She spoke with cynical, false delight, but the midwife failed to recognize her mockery. Her eyes danced with joy. “Aye, madam, but he’s waiting just outside the door. Perhaps you’d like to tell him yourself?”
“No, I wantyouto deliver the news. I doubt he’ll believe it, coming from me.”
The stout woman grinned. “He’ll think it’s too good to be true. Is that it? Well, I’ll tell him myself, if that is your wish.”
“Indeed it is.” Gwendolen opened the door and found Angus waiting in the corridor.
The midwife approached him. “Congratulations, sir. Your wife is expecting.”
His cool gaze lifted, and he glanced across at Gwendolen, who was leaning against the doorway with her arms folded at her chest. She tilted her head at him and raised an eyebrow.
“I see,” he said to the woman, without looking at her. “You may go now.”
The midwife’s smile vanished immediately, then she lowered her gaze and hurried to the stairs.
“It is true, then,” Angus said.
Gwendolen backed into her room and rested her hand on the edge of the door. She was so angry with him, she could have spat. “Of course it’s true. I am surprised your precious oracle didn’t inform you of it already, but maybe she doesn’t always see the whole picture. Why don’t you go climb into bed withher, and ask if she forgot to mention that she saw your firstborn child in my womb?”
He took an anxious step forward. “Gwendolen—”
“No,I don’t want to hear it. I am too angry with you.” She slammed the door in his face.
Leaning close to it, she listened, half expecting him to pound a fist against it, or come barging in to teach her a lesson or two about such bold acts of defiance. But all she heard was the sound of his breathing, slow and steady on the other side of the door until, at last, he turned and walked away.
She listened intently, waiting for his footsteps to disappear at the bottom of the stairs, then, very quietly, she opened the door and peered out.
The corridor was empty. He was gone.
***
“You ought to send her away,” Lachlan said, as he followed Angus across the hall toward the bailey. “Send her back to the dark cave where she came from. She brings nothing but poison.”
“She doesn’t live in a cave,” Angus replied. “She has a cottage, and she let me live with her for the better part of a year when I had nowhere else to go. I’ll not send her away.”
They entered the bailey. The sky was overcast, and a thick white mist hung over the four corner towers. Angus looked up at the clouds, barely able to comprehend what the midwife had just confirmed—that Gwendolen was with child. He was going to be a father.
It should have come as good news. He should be celebrating, but all he felt presently was a raw, blinding terror, which was completely unfamiliar to him, for he had never feared for the future. But now, everything was different.
Because of his marriage to Gwendolen. It had done something to him.
“Raonaid will destroy what you’ve built here,” Lachlan said, keeping up with Angus as he quickened his pace across the bailey. “She’ll wreck it with all her grisly omens and prophecies of disaster.”
They had to stop and let a donkey and cart pass in front of them. The rickety wheels left deep tracks in the muck. Angus stared down at the tracks and watched them fill with water.
“And don’t tell me you believe in her curses and spells,” Lachlan continued. “She’s a lunatic. It’s nothing but folly.”
“She doesn’t cast spells,” Angus said. “She has visions, and she predicts the future. She knew you would come for me, and that together we’d raise an army to reclaim Kinloch.”
“Anyone could have predicted that. And are you forgetting that shedidn’tpredict you’d be a father?”
The mention of his unborn child caused something inside him to shudder. “Maybe I won’t be—because I’ll be dead.”
They stopped at the door to the powder magazine, and Angus dug into his sporran for the key. What he found was the letter he had written to Duncan.
He thought for a moment that he should just rip it up. He already had enough distractions. And what was the point in trying to rekindle an old friendship if he was not going to live long enough to even see Duncan again?
At the same time, he knew it would benefit his clan to have allies at Moncrieffe Castle, for Duncan was one of the most powerful and influential Scottish nobles, and his castle was a mere two-day ride from here. If Gwendolen delivered a son, the boy might be chief one day. He would require friends and allies. Perhaps Duncan, the great Earl of Moncrieffe, would watch over them…
