Sing Me Home (26 page)

She spoke around the lump rising in her throat. “Are you finally offering me marriage, Colin MacEgan?”

He didn’t laugh as she expected him to. He released her hands and then cupped her face, lifting her chin so he could look in her eyes.

He asked, “If I did, would you say yes?”

His face went blurry beyond her tears. How ironic that he would offer her a future, when the future between them was lost for sure. “It would be a poor wedding,” she whispered. “Done on a roadside by some traveling friar.”

“Fingar would play the harp.” He rubbed his thumbs across her cheeks. “And Matilda would supply the silks for your wedding dress.”

“Wouldn’t that be a sight.”

“The roadside would be filled with flowers.”

“Aye, that’s true.”

“But we could find a church that would take us,” he said, “if that’s your wish.”

“Padraig wouldn’t pass the threshold without raising up a hellish smoke. And someone has to steal the ring.”

“We could use this.”

Colin tapped the ring on her finger, the ring that had been tucked in her swaddling clothes.

His blue gaze settled on her with growing intensity. She realized he was waiting for an answer to an impossible question, an answer that must be glowing on her face. He pulled her into his arms. She pressed against his chest, feeling a buckle under his surcoat bite into her cheek. He held her so tightly that she found herself gasping that she couldn’t breathe, until finally he loosed her and laid a kiss upon her lips that stole the very last of her breath.

He said against her mouth, “I have another question for you.”

“Questions, questions.” She licked his lower lip. “Doesn’t a man have better things to do with his tongue?”

“I won’t be able to walk this slope if you keep talking like that,” he said. “And Caddell is waiting for my answer.”

At the sound of the name, she remembered herself. “Caddell is waiting?”

“As am I.”

She pulled away from him, searching his eyes, and then realized that this whole strange conversation had something to do with William Caddell and the ransom he’d come to pay.

“Colin,” she said, her voice breaking, “I’ve no stomach for japes.”

“It’s no jape. You will have to go back to Shrule with him, for appearance’s sake. But only until the marriage.”

“Marriage.”

His smile was slow. “I’ve been offered your hand, Maura. But I’ll only take it if you’ll agree to have me.”

She blinked at him, disbelieving. Her lips, fingertips, nose, went numb. She blurted, “It’s a trick.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I think he speaks the truth. I marry you, and there will be peace.”

Hope leapt in her breast, a treacherous thing. Could it be possible that Colin would be The MacEgan openly, without fear, the war and skirmishes over? And she—the foundling from Killeigh, a mere kitchen servant—become the Lady MacEgan, the mistress of the castle looming over them from above?

It was too odd, too impossible, too fantastic to imagine, a player’s midnight tale come to life.

He wiped a strand of hair off her brow to draw her attention. “You already told me you’d marry the minstrel. Would you marry the warrior as well?”

She traced the scruff of his jaw, the indentation of his chin, and then the sweep of his lower lip, whispering, “Aren’t the two men one and the same?

Chapter Twenty-One

M
aura shifted the stool so that the light streaming from the arrow-slit fell upon the swirling design of scarlet and gold threads along the collar of her bridal gown. Her silver needle flashed as she pierced the rose-colored silk. By her bed, two maidservants bickered as they struggled to re-hang the newly washed drapes of her bed. Before drying the cloth in the late August sun, they had steeped it in a heather rinse. As they shook out the first drape, the scent billowed over her.

She found herself thinking of warm hillsides. She found herself yearning for Colin’s lovemaking. Most of all, she found herself wondering what niggling concern kept dampening what should be delirious joy at the prospect of marrying the man she loved.

She winced as silver pierced her flesh. A drop of blood pearled out of her thumb. She sucked its coppery tang into her mouth before it could stain the fabric. Maybe her discontent arose from nothing more than being back in this castle with this false family. She hated being steeped in the lie that she was Lord Caddell’s daughter, but Colin had convinced her that all the pomp and fuss was necessary. Many wars ended in a wedding, but only if the wedding had a multitude of witnesses.

She felt the patter of little feet and looked down to see Nutmeg on his haunches in her lap, twitching his nose.

“Aye, you feel it, too,” she said, putting her embroidery aside to scratch his belly. “I suppose we’ll both feel better once this wedding is done and we’re out of this place.”

Feeling the servants’ eyes upon her, she set her attention back on her embroidery. Nutmeg skittered off her lap to nose around in an unoccupied corner. Lord William’s announcement of the upcoming wedding had overturned the rigid, well-worn protocol of the castle. The last of the banns had been read yesterday at Mass. Though the wedding was ten days away, the guests had already begun arriving. The first pavilions rose up in the fields outside the walls—haphazard rows of dun-colored tarps, with brightly colored pennants flapping at their peaks like cock’s combs of competing roosters. Servants bustled as if possessed, tradesmen roamed the halls, selling spices and cloth and ribbons and baubles to all who needed a new robe for the wedding day,
brehons
had arrived to draw up the wedding agreement, bickering with the English clerks, priests came to speak of marriage and take confession. She couldn’t even escape to the kitchen for peace, for those rooms buzzed—a hive of kneading and baking and smoking and plucking.

To Maura’s great relief, Lady Isabelle had taken the handling of most of the arrangements out of Maura’s clumsy hands. Instead, Maura concentrated on her bridal gown, on making the tiny tight stitches Sister Agnes had taught her to make. She set her mind to dreaming of how her life would be, once Colin and she were married. She wondered if they would ever have a moment of privacy again.

The door to her chamber flew open and another fleet of servants flooded in. One came directly to her and bobbed a curtsy.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, milady.” The elderly woman’s gaze darted around the room. Maura found herself thinking of those tiny, dun-colored birds that always flitted in and out of the stables, feasting on fleas and the occasional bit of grain. “I beg for a moment of your time.”

“No need to beg.” Maura would never get used to all the bobbing and curtsying. “Speak your mind.”

“It’s about the matter of your servants.”

The woman had switched to Irish, so Maura did the same. “My servants?”

“Aye, milady. After your wedding, blessed be—” the woman made the sign of the cross, “you’ll be off to your own household. And it’s no secret that you’ll need some women of your own to see to you.”

Maura blinked. She supposed once the wedding was over it would be her responsibility to hire servants to keep Colin’s castle running properly.

“I was wondering when you’d be picking them,” the woman continued, fussing with her bird-boned hands, “and if you’ll be taking many from the castle.”

“I’ll have to speak to The MacEgan.”

“Of course,” the woman said. “It’s a wise thing, to consult with your husband before making a decision. But as to the matter of servants, the mistress picks her own.”

Maura dropped her hands into her sewing. “Has someone sent you?”
To remind me of my duties?

The elderly woman shook her head. “I come to speak for myself, milady.”

Maura nodded in acknowledgement. Another consequence of becoming a chieftain’s wife was that she must listen to the complaints of the village women in the expectation of speaking quiet counsel to her husband upon the bed pillow.

“Do you not remember me?” The elderly woman glanced over her shoulder at the other servants and then leaned in. “‘Twas I who risked my old bones and what life I have left, God save me, to come forward on the St. Vitus’s Day feast and tell the … tale.”

Maura looked at the elderly woman with more attention. She remembered little of that night except an elderly nursemaid sprawled upon the rushes of the mead hall blathering on about twin babies and the vow she’d made to a baroness long dead.

“Lord William has treated me well,” the servant continued, tugging her gray mantle close as if she were cold, “but once you’re gone, I fear he won’t want me around as my mind grows feeble, in case I go about speaking out of turn.”

The older woman plucked at the edge of the mantle with nervous fingers. Her gaze kept darting about, to the servants and back.

Maura asked, “Has Lord William threatened to send you away?”

“No,” she said. “Not yet. But I beg you to think on me, my lady. I may be old, but I can be of service. By the look of your future husband, it’s likely you’ll have a new babe in your arms every year.”

Her cheeks grew warm. Yes, she was certain there would be many children in the years to come. A welcome responsibility. But another responsibility nonetheless.

“And since I know that kind of work,” the old woman continued, “being a nursemaid and all, I was thinking you’d take me in.”

Maura glanced at the woman’s arms and thought they looked like they’d break under the weight of a pail of water. Then she thought of the cold gray eyes of William Caddell and imagined this Irishwoman begging outside a church, or silenced in a far worse way. She thought of the other servants she would have to hire, the children she would raise, the household she’d be responsible for on the height of that mountain. Her neck tightened up. She felt, all of a sudden, like she had to cook for thirty honored guests with nothing but a single ham, one pot, and two dull-witted servants.

Her stomach turned over like she’d swallowed a flock of birds.

“You are welcome in my household,” she murmured, distractedly. “I thank you—all the MacEgans thank you—for your service.”

After the servant bowed and left, Maura put her sewing aside. She paced to the window, and then back to the chair, and then back to the narrow window again. Nutmeg followed, his little claws skittering on the floor slates. Then, without thinking any longer, she swept up her pet and headed for the door.

The next thing she knew, she was striding through the pavilion field. Catching sight of the pennant flapping with the serpentine swan, Maura swept past a startled Irish guard straight into Colin’s tent—and a gathering of laughing, roughly-dressed Irishmen.

Colin rose from his crouch. He wore a fine tunic of crimson today, edged with silver embroidery. Gone was the chain mail that had encased his figure. Gone, too, was the bristle that had darkened his lip and jaw. Clean-shaven, he had the look of a young English nobleman at leisure.

With one look at her face, he waved his men out of the tent.

Colin held out a skin. She slipped Nutmeg to the ground and then took a sip of the ale. She couldn’t catch her breath. She couldn’t stop the racing of her heart. So she sank her face into his silk tunic. She curled her fists into the cloth, holding him close. He held her tight against his chest. His chin rested upon her head, his heart beat steady under her ear.

The cries of a ribbon-peddler sounded in the path between the pavilions. From outside came the barks of men’s laughter, the murmur of women gossiping as they plied their needles in the waning sunshine. The smell of roasting meat wafted in through the flaps.

He said, softly, “What happened, my love?”

She murmured, “The world is changing.”

“Aye, lass, it is. Very fast.”

“I don’t like being in this castle with this false family.”

“Neither do I.”

“And I still have my ring,” she said, “and no answers.”

She pulled away from him and splayed her hand. When she’d first been given this shiny gold ring, she’d felt great gratitude for the gift. But this gift had birthed a thousand unanswered questions, and no time to find answers amid her regular responsibilities. The mix had made her so restless that she’d abandoned the convent just to seek the truth.