“So she ran?”
“To a cave somewhere. She was sick with a fever. It was winter and they had no food. She died while my mother shivered beside her.”
“How did your mother survive?”
“Kindness from a Spalding shepherd with a pregnant wife. She was half frozen and starving, but she knew her trade. She repaid him by helping with his sheep and his wife. In time, she worked at market day and met my father before he was laird.”
Reuben nodded. “And he figured it out?”
“She told him.” There was insult in her tone. “She would not begin their marriage with a lie.”
“Of course not,” he said, knowing full well that many would. Indeed, it probably would have been better for everyone if she had kept her identity secret. But she had been honest, and that was a credit to her mother, and something that Iseabail clearly valued.
“He kept it quiet as long as possible. Many knew, but while he was alive, he would brook no talk about magic. But after his death…” She shook her head. “My uncle started telling everyone. He stoked the fear about us even as he bragged about it.”
“He was stirring everyone up about it—both good and bad. It probably made it easier to control you and gave him someone to blame if things went wrong.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Every stillbirth was Mama’s fault. Every bad storm came because she had prayed for it or not prayed enough. She would be delivering a child and the father would threaten her if it wasn’t a boy.” She looked at him, her eyes filled with pain. “It was awful. Every day, every night. Awful.”
He wrapped her in his arms and set her head on her chest. He tucked her close as she lay on him, not crying but still taking comfort. Or so he hoped. “Those days are over,” he promised. “You will never live like that again.”
She nodded against him, but he could tell she didn’t fully believe it. Neither did he.
He didn’t yet see a way through. At the moment, every direction ended with him dead. Someone, somehow would gut him in the night if he didn’t finish this fast. It had to be public, and it had to leave Iseabail vindicated. Otherwise, she would likely be gutted along with him.
Or married to Hamish, which was even worse.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Why did yougo to outsiders for help?”
“Hmmm?” Iseabail stretched against her husband, feeling her body slide against his. There wasn’t a soft spot of fat anywhere, and yet when she snuggled next to him, she felt as if he softened to accommodate her. Never had she thought such physical sweetness could exist between man and woman. She’d always heard about the passion, never the sweet aftermath.
She liked it. But she didn’t like his question.
“I have been speaking of this all day with you,” she murmured. “Must we do so now in the middle of the night?” They had stopped south of Scotland to give the horses a night’s rest and wait for his men to catch up. For all that their departure from London had been abrupt and desperate, they were now taking their sweet time as if he had no fear of being caught.
“And why are we going so slowly to Scotland?” she added.
“Because I am not prepared to face your uncle yet.”
“They why did we have to leave London so quickly?”
“Because his men knew where you lived. He does not know where we are now.” He rolled her so that she lay on her back while he set his chin on his elbow above her. He was studying her, his expression grave, and she took the opening to move against him again. Would there be more bed sport tonight? She had already enjoyed—
“You are ducking my question. Why did you go to outsiders instead of your own people?”
She looked at him for a long moment. It wasn’t that she was ducking the question, exactly. It was that she had no answer for him.
“Iseabail—”
“I couldn’t be sure they would help me. I didn’t think it through. I just did it.” She sighed. She had already told him the details, just not the why. Because she didn’t fully understand it herself. “I was cleaning and stitching the hand of a farmer who sold potatoes and other vegetables at the fair. He’d cut his hand open on the market stall and if it was not tended well, he would lose the use of his fingers. And if it got infected—”
“That’s a serious wound. He was lucky you were there.”
She shrugged. “Someone was always hurting themselves on the market stalls. My uncle did not construct them carefully and they are hard used.”
He pressed a kiss to her hand. “Tell me what happened next.”
