“The babe could be a girl, you know,” she finally said when they’d both gotten their regular breathing back.
“Or twins,” Ian answered. “Did the Crone of the Hills nae say as much?”
“She did.” Jillian smiled at the thought as she nestled her head on Ian’s shoulder. The crone carried the Faerie blood of the MacLeod ancestors. She had originally appeared to Jillian as a small girl at the local market and given her a stone with the solemn request that she keep it on her person always. At the time, Jillian had agreed to humor the serious child, not realizing the stone harbored a faerie who would save her from being raped by Wesley.
“Twins run in the family, ye ken.”
“Mercy. If they turn out like Shane’s sisters, Caitlin and Caylin, I will have my hands quite full.”
His voice lowered. “Ye will be the perfectmáthair.”
Jillian wondered if he were recalling his own mother who had died birthing Fiona. His father had remarried—a beautiful woman who, by all accounts, had been haughty and cold, more interested in the power a laird’s wife held than in being a mother to his children.
Jillian raised her head to look at Ian. “You will be a wonderful father too.”
“I intend to be,” he answered seriously.
She knew he’d worshipped his father. Bridget had told her how Ian had grieved when his father’s carriage slipped down a ravine during a sudden snowstorm. Both his father and the stepmother were found frozen to death the next morning.
“I hope—” She didn’t get to finish her sentence since someone was bellowing in the courtyard.
Ian groaned and released her, sitting up to reach for his breeches. “That sounds like Uncle Duncan or his brother, Broc. What could ail a mon so early in the morn?”
Jillian sat up too, reaching for her dressing gown. She no longer bothered with a night rail. It fit tightly with her swollen stomach, and Ian rarely left it on long anyway. “I do not think your uncle or his brother has really accepted me. They hate the English.”
“Bah! The mon is stubborn as a mountain goat. He will be singing a different tune once the fine English lands we own provide coin for the clan. Besides,” Ian said as he leaned over to give her a quick kiss before striding to the door. “Once the bairns arrive, he canna deny that ye belong to the MacLeods.”
Jillian watched Ian leave and then frowned slightly. Something about Duncan MacNair and his half-brother, Broc Moffett, always made her uneasy. She could not put her finger on why, but she had a sense of foreboding.
