Claimed by the Highlander (22 page)

“When did she see this?”

“Weeks ago, at Calanais.”

She worked over the details in her mind and clung to the absolute certainty that she would never betray her husband. Raonaid was wrong.

“Perhaps she was seeing the dispatch I sent to Colonel Worthington at Fort William,” Gwendolen suggested. “In it, I wrote that I wanted him to come and take you away by force, and hang you at the gallows. I wanted it very badly at the time. I have no excuse, but you already know this, because you read the letter yourself. You burned it, remember?”

He regarded her with suspicion.

“I confess that when I wrote it,” Gwendolen continued, “I was sincere in my wish to see you hanged, but afterward, I faced your wrath and regretted my actions. I meant it when I pledged my allegiance.” She moved closer to him and laid her hands on his chest, willing him to believe her. “Since then, we have spoken vows before God to unite us as man and wife. I have given my body to you willingly.” She paused. “Surely what Raonaid saw was a moment out of the past. That is all. I do not fault her for coming here. I would have done the same, but Colonel Worthington came here and met with you, and he did not do what I asked him to do, and thank God for that, because I do not want you dead. I want you to live. I
need
you to live.”

He took hold of her hands and held them away from him. “How do I know I can trust you? You betrayed me once before, after you gave me your word that you would be loyal.”

“Things were different then.” He did not seem convinced, so she made another desperate attempt to prove to him that she could be trusted. “And today, they are different yet again.”

“How so?”

She placed a hand on her belly, and felt a strange mixture of joy and anguish. “Because I was ill the past three mornings. I’ve had no flux.”

For days, she had been anticipating this moment. She’d hoped to tell Angus the news in the Great Hall in front of the clans. She knew how pleased he would be, and imagined him gathering her into his arms, perhaps lifting her into the air.

He did none of those things now. The ice in his eyes grew more frigid than ever.

“How do I know this isn’t a trick meant to distract me from some other treachery?”

“Is that what you think?” Sudden tears of rage pooled in her eyes. “Do you truly believe that I would lie about something like this?”

“I don’t know what to believe. Raonaid has never been wrong before.”

“So you’ll believe her over me?”

She wanted to hit him, to scream at him, punch him, and demand that he take her side. She was his wife, and that woman was known all over Scotland as a mad witch!

He took hold of her arm and dragged her out of the room. “Come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“Back to your chamber, and I’ll send for a midwife to examine you. I want to know if you’re telling me the truth.”

“Angus, how dare you!” Besieged by anger and disbelief, she struggled to pry his fingers off her arm, but he possessed an iron grip.

“I need to know, lass. There can be no lies between us.”

“There are none!” she shouted.
“And I will never forgive you for this!”

He dragged her down the stairs and through the stone passageways of the castle. “I’ll believe you about the child when the midwife tells me it is so.”

“I suppose it’ll be a MacDonald midwife,” she retorted, “and not a MacEwen?”

“Aye, and I’ll be choosing the woman myself. At least that way, I’ll know I’m not being deceived again.”

He shoved her into the room and looked at her harshly, before he shut the door in her face and locked her in.

Chapter Eighteen

The midwife arrived within the hour to examine Gwendolen and confirmed that her womb was enlarged. Given her symptoms, it was therefore almost certain that she was expecting a child.

Gwendolen thanked the woman and escorted her to the door. “Will you inform my husband of the happy news?”

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 want
you
to 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 with
her
, 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 she
didn’t
predict 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 …

He withdrew the letter and handed it to Lachlan. “See that this is delivered to Moncrieffe. Send a dispatch rider today and tell him to wait for a reply. If there is one.”

Lachlan reached out to take it. “I thought you and the earl were not on speaking terms.”

“We aren’t, but it’s time I remedied that.” Angus unlocked the door to the powder magazine and entered. He lifted the lid on one of the wooden barrels. “Are all of these full?”

“To the brim. We have enough powder to blow the entire English army halfway across the Irish Sea.”

Angus looked around. “What about the armory? Are all the muskets in working order? Do we have sufficient ammunition?”

“Aye.”

“Good.” He started for the door. “Assemble the men, Lachlan. I wish to speak to them in the bailey.”

*   *   *

How was it possible that a person’s emotions could shift from one extreme to the other in the space of a single heartbeat? Gwendolen wondered miserably as she passed through the castle corridors toward the South Tower. Earlier that morning, she had been drifting along on a happy cloud of bliss while supervising the weavers in the spinning room, and anticipating the moment when she would tell her husband about the child in her womb.

The next thing she knew, he was bursting through the door and announcing that the oracle—a woman who had shared his bed quite recently—had envisioned his death by hanging. And that Gwendolen would be the cause of it.

She arrived at the door to the oracle’s guest chamber and fought a sickening ball of apprehension in her belly. She had never met this woman, but she despised her already, for planting false seeds of doubt and mistrust in her husband’s mind.

At the same time, however, she knew she could not be too hasty with her anger. This woman had foreseen her husband’s death, and perhaps knowledge of such an event could provide a defense against it. Despite how furious she felt, she did not want to lose Angus. She would therefore have to be calm and press Raonaid for more information about her visions, and ascertain if she was, in fact, correct—or simply here to cause mischief and lure Angus back to her bed.

Struggling to keep a firm grip on her emotions, Gwendolen knocked on the door. No one answered, so she knocked again, a second time.

At last, the door opened, and she swallowed uneasily at the disturbing image of the woman before her.

Raonaid, the famous oracle.

Mad as the devil. Crafty as a fox. And the most beautiful woman she had ever seen.

She was tall and buxom. Her hair was the color of a raging inferno, her complexion pure white, like polished ivory.

But it was her eyes that caused Gwendolen the most distress, for they were a spectacular shade of blue, and brilliantly, ruthlessly calculating.

Chapter Nineteen

“I knew you would come,” the oracle said, appearing more than a little satisfied with herself, as she turned her back on Gwendolen, walked with a sensual swagger across the room, and left the door open behind her.

Gwendolen entered and looked around the quiet chamber. A hot fire was blazing in the hearth. The whisky decanter had been emptied almost entirely, and the bedclothes were torn off the mattress and thrown to the floor in a massive heap of silks and linens.

Gwendolen took in Raonaid’s overall appearance—her tattered, homespun skirt and bodice, her tiny waist and ample bosom, and the strange cord of bones tied around her neck.

She hated to admit it, but there was a natural majesty about her husband’s former lover, especially in the way she carried herself, with such pride and dignity.

Any fool could see that she embodied everything a man would find appealing in a woman, and exuded an air of sexuality as well. Gwendolen had to fight against the sudden twinge of jealousy that poked at her confidence.

“Are you enjoying yourself with the great Lion?” Raonaid asked, tossing back a sip of whisky. “Spending lots of time on your back, I expect. I’ll bet he’s taught you all kinds of interesting things you never imagined.”

Gwendolen raised her chin. “How kind of you to ask. Indeed, I am enjoying him tremendously. He is an excellent lover and I feel drunk with lust most of the time, but of course, you would already know that. You would remember how it once felt.”