“You said there were things you wished to tell me before I went to my marriage bed?” she asked, embarrassed but determined to learn what she could.
“Aye.” Shona frowned, a shadow of the despair Audrey used to see in her gaze. “It can be both wonderful and terrible.”
“I do not believe Vegar is like the baron.”
“Nay, and you will not loathe his touch as I did the baron’s. That in itself will make things easier.”
“You said there was great joy in the act for a woman.”
“I found so with Caelis.”
“Not the baron though.”
“Nay, but there are ways to endure.”
“I do not believe I will need to endure with Vegar.”
“I am more grateful than I can say to agree with you.” The sincerity in Shona’s tone could not be questioned.
Audrey had known her dearest friend had found her marital duties onerous, but she saw now they had wounded Shona deep in her soul. “Does Caelis know?”
“What?”
“How awful it was for you to be married to the baron?”
“It does not matter.”
“I think it does.”
Shona just shook her head and then proceeded to tell Audrey the most improbable things about the pleasure between a man and woman. Or at least Audrey would have seen them as so before meeting Vegar.
“It was not like that with the baron.”
“Nay.”
“What was it like?”
Shona just shook her head. “God willing, you will never know and I’ll not give you thoughts to feed your nightmares or wedding-night jitters.”
“Percival would have been worse,” Audrey guessed.
“Aye. Submitting to him might well have broken me.”
Audrey privately agreed. Even the strongest woman could only bow so far before she snapped in half, never to be whole again.
Hours after Vegar had come to collect Audrey, Shona paced her bedchamber, unable to sleep. Caelis most likely knew, too. He could probably hear her every footfall. Infernal Chrechte senses.
She wasn’t a fool, no matter what her past with him might lead the man to believe. She had no questions about where he was spending his night, either.
Outside her door.
In the hall…with no bedding, or comforts.
Not that she was concerned about that. No. It was no concern of hers if a grown man chose to spend his night sleeping on a stone floor instead of using the perfectly good quarters provided by Laird Sinclair for his soldiers.
Really, it was not.
She glared at the door, still furious with him for his assumption she would marry him without so much as even the most rude request. Much less an actual proposal.
Did he not believe she deserved even such minimal consideration?
Mayhap he thought he had reason to make assumptions, but she’d maintained her uncertainty of her future from the beginning. Even after the folly of allowing him into her bed the night before.
Did he believe his willingness to kill for her, or shift into his conriocht put the onus of acceptance on her? According to him and everyone else, there could be no question she was his sacred mate.
That may well be, but that did not mean she would fall at his feet. Even if she could not seem to stop herself from falling into his bed.
Yes, he was father to her child, but Caelis had been that very thing when he had rejected her in favor of his alpha’s dictates six years before. Even if he had not known it.
No, she could not start thinking that way.
But neither could she make herself ignore certain truths.
The most important being: he would keep her children safe.
She stopped her pacing and took a deep breath. More than any other consideration, that one swayed her.
The world was an even more danger-filled place than she’d known on her escape from the barony, which had been her home for all of her children’s lives.
Caelis, as conriocht and eventual laird of his own clan—because she was certain he would wrest control of the MacLeod from Uven—was in a better position to protect Eadan and Marjory than most.
Marrying him, however, meant returning to the clan that had been only too willing to see the back of her and her parents. Because they were human. Though she hadn’t known that was the reason at the time.
She would still be a human in a clan with too many who had been taught to see her as inferior for her humanity as well as her gender.
It was untenable.
She hadn’t suddenly sprouted angel’s wings, nor would she. She had no great magical ability to shift into another form and that was not about to change. Or would it?
Caelis had told Maon that Mairi could now shift into wolf form. Apparently, she hadn’t been able to do so before. That’s why Uven had treated her so badly.
He had not been pleased to have a daughter who was not fully Chrechte.
Could she shift now only because her father had been a wolf? Or was it some inevitable response to being mated to a Chrechte?
Though hadn’t Caelis said her mate was an Éan? That would make her husband a man who shifted into a bird.
And Mairi now transformed into a wolf. Wasn’t that what Caelis had said?
Had Caelis destined her to become like him without telling her? Was he hiding something of great magnitude from her?
Again?
She stormed to the door and pulled the heavy bar up so she could fling it open.
“Why are you out here?” she demanded of the man who was exactly where she’d known he would be.
“Where else would I be?” he asked, sounding far too reasonable.
“In your own bed.”
“I do not sleep in a bed. Vegar and I prefer furs.”
“You sleep with Vegar?”
He rolled his eyes at the nonsensical notion. “We share a room. As Cahir, it is preferable to the soldier’s quarters.”
“Why? Do you hide secrets from even your fellow soldiers?”
“You know I do.” Caelis looked confused by her question. “Not all the soldiers in the keep are Chrechte.”
“Even the Chrechte don’t know everything about the Cahir.”
“That’s so like you.”
“What do you mean?”
She glared at the fur on the floor.
“And you sleep on the floor like a barbarian?”
“Soldiers are not afforded the luxury of a bed.”
She knew that, but she didn’t say so. It felt like giving him ground. And she could not afford to do that.
“Where did you sleep all the years you lived in our clan?” he asked, as if making a point.
In a pile of blankets near the fire in the main room of her family’s small hut. The laird before Uven had been willing to have a human as his seneschal, but that had not extended to Shona’s family being invited to live within the keep. Only now did she realize why that was.
Not only had the man been Fearghall and therefore of the mind that Chrechte were superior to those without an animal nature, but he had a secret to protect.
The Sinclair had human soldiers and servants living in his keep, but the MacLeod’s home was nothing like the Sinclair’s. Not in size and not in security.
And if she was not mistaken, Caelis expected her to return and live in that very keep.
“That is entirely beside the point.”
“If you say so.”
“Do not patronize me!”
“I would not.”
“Hah.”
“You are upset.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared up at him. “And you still haven’t figured out why, have you?”
His blue gaze turned wary and she noted he did not answer immediately.