Warrior's Moon

Chapter 2

The warrior fainted.

With a great resounding thud as his big, over-muscled body hit the dirt.

Caelis had taken one look at their son, his blue eyes widening in recognition that had quickly turned to horror and then he’d sunk to the ground like a stone.

Several people, Sinclairs and Shona’s friends alike, made sounds with varying degrees of shock and volume.

Her own heart in her throat, though why she should be concerned for the blackguard she did not know, Shona paid none of them any heed until her son spoke. “Is he dead then, like my lord?”

The fact that her former husband had insisted on the formal address from the boy all but he and Shona considered his son never seemed so absurd and yet appropriate as it did in that moment when Eadan stood staring at the unconscious body of the father who shared his blood.

Niall shook his head and turned away from the other big soldier, as if a warrior collapsing was of little notice. “Nay, laddie. He’s alive, just taking a wee nap.”

“On the ground?” Eadan asked, blinking up at Niall uncertainly.

“Aye.”

“He fainted,” said the smaller man who had been talking to her son and Niall earlier, a certain amount of glee in his tone.

“Like a damsel in the stories Audrey tells us?”

Niall snorted a laugh. “Aye, just like that.”

“Audrey?” the redheaded smaller man asked. “Not your mother?”

“Mum doesn’t ever tell stories where the damsel faints or needs rescuing. In all her stories, the knights and princesses fight side by side. My lord said they were nonsense, but Marjory and I like them,” Eadan said with staunch loyalty.

“As you should,” Niall said with a pat to her son’s head. “Let Guaire take you and the others to the keep.”

“What about Mum?” Eadan gave her a worried frown, hanging back.

She couldn’t even dredge a smile of comfort for him, but she did manage to say, “Go with Master Guaire, sweeting,” through a very tight throat.

“Here,” Niall raised his arms. “Give me the girl.”

“My name is Marjory,” her daughter decided to inform the giant man.

“Aye, lass, so I heard and a fine name it is. Will you come to me?”

Marjory turned her face into Shona’s chest, her shy nature asserting itself.

Thomas stepped forward. “Come, little dumpling, Uncle Thomas will carry you.”

Marjory shook her head, not looking away from the cocoon of safety she’d created for herself.

Shona would have laughed if she had it in her to do so. Her daughter’s stubborn shyness was all too familiar.

“How will your mama get down from the horse if you don’t let go of her?” Audrey wheedled.

But to no avail.

“We’ll stay here. It’s comfortable,” Marjory claimed in a voice muffled by Shona’s body.

“Marjory, don’t you want to meet the laird?” Thomas asked.

It was exactly the wrong thing to say because Marjory grabbed Shona all the tighter and exclaimed her very clear denial.

Caelis groaned and shifted on the ground. Shockingly, it was that action that caused Marjory to release her tight grip on her mother’s waist and turn to see the big man sit up in the dirt.

“You felled down.” Marjory’s observation was met with a confused nod. “I takes naps, but Eadan doesn’t. Big boys don’t take naps.”

Marjory spoke in a mixture of English and Gaelic, which Shona was used to interpreting. The perplexed look on Caelis’s face said he wasn’t. She knew he’d learned rudimentary English like she had among their clan, so she wasn’t surprised when his confusion eventually cleared.

“I don’t normally nap, princess.”

“I’m not a princess.”

Shona was so shocked by his kindness to her daughter that she gasped.

He flicked a glance at her, but it didn’t linger.

“Are you sure? You look like one.” Caelis stood, dusting himself off and ignoring the curious stares of the Sinclairs around them. He appeared wholly unaffected by having fainted in front of a bailey full of people.

Six years ago, he would not have been so sanguine about revealing any weakness to others.

“My papa was a baron.”

“He isn’t one any longer?” Caelis asked.

“He’s dead. Brother is baron now, but I don’t think he likes Eadan and me.”

Out of the mouths of babes.

This time when Caelis looked at Shona, his regard stayed with her. “You are a widow?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“That is hardly a civilized response to learning a woman’s husband has died,” she remonstrated.

Though she could not claim to feel grief over Henry’s demise, the fact that she’d been left alone in the world—again—without even the baron’s marginal protection, was hardly cause for rejoicing.

“I am not a civilized man.”

He would get no argument from her in that regard. There had been a time that the wild side to his nature appealed to her very much. No longer. “Still, I cannot fathom why you should think my present circumstances good ones.”

She’d thrown off one yoke only to find herself at the risk of falling prey to another, far more onerous one.

Caelis shrugged. “It is good I do not have to kill him.”

Shona gasped, unable to fathom him expressing such a sentiment. “You cannot say such things in front of my children.”

Regret flared in Caelis’s eyes, but his jaw set in stubborn lines she remembered too well for her own comfort. “Please pardon me for speaking so in front of you, princess.”

Marjory giggled.

“What about me?” Eadan demanded.

“You are a big boy, five summers are you not?” Caelis asked.

Eadan nodded without his usual questions of how the man could know this.

“Warrior talk will not upset you,” Caelis said with certainty.

Eadan puffed up at the implied praise and nodded solemnly. “Sometimes a man must do what needs doing.”

Caelis flicked a glance at her. “That is a clan warrior’s saying.”

“My grandfather told me.”

“Where is your grandfather now?”

Eadan’s eyes filled with grief. “The horse kicked him and he died.”

“What horse?”

“Mine.”

“It was not your horse, sweeting. It was only the horse an idiot man put you on.” Shona hated the guilt her son struggled with over his adored grandfather’s demise. She told Caelis, “Eadan’s older brother put him on an untried horse. Percival claimed he did not realize the horse was so temperamental. My father died saving my son.”

“Not a brother.” Caelis’s tone brooked no argument.

Shona was saved from a reply by her son’s. “No, Lord Percival is a bad man. I do not want him for a brother. Mummy said I did not have to claim him if I do not want to now that we are in Scotland.”

“Good.”

Eadan nodded. “Aye.”

Oh, good Lord above, give her strength. She was not going to survive this meeting with her heart or her sanity intact.

The boy and man were so alike.

“Shona…” Audrey’s prompt reminded Shona that she still had yet to get off her horse.

She looked down at Marjory. The child seemed less reticent about her surroundings. “Will you let Audrey take you, now?” she asked.

Marjory’s thumb popped into her mouth and she shook her head.

Caelis looked them over and then looked down at her son. “Your sister does not want to come down.”

“She’s shy of strangers.”

“I see.”

“If I were bigger, she’d come to me.”

Caelis nodded with serious mien. “Perhaps if I lift you to her?”

Eadan considered this before nodding. “She’ll come to me,” he said with certainty.

Caelis picked the boy up, deep emotion covering his features as his son put his arm around the big warrior’s neck for stability. Shona wanted to shout at him, to tell him that he, too, was a very stupid man.

If he felt the connection so deeply, than why deny even the possibility of a child? Why tell her that they could not marry?

Caelis leaned down and inhaled a long breath against Eadan’s neck, his big body going rigid for several seconds in response to her son’s scent. He used to do that to Shona, and the memories evoked by seeing him do it to her son were no longer welcome ones.

“Caelis,” she said sharply.

He lifted his gaze, the gentian eyes filled with such deep grief even she could not deny this moment was truly profound for him. “Aye?” His voice came out strained, as if even that single word came at only great effort.

She shook her head, her own throat too tight to speak.

“We’re getting Marjory,” Eadan reminded the big man, clearly at ease in his father’s arms.

Caelis nodded, the movement jerky. “Aye, that we are.” He approached the mare, his hold on Eadan secure.

Shona’s son put his arms out to his little sister. He didn’t say anything, just looked at Marjory expectantly.

And her tiny arms stretched out to him. She did not seem to notice the huge warrior supporting them both as she was taken off the horse. Caelis set the children down together beside Niall and Guaire, rather than Audrey or Thomas.

Shona found that telling. He trusted the Scottish warrior, even of a different clan, over the English he did not know. Which meant that he had some measure of trust for Niall, a Sinclair. Which was odd, but not as strange as the fact that Caelis was here on Sinclair lands at all.

His travels were the least of Shona’s concerns at the moment. What did matter was that Caelis cared if her children were protected.

That was more concern than he had shown for her six years ago.

Guaire dropped to his haunches so he was eye level with Eadan and started talking gently to the children.

Shona sighed, letting her rigid muscles relax. Pain shot through her lower back, up her spine and into her shoulders. She could not stifle her groan of agony, though she tried.

Getting off the mare was going to be more than tricky; it was going to be impossible. She might as well just tip sideways and fall into the dust like Caelis.

Before she had a chance to work up any worry over it, big hands closed around her waist and she was lifted to the ground.

Caelis did not release her, however, once her feet were on the dirt. He held her, his face a study of emotions she no longer knew how to name with this man.

“You must release me.”

“Nay.”

“It is unseemly.” Not to mention entirely dangerous to her hard fought composure.

The emotional calm she wore like a façade to protect those depending on her was already beginning to crack at the edges under the strain the past months had put on it.

Caelis made a sound of disgust. “You are not an Englishwoman to worry about such, no matter what garb you wear.”

“Had I worried about the like as a younger woman, many of my hardest choices would not have been forced on me.” She pressed against his chest to push him away, knowing the additional touch was risky.

And indeed, her hands wanted to stay pressed against hot skin over strong muscle and a plaid worn to softness. She could not give in to such weakness and forced her hands to drop to her sides again when her attempt had no effect on the big man.

Instead, Caelis reacted to her attempt to free herself by pulling her closer. “I can explain.”

“Explain?” At first she could not comprehend what he could be talking about.

And then it came to her. He thought he could explain six years ago? There was no explanation for that kind of betrayal.

She shook her head vehemently, her emotion threatening to overwhelm the calm she clung to. “Nothing you say could ever undo what you have done, what I have had to endure these past six years.”

A spasm of regret crossed his face, but it was quickly followed by the obstinacy she’d once found comforting. “You will still listen to what I have to say.”

“I’ll do that,” she said with bite. “Exactly when the Highland clans bow to England’s king.”

She could not imagine in her worst nightmares that day coming and neither could Caelis, she knew.

He scowled when he got her meaning. “Mo toilichte,” he whispered as if the words themselves had the power to heal the breach between them. “There were things you did not know, could not know then.”

“I’m no more your happiness, than you are my warrior.” She shook her head, trying again to step away. “Please. Let me go.”

Perhaps he realized the cost to her to plead with him, or mayhap he simply decided he had held her long enough, but hands so large they covered her shoulders completely dropped and she was able to step away.

“Whatever talking you seek to do will have to wait until the English lady has spoken to our laird.” Niall’s tone left no room for argument.

Surprisingly, Caelis did not make one. He simply nodded. “I will accompany you to the keep.”

The reminder that their discussion had been overheard by others, many of whom could not fail to note the resemblance between Caelis and his near–mirror image son, brought the heat of embarrassment crawling up Shona’s neck. She should be used to it by now, but the sting of humiliation still pricked deeply.

Caelis looked down at her, dark brows drawn down over his blue gaze. “Are you well?”

To answer truthfully was not a luxury Shona could afford, so she merely nodded and indicated they should begin their trek to the keep.

Niall did exactly that, leading them all onto the narrow path, her son’s hand still firmly held in his big warrior’s paw. So tired and stiff from day after day of riding that her limbs did not want to work, Shona trudged behind.

Shona stumbled. Her exhaustion—mixed with the near dreamlike state of the fact she’d come face-to-face with Caelis again after six years and all that had come between—making her clumsy.

Audrey took one hand, giving Shona a reassuring smile, and Thomas offered his arm.

The growl from behind them should have made the young Englishman drop his proffered arm. It certainly sent chills down Shona’s spine.

But Thomas just scowled over her shoulder at the big warrior who had taken up position behind them. “I know what you are, and you forfeited your rights to her. I will offer my friend assistance and if she will take it, I will give it to her.”

Shona felt a prick of humiliation to realize her friends did indeed realize this man was the father to her eldest child, not the man she had called husband for a little over five years.

She thought Thomas’s wording odd, saying what instead of who to Caelis, but she did not mention it. Would prefer not to acknowledge the mortifying truth at all.

Mayhap he considered Caelis every bit the monster the baron’s son was. For six years, Shona had certainly believed that—or at least convinced herself she did.

Regardless of her weakness and past indiscretions, Thomas’s youthful eagerness and firm loyalty touched her.

“Thank you, Thomas.” She reached for his arm.

But Caelis’s hand was there, his body pushing the younger man aside just as he’d done to Niall earlier. “He will not thank you if I have to challenge him over rights.”

Thomas blanched. For the second time in mere minutes, Shona was filled with fury by this man. “You’ll do no such thing! You have no rights to me. You repudiated them when you abandoned me six years ago.”

“’Twas your family that left the clan, not me.”

She stopped, pulling poor Audrey to a halt beside her so Shona could glare up at the man. “Do not even attempt to pretend it was the other way around. I listened to your lies once, but they will never dictate my life again.”

He winced as if her words had wounded, though she knew it was not possible. “Make no mistake: whatever my errors in the past, I will challenge this young one if he tries again to come between me and my mate.”

He spoke of her like an animal, and she wished they were. Animals did not abandon those they chose as mates, but this very human man had undeniably deserted her.

If Caelis had cared at all, he would not have disavowed Shona before her own father.

Choking emotion surged up inside her at the memory and she felt the burn of tears at the back of her eyes. She blinked furiously, adamant they would not fall.

Caelis swore, looking pained, if she could believe it.

She wouldn’t. “I’m not your mate. I’m not your wife. I’m not even your former betrothed.” The banns had never been called. “I am nothing to you.”

Without another word, he took her hand and slid a far too gentle hand for a man who kept threatening others around her waist. She was too tired to continue fighting his help.

He took so much of her weight she was barely walking as they continued up the path.

After several steps in silence, he said quietly, “In that, Shona, you are very wrong. You are not only the mother of my child, you are mine. And I will convince you of that truth. In time.”

“I will never be yours again!” Where the energy or will to shout came from, she could not say, but her voice carried with it all the desperation and conviction she felt in that moment.

Marjory turned back to look at Shona from where she walked hand in hand with Guaire. “Why are you yelling at the nice man, Mummy?”

Nice man? Had her daughter lost her mind? Marjory didn’t like strangers and now she’d decided Caelis, the man who said he would have killed her father if he wasn’t already dead, was a nice man.

Perhaps Shona’s sanity wasn’t as intact as she’d convinced herself. Mayhap this was all some truly bizarre nightmare and she would wake soon.

She could but hope.