For once Abigail was grateful she could not hear. She could not be forced to listen to her mother’s words and she chose not to watch Sybil’s lips.
The decision to pitch the tents for the English soldiers on the west side of the cottage, farthest from the keep, made little difference to Abigail.
She wanted a chance to see the man she had been commanded to wed, the laird she had to deceive about her affliction.
At least until they reached the Highlands.
Later that night, Abigail willed herself to sleep as she lay in the small bed in the corner of the cottage. Only it was to no avail. Her mind was whirling with questions and possibilities.
Why had her intended groom been out hunting when she and her family had arrived? Surely he had known the date of their arrival; it had been dictated by him through his king to hers.
He had yet to return to the keep, having missed the evening meal.
Was this his way of showing his unhappiness with the prospect of marriage to an Englishwoman? Was he delivering a slap at her stepfather’s consequence? His dislike of the English was no secret, but he had agreed to the marriage and all the stipulations surrounding it.
Stipulations that scared the tiredness right out of Abigail and filled her with worry on top of the apprehensions already plaguing her. His king had required the marriage be consummated before they left the Lowlands. Abigail had no idea why Scotland’s sovereign would demand such a thing, but the prospect leant additional discomfort to a situation that already had the power to terrify her completely.
None of those fears were soothed in any way by the fact that she had yet to even see her groom from a distance.
When she looked into his eyes, would she see cruelty? Hatred to rival her mother’s? Would he recognize her affliction despite her best efforts to hide it?
Tonight’s dinner had been a trial unlike anything she had experienced since first losing her hearing. It was hard enough to keep track of several people speaking at once; the unfamiliar surroundings only made it worse. She had received help from an unexpected source. Sir Reuben had done his best to help Abigail maintain the threads of the conversations happening around her.
None of the MacDonald clan spoke directly to her. She got the impression this was out of respect to the Sinclair laird.
Even without being directly involved in discussions, she had made several mistakes because she had not realized she was being spoken to.
The old warrior who had filled the laird’s position as host had believed Abigail’s faulty Gaelic to be the cause, when in fact, Abigail understood and spoke Gaelic quite well now. As convenient as the excuse, how long would it serve to cover the fact she simply didn’t always know when someone was speaking to her?
And what would Talorc, Laird of the Sinclair, do when he found out?
Emily had made it clear in her first letter that she and Talorc had not suited at all. Abigail’s older sister had written that the man hated the English. He had not wanted what he called a
Would that work in Abigail’s favor or against her? Certainly, if she wanted a powerful Scottish laird for a husband as her younger sister Jolenta seemed to, the knowledge that Talorc of the Sinclairs despised the English would wound her hopes. But Abigail had given up hope of ever having her own family when her blood kin rejected her because of her affliction. No man, be he Scottish barbarian or English knight would want a wife cursed by deafness.
The possibility that Talorc’s dislike of the English, and naturally subsequent desire to be rid of her, would be great enough for him to see her deception as a gift rather than an offense over which he would declare war, was her one slim hope.
Sir Reuben seemed unconcerned with the idea Laird Sinclair might declare war over such a thing. However, from what Emily had said in her letters regarding the pride of the Highlanders and Talorc especially, Abigail had her doubts. In addition, if Talorc was as hard a man as Emily had implied in her letters, he might very well exact a personal revenge from a deceptive bride.
The prospect terrified her almost as much as her first lucid moments after her world had gone silent.
At this moment, there were altogether too many prospects to cause her concern, and Abigail envied her maid the oblivion of sleep. She craved escape from her thoughts, but not enough to wish she’d joined her parents. Sybil and Sir Reuben were in the keep, along with the soldiers on duty and those that had not chosen an early night.
Abigail had not been invited to join them, and she had not requested to do so. Supper had been difficult enough with her struggle to read unfamiliar lips and features. Added to that had been the nerve-racking condition of being the center of all eyes, a condition she had no experience with.
Abigail was used to being ignored among her stepfather’s people. Only here, she was the future wife of a powerful Highland laird obviously respected and admired by the MacDonald clan—and perhaps even a little feared. Everyone had stared at her, and she felt their judgment even if she could not hear the whispers going on around her.
Sadly,
The dirt floor of the cottage vibrated. Emily had taught Abigail that she had to use her other senses to compensate for her lack of hearing. Otherwise, she would be found out and become an outcast even in her family’s own keep. She had learned to “hear” a great deal through what she felt around her. Dropping her hand to the floor, she let it settle against the compacted earth. The vibrations were in no way subtle and indicated a party of warhorses riding past the cottage. Her soon-to-be groom and the MacDonald laird must have returned.
They had certainly taken their time about it. It was full dark, and the two lairds had missed the evening meal by more than two hours.
Careful not to wake the sleeping maid, Abigail climbed from her bed. She could not miss this opportunity to get a glimpse of the Sinclair laird.
She snuck quietly to the cottage window facing the front, but when she pulled back the covering, she saw no horses or men. She hurried across the one-room dwelling and pulled the covering aside on the window facing the chapel.
The nearly full, waxing moon illuminated a large group of warriors. Nine men in all. Five were on huge warhorses and held themselves with greater confidence than the others. Or perhaps it was simply that they exuded dominance over everything around them. They were all big men, though two were near giants. They all wore a plaid different from the MacDonalds, though the colors were hard to distinguish at this distance in the moonlight.
The Sinclairs. They had to be.
The four remaining men wore the MacDonald plaid. Watching the interplay among them, it was easy to determine who the MacDonald laird was.
The Sinclairs were not so uncomplicated to read. The other four warriors, including the MacDonald laird, deferred to all five of the Sinclairs in subtle but unmistakable ways. At least they were evident to a woman who had spent as much time deciphering the language of body movement as Abigail.
And while it was clear someone among the Sinclairs had given the order to dismount, she could not tell who had done it. The giant with hair the color of a raven that brushed his shoulders, or the one with light-colored hair that glowed almost silver in the moonlight?
Neither wore a shirt with their plaid, which she had been told was common when a Scottish warrior hunted or fought in battle. At least among the Highlanders. The MacDonalds all wore shirts, even if they still displayed their naked legs with a total lack of civilized modesty. Abigail had spent so much time blushing over that Gaelic wardrobe idiosyncrasy, she was sure her cheeks were tinged a permanent pink.
The raven-haired man had an intricate, dark tattoo circling his left bicep. She had heard there were tribes in the Highlands that practiced the barbaric custom of permanently marking their skin with blue ink, but it had never occurred to her that the Sinclairs might be one of them. The dark swirls moved as the warrior’s muscles bunched when he swung down from his horse.
She experienced the most perplexing desire to follow those lines of dark ink with her fingertips. The urge
