Apparently, Niall's adure for her body was still only for the necessity of childbearing. And, as she had yet to pass a month since her last lunar period, she had yet to prove whether another bedding was necessary.
Hurt that she could not, regardless, rouse enough feeling in her husband to seek her for his own, Caoimhe tried to focus on the festivities ahead and on all that was positive and good within the walls of Aberlynn.
Samhain came with an energy and speed that was surprising to most. As the harvest came to a close and the last week of efforts saw bales and crates and barrels and sacks carried up and down the lanes from the farmlands, the ladies of the district were quick to look towards the final evening of the tenth month. On such a night, when the ghosts of generations past came to bless those of the present, there would be food and music and jovial energy the likes of which would have seemed impossible after so many weeks of toil.
The excitement of Samhain had a magical effect that removed any and all weariness.
Caoimhe felt it in the air around her, as she rode to the open heath beside Niall. There was a zipping sort of energy in her limbs as she held herself steady upon the back of Lady's Breath. Her feet remained calm and her hands were a soft guide on the reins. Caoimhe felt inspired by the little glances of pride from the man that rode beside her, excited by the fact that she had not yet fallen from the plodding mare's back into the mud below. Instead, gowned in a dress of bronze and warmed by a cloak of burgundy, Caoimhe felt every inch the wife that Niall deserved to have riding by his side.
The heath upon which they entered was one straight out of Caoimhe's childhood. She remembered the smells, the colors, and the noise well enough but never had she seen it through a view from up high.
Aback her mare, Caoimhe could look out across the heads of the crowds, read some of the signs above food stalls, and watch the chaotic paths of children as they sped between carts and legs. Colored papers, fabrics, and strings hung from the trees in festive loops, and the smell of roasting pork was hot and heavy in the air. Gossip and chatter was almost as loud as the music, and interrupted by the squealing of children running around with sticks, balls, and trailing ribbons.
On the far side of the clearing was the swirling patterns of dancers—men and women of all ages—that had shucked their stoles and sticks to spin, twist, and march the traditional dances of the highlands. Bagpipes, fiddles, flutes, and drums kept them in beat and gave the entire event the feel of drama and vibrant levity.
Caoimhe's eyes were bright, once more a child, as she looked at her husband. Her smile was broad and her eagerness so palpable that he was forced to smile just a little in return.
After Niall helped her down from the horse, it took only seconds for Caoimhe to be inundated with those she knew. Old Bertha from whom she had bought all those radishes came over and gave a clumsy sort of curtsy. John David, a man that had traded with her father since she was in pigtails was next. Before anyone else could heighten the blush in her cheeks with their formality, three children had pushed and shoved to the front, and Caoimhe broke all rules of propriety to sweep them into her arms.
It had been weeks since she had seen Heather's children. The warm bodies of Monro, Marcas, and Effie had her heart break with guilt and longing. How, in all that was holy, had she not recognized sooner how much she missed them?
Breathing in the scent of Effie's pretty red hair, Caoimhe was forced to break their embrace, if she was to protect her nose, as Monro jumped with joy. Overstimulated by all that the evening had to offer, he seemed to not know what to drag his aunt towards first.
After a beseeching look towards her husband, Caoimhe took Niall's smile for permission and abandoned the man with their mounts.
With a nephew tied to each hand, and Effie bouncing around under her feet, Caoimhe was given the royal tour of the event, from the wondrous view of the young.
Their progress was slow, creating a loop around the stalls, games, and traditional activities. No sooner had Caoimhe taken three steps forward than an old friend of the family, a merchant she had used to visit, or one of her own servants came to greet and talk with her. Every face was full of smiles, and Caoimhe found it easy to chatter back, whether her friend was of money or not.
Unbeknownst to her, Caoimhe moved around the event like a cast stone in a pond, the ripples of her presence drawing the attention of others and bringing them closer to her heart and care.
The entire experience warmed Caoimhe from the inside out and, in a moment of sentimentality, she even stopped upon a small bushel to pluck free a strand of knotgrass. She had spotted its little buds in the moonlight and taken it into hand, saddened that this particular little plant would never bloom. It was too late in the season for such things, for this little one was late. Still, Caoimhe could carry it with her and appreciate the potential for beauty that it still held within its folded petals.
By the time Monro and Marcas had dragged her willingly about the festivities, Caoimhe had seen both of her sisters, her parents, near the entire townsfolk of her little portside home, and made it back to the pig roast. She glanced up in surprise and pleasure when she spotted Niall's tall frame lingering in the company of a couple of lords.
His eyes met hers over the top of a greying head, and he smiled. She blushed like a silly schoolgirl, the realization of which only saw her blushing harder. Her fingers stroked over the little plant she still held, and her heart clung to the memory of Niall's flattery.
Delicate and beautiful…
When the lords that separated the two of them passed on by, Caoimhe's happiness dimmed a little as Malcolm was revealed to be one of the party. He lingered at Niall's side, apparently uninvited, his gaze upon Caoimhe and the children.
His words only became clear as she moved closer, but Caoimhe already knew them to be cruel from the anger on Niall's face.
“...getting in some practice,” Malcolm was saying, his gaze upon Monro and Marcas. Caoimhe drew them close, her hands in their dark and russet curls. She didn't like the way that the man was looking at them.
Niall's jaw was tight as he spoke, clearly wishing his cousin gone from his company.
“If God so wishes to bless us, then I shall be grateful. But I think there is little practice to be had for the realities of parenthood.”
“If?” Malcolm was saying. His cheeks were ruddy with wine, and it was clear that he had been taking his role as son of the event's matriarch with some large dose of arrogance. “Come now, Cousin, you don't expect me and the other lords to believe that you married your wife for her money or her looks? We're only left to assume that you have followed in your father's footsteps.”
Caoimhe felt sick as nearby listeners seemed to turn with suspicious gazes. Malcolm was trying to imply that Niall had seen her pregnant! Before they were married. She had no idea who to feel more insulted for: herself and her own pride in her chastity, or Niall and the judgment that was being laid at his family's feet.
She felt her cheeks heat with mortification, and moved closer to the group. Part of her hoped that a more obvious presence on her part might stall Malcolm's lying tongue.
“I think you should be careful of your words, Cousin,” she heard Niall say. He was clearly trying to keep his calm. She could recognize the latent anger behind his clenched fists and the tension in his face. “Not only are they untrue, but unfounded also. You'll not wish for polite society to think you a monger of rumor.”
“Rumor?” Malcolm was shaking his head. His intoxication was clearly blinding him to the danger he was in from Niall's rage. It crackled in every word that left her husband's lips, and poured from him in waves.
Yet, Malcolm seemed oblivious and continued to spew his poison.
“How is it rumor to see the only truth that is there to be seen? If she has no money, connections, or education, and is as bland as the serving girl that empties my bedpans, the only option is that she has something tempting between the legs—”
Malcolm never finished
his sentence.
Niall launched himself at the man in a blaze of honor-bound rage. Caoimhe cried out in shock, as his frame sailed through the air to tackle Malcolm to the ground. She pulled away her nephews so they would not be caught by a stray fist.
The cousins fought with a strength that only years of pent-up aggression could build, and Caoimhe felt her heart falter with every strike to Niall's face and body. She called his name, then called for someone to stop them, but no man was brave enough to try to break up a fight between their masters.
Keeping Monro and Marcas back, Caoimhe could only watch in horror as the two men fought for supremacy over the ground and launched their fists into one another's faces over and over again. The grunts and cracks of their violence drew gasps and shrieks from their audience. The musicians stopped playing, and all eyes turned to the spectacle in the middle of the event. Caoimhe winced with every strike, and looked away when Niall took a punch to the jaw. She spied blood across her husband's brow, heard the tearing of clothes...
“Stop it!” she found herself calling. She shooed her nephews behind her and stormed forward with a courage she had rarely mustered. “Niall! Stop it! There are children here.”
Her words took a moment to sink in, but the momentum of the fight stalled and slowed. Both men were breathing hard—Malcolm on his back, Niall rising above him with fist drawn and wrath in every line of his figure. As Malcolm's hold on Niall's tunic lessened, Niall's arm lowered. In a smooth rise to his feet, Niall released his cousin before spitting to the ground beside his head. The spot was marked with the blood that seeped from the corner of his mouth.
Caoimhe reached to touch Niall's face, to turn him towards her and inspect the damage, but he looked away from her. Whether in shame for his actions or because he could not bear her touch, Caoimhe could not tell.
There was a moment of silence before a shriek split the air, as the figure of Fiona Brodie had finally made her way to the front of the crowd. Her son still lay upon the earth, nursing a split lip and a swollen eye, and the blame she found in Niall and Caoimhe unleashed the venom from her tongue.
“This is what my son and I have been warning the nobles of, Lord Brodie.” she accused, her finger upon him, straight as an arrow. Niall brushed the back of his hand over his mouth. “You are a brute to all those who might speak their minds, and have no civility. Your birth turned you barbarous; you have not the right to sit upon the lairdship seat.”
Caoimhe had absolutely no control over what happened next.
Something within her snapped.
“How dare you!” she cried.
She stepped around Niall, shrugging off the play he made for her arm. Her gaze was focused on Fiona, the raging pride of the Scots boiling in her blood.
“You think yourself so worthy to judge others, when you have no true knowledge of myself or my husband? You do not see the hours he spends every night to secure the economy of this province, or how decisions as laird bear heavily upon his shoulders. He gives more for others here than you have the ability to comprehend. How dare you come here and launch criticisms upon those that live so selflessly!”
Caoimhe could not stem the flow of her words. It was as if she had held in her frustrations at this woman since the first time they had met, and now a spirit of old had chosen Samhain to possess her into speaking them.
“This is Samhain. It is a time for fresh beginnings, for the celebrating of the future, of our children and the lands and traditions that we leave to them. If you, Lady Fiona, cannot come here with an open mind for a better, newer year, and must steep yourself in a history of darkness and ill content, then perhaps you and your son should leave.”
Silence reigned over the gathering, but Caoimhe was too fueled by her sense of justice to feel self-conscious. Instead, her gaze was focused on Malcolm's impression of victimization on the ground, and had laid claim to Fiona's startled gaze.
Lady Fiona looked as if she had never been spoken to with so much as a rough word. Her lips had parted in shock, her eyes widened in horror. Through the sheer force of Caoimhe's convictions, a lock of her hair had fallen from its strict knot atop her head.
Given that the woman surrounded herself with the high and mighty, Caoimhe was not surprised that this was her first taste of adversarial combat, for Niall was too much of a gentleman to have ever publicly chastised a woman. Fiona had been left unchecked for too many years, flattered and encouraged by her little circle of well-to-do ladies.
But Caoimhe wasn't one of Fiona's little silken dolls. She was a Webb. A woman of honesty and integrity. Like knotgrass, she was hard to get rid of, and was not so fragile as to disintegrate underfoot.
Caoimhe's fingers tightened around the little sprig that she still held, the leaves fluttering in the nighttime breeze. Fiona's gaze was drawn to Caoimhe’s hip, where the knotgrass rested against her skirts, and her nose curled up in a snort.
“A fitting decoration for you, my lady,” she said, sneering. She moved forward to loom over Caoimhe. “That little thing was what told me that I was with child…”
Fiona leaned in and over Caoimhe, and Niall took a cautious step closer. But all Caoimhe could see was the curling lip of disgust on the woman before her. For her part, Fiona paused for dramatic effect before making her opinion of knotgrass, of Caoimhe, very clear.
“It always made me sick.”
Caoimhe held her ground before the woman, but she did not hold it alone. A moment later, Niall was at her side. He reached around her to draw her close, a wall of solidarity.
“I believe my wife asked you to leave, Lady Fiona,” Niall determined, his gaze flickering between the woman and her son. “I suggest you honor her request, before I alter it to a command.”
Pride and love swelled within Caoimhe as Niall took up her sword of battle. Even more so for how he did not wrestle it from her grip. Instead, he stood beside her, supporting her arm and her hold, not allowing it to fall, but never stealing from her the significance of her own convictions.
For a moment, she thought Fiona was going to argue, to push her luck and insist that, as coordinator of the event, they had no right to throw her from its grounds. But the woman was smarter than that. She, instead, chose to take what little dignity she had left, hiss at her son to get up, and then abandoned the festivities with Malcolm at her side.
Caoimhe breathed a calming sigh of relief and practically melted where she stood.
With the adrenaline gone, she found her legs wobbly and her head pounding, but Niall was there to support her. With a quick word here and instruction there, the crowd dispersed, the music began once more, and within a few minutes, Samhain had returned. Excitement and eagerness, now fueled by new rumors and stories of who had heard what, rippled through the gathering.
The new year was back on track.
With steady hands, Niall took Caoimhe’s face in his hold; she was shocked to see a look on his face that he had never shown her before. There was a melting look of compassion in his eyes, a hunger in the line of his mouth, a shock to his brows. His entire visage was one of a man surprised to find pleasure as he burned.
“Caoimhe…” Her name left his lips like a prayer, and she felt a hot shiver run down her spine. Caoimhe didn’t know why, but her heart was racing, her breathing shallow. Something momentous was about to happen, about to be said. She could feel it as the sea felt the changing of the tides.
And Niall knew it too. His hands held her fast, and his eyes were intense. His gaze blocked out the rest of the world and brought all of existence down to just the two of them.
To this conversation. To this moment.
“Caoimhe, that was… You were…” The words would not come. Niall licked his lips and tried again, a wrinkle over the bridge of his nose the only evidence of his frustration, of his determination to get his next words right.
“Caoimhe, I think I lo—”
“Caoimhe!”
The call of her name broke Caoimhe’s heart. Niall looked up, their
gazes broke, and she was left with the hollow feeling of loss.
She wanted to grab the sands of time and push them backward! To blot out her sister Heather from this moment, for just a few more seconds, so that she could know the words that had lingered on Niall’s tongue. So that her heart would not cling to what she wanted them to have been. For fear that her hopes were ungrounded.
“Caoimhe, we’re going back home now. But the kids wanted to know if you’re coming with us?” Heather glanced between the two of them, Niall’s hands falling away from Caoimhe’s face. She blushed, suddenly realizing that she had interrupted. Her voice was small and uncertain. “They, er…wanted to know if you would tell them a bedtime story?”
Despite the broken moment between them, Caoimhe’s desire to spend more time with the little ones was clearly evident upon her face. It took only a heartbeat for Niall to promise that Brogan and a carriage would arrive at her parents’ home in a few hours to bring her back to Aberlynn.
The look in his eyes said that their conversation was far from over, but that he was willing to wait until he had her alone before chancing to finish it.
20
How the Heart Aches
Courageous or foolhardy. Those were the two words that Niall's father had always suggested as reasons for his lack of fear—how he could dive into conflict without a backward glance, driven by adrenaline and honor.
Now, sitting in his chair in the blue parlor and sipping from his whiskey, Niall could take no such compliment. Switching his chalice to the other hand, Niall flexed his fingers and inspected the red swelling around his knuckles. He thought of how Malcolm's words had sent him into a flying rage, how every muscle in his body had screamed to exact vengeance on his cousin for his disgracing words.
He had insulted Caoimhe, a woman that had done nothing to him, never spoken a word out of turn in every moment that Niall had known her. She was the woman that protected children behind her legs, cleaned portraits of strangers with loving care, and breathed her thanks to him for tenderness as they had lain together.
Haunted By A Highland Curse: A Steamy Scottish Medieval Historical Romance Page 17
