“Refusing to admit it would not make it any less true.”
“I know.” Shona sighed as she finished tying off her own loose braid, letting it rest over her left breast.
The braid would not tame her curls completely, but helped them remain manageable. Henry had always said her hair was her glory and insisted she wore it down with only a thin gold circlet on her head.
It had been fashionable, but not practical. Not that the old man had cared if Marjory’s baby fists got tangled in the long red tresses, or flour from the kitchens inevitably ended up decorating the ends when she made bread.
He’d told her his cook could see to the needs of the keep, but the man had been a miser in areas not easily discerned by his knights or guests. He’d refused to provide enough kitchen help to feed the mouths living in his walls.
Of course Shona had stepped in to help. Particularly since her own mother had been cook until her death.
“You’ve got that look again.”
“What look is that?” Shona asked Audrey.
“Sadness.”
There was no point in denying the truth. “I was thinking of my mother.”
“She was a good woman, but not half so kind as her daughter.” It was a sweet sentiment, though not entirely true.
Before Shona’s disgrace, her mother had shown her daughter, and the others around them, a great deal of kindness.
Her husband losing his position as seneschal for the MacLeod, their move to England (a land her mother had hated) and then discovering her daughter carried a child out of wedlock had all taken a great toll on the older Scotswoman.
She said none of this to Audrey though, the topic of her life before England one Shona had always been loath to discuss. While the very reason for that habit now played in the water with their son, she found it difficult to break regardless.
The men left the water, taking Eadan behind a stand of bushes to preserve the women’s modesty as they dressed.
Her son came out of the foliage dressed in a child-size kilt of the MacLeod colors. Shona did not know where Caelis had come by the small plaid, but it gave her no joy to see her son dressed thus. In truth, the silent claim by the big warrior sent a skirl of fear shivering down her spine.
In that moment, Eadan looked wholly like Caelis’s child, with nothing to indicate an English baroness was his mother at all.
She opened her mouth to protest, but was interrupted by Marjory tugging at the skirt of Shona’s heavy green velvet gown. “Mama?”
“Yes, love?”
“I don’t want to ride a horse today.”
Audrey and Shona shared a commiserating look.
In all truth, Shona knew not what the day would hold, but at the very least she thought the generosity of the Sinclair laird might extend to another night’s lodging. “We will stay here for today.”
“Promise?” Marjory asked with such hope Shona had to hide a wince.
Her poor daughter was tired of the adventure of travel. Eadan as well, no doubt. Neither child was used to spending so many hours confined from play, much less to a saddle.
And while sleeping on the ground under the stars had been an adventure the first couple of nights, it soon grew less charming, even for the wee ones. But Shona had had no choice other than to set the grueling pace she had done.
They had needed to put as much distance as possible between themselves and any soldiers Percival might have sent after them.
“Can we live here, do you think?” Marjory asked artlessly.
“I’m sorry sweeting, but our family is on Balmoral Island.”
“You’re still set on traveling there?” Caelis asked, reproof in his tone.
“My plans are not set.” And that was all she would give the big warrior. “You are ready to return to the keep?”
Though clearly they were. Thomas was once again dressed in his English garb and Caelis had re-donned his plaid, his hair still dripping rivulets of water down his chest and back. Having done no better a job at drying, Eadan stood between the two men looking like a miniature version of the Chrechte warrior.
“I would not mind staying here for a bit,” Thomas said, sounding every bit as hopeful as the children. “The Sinclair said I could train with his Chrechte, his elite soldiers.”
Shona did not miss Thomas’s attempt to explain the Chrechte away as elite soldiers. Just as others in her former clan had done when she’d lived among them, but after last night, Shona knew exactly what Chrechte were.
Elite soldiers they might be, but ’twas because they shared their nature with a beast.
She stared at Thomas, the young man who had come to live in her home when he was still a gangly boy of fourteen. She’d been only a few years older but felt decades wiser in the ways of the world.
This boy was to train with the Chrechte. That could only mean one thing.
“You have a wolf as well,” she whispered, barely able to get the words past the tightness in her throat.
For if Thomas, honorary uncle to her children and close as a brother to Shona, was a shape-changer—that meant her dearest friend, the true sister of her heart, Audrey was as well.
And all these years, neither had said a thing.
Chapter 9
A mother, though of the softest feminine nature, will let her beast rule when protecting her child.
—SABRINE OF THE DONEGAL
“Wolf? I don’t know what you mean.” Thomas was such a poor liar, Shona had to wonder at his and Audrey’s ability to keep their secret all these years.
“Stop your fabrications. Caelis told me. He showed me,” she emphasized, so they would not think there was any room for doubt.
“You showed her?” Thomas asked, clearly shocked to the core. “But you are male and it is not the full moon.”
“We gain control of our change once we have engaged in certain acts,” Caelis said with a significant look at the children.
Shona had no idea what he meant, but Thomas seemed to understand just fine because he nodded and then turned bright red.
“You are a white wolf, are you not?” Caelis asked.
Thomas nodded his head doubtfully.
Caelis looked to Audrey, who gave a more confident affirmative. “Then you should have control of the change already. It is the way of your wolf. Others are not so lucky.”
“I can prevent it at the full moon,” Thomas said. “Mother taught us.”
“If you can prevent the change, you can initiate it as well.”
“I can?” Thomas asked, his eyes shining with delight at the thought.
“Aye.”
“Will you show me how?”
Caelis gave a short nod of his head in affirmative.
Thomas’s eyes glowed with such hero worship, in other circumstances it would have brought a smile to Shona’s features. But numbness was taking over emotions battered by one too many blows.
“Did you know about Eadan?” Shona asked Audrey, her voice strained.
Though she felt distanced from the pain of yet another betrayal slicing at her heart and the way it manifested itself.
Audrey’s face crumpled and Shona had her answer.
Not only were they both Chrechte, but they’d known her son was one as well.
For five years, Audrey and Thomas had known Shona’s most shameful secret.
They had always been aware that her husband was not father to her son, and yet they’d kept their own mystery without a hint to the truth.
They’d kept her son’s true nature from her. “How? How did you know?”
Was it something about the way her son smelled to them? He was always talking about being able to smell her sadness or a lie when she tried to protect him from the truth.