Chapter Twelve

Lark stood on the shore as Adam and his brothers tied the ferry securely to the dock on Wolf Isle. The sun was not even high, and they were already back.

Waking up, her body had been deliciously sore from such passionate loving with Adam. She had firmly decided to let her past stay in the past. But then she’d seen Father Lowder. And then she’d read Anna’s letter. And then she’d yelled before everyone that Roylin Montgomerie was not her father.

The brawling, hysterical bride, and bruised wrist from Fergus’s grip added to her already twisted worries.

“Are ye well?” Adam asked. His deep voice made her close her eyes as her heart leaped into a frantic trot.

She forced an even breath and looked up at him. “The bride was distraught, all of you are bleeding, and we may not be welcome back onto Mull.” But none of that mattered in the face of her secret. From Anna’s letter of warning, Roylin had been revealing all her secrets, real ones and ones he imagined in his sick mind.

“Tor will have us back,” Adam said. “Perhaps not the MacLeods.”

She glanced past him to where his brothers tied the ferry secure. They all had blood and dirt smeared on their white tunics and bruised knuckles. Callum had a swelling eye, and Eagan’s lip needed stitching.

Adam’s eyes held questions, and worry snaked through her. The whisky did not help her open up to him about her shame. It only made her more open to his caresses.

She glanced down at the damp grass. “I am embarrassed for our family.” Like it or not, she and Adam had consummated their marriage several times, and she was part of their family. An annulment would be nearly impossible. Would he petition for divorce?

Adam looked away, his shoulders rising one at a time as if they ached. “Iain is an arse, and I should not have reacted.”

“The arse threatened ye, Lark,” Callum said, striding past them, his gaze trained on the ground as if he searched for something. He turned to walk backward and nodded at her. “Adam was showing him how painfully foolish his tongue was.”

Her tongue was equally foolish. No one had immediately asked her about her confession on the stilted ride across the water. Her brothers did not seem to want to look at her. Were they ashamed of themselves or wondering about her?

“Eagan definitely needs his lip stitched,” Beck said as he strode past.

She’d been wielding a needle since she was five years old and her mother was seeking a way to make her valuable in the household. “I will see to it up at Gylin,” she said. Their knuckles would all need attention as well, and Rabbie had been unusually quiet, his face pale.

Drostan crouched down, his finger on the ground. “There are extra footprints on the beach,” he said, glancing up at Adam.

“I cannot tell if these all are ours,” Beck said near the dock.

“Go on up to the castle,” Adam said. “Keep your eyes open.” His brothers drew their swords and hurried up the path.

Adam grasped Lark’s arm and moved before her, dipping his head to look in her eyes. “I am sorry, lass.” His voice was quiet, and her body remembered the timber well. A wave of sensation slid along her skin, making her lips open to draw in breath. He caught her chin in his fingers, and she remained looking into his eyes. They were clear and bright, not bloodshot or blurry or filled with pain and shameful want.

“I wish the fight had not tainted our night together,” he said. “And…” She held her breath, waiting for his questions. “…the letter from your sister,” he said. “I hope all is well with her.”

She wet her dry lips. “As well as can be expected.” She met his gaze. “You have likely figured out that life in the Montgomerie household was not…easy.”

He touched a curl hanging down the side of her face, his thumb grazing the skin. “I am beginning to see that.” He frowned, but his touch made it feel like concern. “Perhaps someday, when ye want, ye can tell me about it.”

She almost turned her face into his hand to kiss it but nodded instead.

He brushed his thumb over her cheek. “Roylin Montgomerie is not your father?” There it was. Of course he had heard her; everyone had. She drew in breath.

“Adam!” one of his brothers yelled from way up the path. “Adam.” Callum jogged down the path, his eyes wide. “Adam, ye need to come.”

“What’s happened?” Adam asked, turning, and Lark released her breath.

Callum glanced at Lark and then Adam, shaking his head. “Ye just need to come.”

Adam grabbed her hand, and they hurried after his brother through the trees, racing toward the castle. Had someone attacked it while they were away? What mischief could have been done over the course of one day?

As they rounded the curve in the path, they slowed as the other three brothers and Rabbie stood before the gate. Adam and Lark hurried forward, and the men stepped back. There in the center of them stood a woman, her stomach protruding in the late stages of pregnancy. She had straight blonde hair and bright blue eyes, her gaze going straight to Adam. She glanced at Lark and then gave him a scalding look that made Lark’s insides toss.

“Adam Macquarie,” the woman said and laid her palms on her round stomach. “This child is yours.”

…

Adam walked the length of the table away from where the overly ripe woman sat eating some bannocks that Callum had found in the kitchen.

Lark stood across the room by the cold hearth. She’d said nothing since the woman’s proclamation and did not look at him.

“Your name just happens to be Elspeth,” Drostan said. “Like the woman who originally hung herself after finding herself with child by Wilyam Macquarie.”

And like then, Adam was married to someone else. The fact that the woman was lying made it likely someone was using the legend of the curse to prevent his clan from settling the isle again, but why and who? The woman could not be working alone. He studied her. She looked vaguely familiar, but he did not remember ever talking with her, let alone tupping her.

“You will be cursed if you do not do right by me and this child,” Elspeth said, hugging her protruding belly. “Having a bastard on this isle will keep it in ruins.”

Adam hadn’t been close to any pregnant women, but she looked to be about done, like the bairn could drop out of her at any moment. “As I said, I do not know ye. The child could not be mine if we have never slept together.”

She waved off his comment. “You were drunk on whisky.”

He had never drunk enough of anything to make him forget his actions. Even the night his da died, when the man had wrung a promise from him to see Wolf Isle settled. He recalled everything that night, even the guilt that he hadn’t done enough to help his father in his quest to move them back to the isle.

We have a house, but we have no home here on Mull. Be the Macquarie to break the curse and build a home on Ulva. His father’s words showed up often in Adam’s nightmares, usually the ones where he was too weak to hold a sword.

“Where did ye say this,” Beck waved his hand at the woman’s stomach, “happened?” All of Adam’s brothers had asked the woman the same thing.

She closed her eyes. “Like I said five times before, it was at a festival on Mull. I was visiting with my da, and all of ye were into your cups, and I had taken a nip, and Adam and I kissed behind the barn—”

“Which barn?” Rabbie asked, eyes narrowed.

“I do not know,” she said, glaring at him. “I had taken some whisky and was unfamiliar with Aros.”

“And who is your father? Where is he now?” Callum asked.

“He was Henry Sinclair, and he is dead.”

“How?” Drostan asked.

Lark pushed away from the wall where she’d been standing. “I think Elspeth has answered enough questions for now.” She walked over to her. “Let us get you settled in a bedroom so you can rest.”

“And ye rowed over here yourself?” Eagan asked, his words muffled from the rag he still held against his lip. “With that belly?”

“And your boat happened to float away?” Drostan asked, his arms crossed.

Lark helped the woman stand. “There is a room above that you can share with me.”

Share with her? Damn. Did Lark believe her lies?

Elspeth walked slowly, her roundness making it look awkward and bloody uncomfortable. How did women do it? Men were foolish to think women weren’t strong when they could grow life within them, carrying it until birth and longer still as a needy infant.

Beck came up behind Adam when they disappeared up the stairs. “Have ye ever seen her before?” he asked, his voice low.

Adam turned to meet his brother’s gaze and noticed the questions on all his brother’s faces. “She looks slightly familiar, like perhaps she has been on Mull. But I have never even talked to her.”

“She is lying,” Drostan said. “But why?”

“To have someone support her and the babe?” Eagan said and grimaced at the pain his talking shot through his lip.

“But why pick Adam? Who even gave her his name?” Callum asked. But they had no answers.

“I do not, for a moment, believe her name is Elspeth,” Adam said, turning back to look at the dark steps.

Rabbie set his tankard on the table. “The extra set of footprints on the shore are too big to be hers. I went down to check and did not see any small prints except one set, which was Lark. The woman’s footprints came from the village.”

Drostan crossed his arms, deep frown in place. “So a man came from the sea, and the woman came from the village or beyond. Are they connected?” Silence settled in the hall for a moment.

“What did Lark mean about Roylin not being her father?” Rabbie asked, scratching his bushy beard. His eyes narrowed with obvious suspicion.

Roylin had signed the marriage certificate as Lark’s father. Perhaps her mother came to the marriage after her first husband died. Roylin would be her stepfather. “I do not know,” he said.

“Well, ye better find out,” Rabbie said, his words sharp.

…

The woman was settled amongst the quilts of Adam’s large bed, the fire crackling in the hearth as it consumed the peat. Elspeth fell asleep almost immediately. Lark hadn’t asked her any questions, and the woman hadn’t provided any answers.

Adam’s child? The look on his face made her want to believe him that he didn’t know the woman at all. But why would she lie? Why use Adam’s name? Was she desperate to wed before the child was born so it would not be a bastard? Bastards certainly had a more difficult way in the world.

Rap. Rap. A light tap on the door made Lark jerk her face from the flames. Adam.

Opening, she found him standing there, hands braced on each side of the door. Without a word, she stepped forward. It took him a moment to step back, allowing her out into the hall to close the door behind her.

He looked into her face in the dim light of the candle he’d set in a window nook. “Ye know it is not my bairn, that she is lying,” he said.

“You are certain? Men can do stupid things when full of whisky.” Roylin had fallen off horses, started brawls, slept in ditches, and told the whole town things about her. “It is possible you do not remember because of drink.”

He leaned closer, his face full of conviction, his brows lowered. “I have never been full of whisky. An honorable man does not drink past reason and tup women, Lark. And yet ye think it possible of me. Have I given ye cause to doubt my word?”

She broke the tether between their gazes, looking off into a dark corner that had been dusted free of cobwebs. “No, but I have seen it before.”

“Drunk men tupping women?”

“Drunk men doing terrible things,” she whispered. “And regretting them afterward.”

There was a long pause. “Has that happened to ye? Terrible things?” His voice was a rough whisper in the darkness.

Blurry eyes and a drunken smile surfaced in Lark’s mind. Rough hands and the sour smell of whisky. Ye look like me wife. Her entire body tensed at the memory.

“Lark,” he said. “Has anyone hurt ye?”

She turned her gaze back to his. His face was hard, his jaw clenched, as he studied her. For a moment, her heart beat hard like a panicked bird in the clutches of a hawk. Could he know the truth? But no one was allowed inside her head to see the shame cowering in the darkness there. “Was someone drunk around ye, a fool who did terrible things?”

“I…I came to you a maid last night.”

“Aye, but has someone harmed ye?”

She shook her head, rubbing her wrist. “We need to do something about Elspeth,” she said, redirecting him. “She is certain you are responsible.”

He exhaled. “The woman looks slightly familiar, as if she attended an event on Mull years ago, but I do not recall even speaking to her before. And I highly doubt her name is Elspeth. Someone told her to use that name to make the curse seem real.”

“Who else knows about the curse?” she asked, the tension unknotting in her back as they moved farther away from questions about her past. I should have told him last night.

“Most on Mull to start with,” he said.

Of course, rumors would run amongst the people like a plague. All of Mull would likely speculate about what Fergus had said and how she had answered. Would he reveal everything Roylin had said? Lark tried to shake off the dread curling in her stomach. “Who would know the name of the original pregnant woman who hung herself?”

“Anyone who has read the family Bible or asked about the specifics of Macquarie history would know the name Elspeth.”

“Grissell would know?” Lark asked.

“Aye.” Adam’s frown deepened. “And ye said ye thought someone was living with her in the forest.”

Lark nodded and looked back at the door. “Attacking the woman with questions is not going to get her to talk. We will keep her here, especially as her time grows near. The babe is an innocent in all this.”

She watched him carefully, his gaze rising above her head as if thoughts moved rapidly within him. “The child is almost certainly a bastard if she is blaming me,” he said.

The word “bastard” sunk inside Lark, like a lead ball thrown into a frothy loch. “You keep saying that you do not believe in curses, and yet I see you do.”

“The curse is real for some,” he said, looking back at her. “Rabbie. My brothers. They have been taught all their lives that darkness will envelope Ulva if we bring a bastard to it.”

She shook her head, swallowing hard. “From what Ida told me, the curse just says that Macquaries cannot father a bastard. It has nothing to do with one visiting the isle. If Elspeth does not have a husband, but her bairn was fathered by someone other than a Macquarie, the curse does not apply.” Anger welled up inside her. “Bastards are not lepers or demons, Adam. They are babes who are innocent of the sins of their parents.”

When he glanced down at his arm, she realized that she’d grabbed hold of it, her fingers curling into the tunic. She slowly released him.

“Aye,” he said, his eyes narrowing to study her in the low light. “’Tis wrong to think a bastard is any different than a bairn coming forth from a strong marriage.” He rubbed a hand through his hair, still studying her. “My father beat it into our heads that we were never to father a bairn outside the sanctity of marriage, because of the curse, which he believed with all his heart. Despite what the family Bible says, he told us time and again that no bastards should even set foot on the isle.”

Lark dropped her hand and stepped back until the wall held her up. “What would happen if you did father a babe out of marriage? Would the curse want you to kill it?”

“Nay,” he answered quickly, his brows pinching low. “Ye think I could murder a child?”

Lark breathed past the thumping in her chest as they stared at one another in the cold shadows. She shook her head. How could she think something so terrible of him? “No.” She shook her head again. “I do not think that.”

She let her breath come out in a small gust. “We should ask a midwife to come from Mull to see the woman,” she said. “I attended a few births with my mother and can help, but we will need her services.”

Adam rubbed a hand down his face. “Of course. And to stop Rabbie from harassing her, we should move her to Mull, so she gives birth off Ulva.”

“It should not matter if the child is not yours,” she said, her words a hoarse whisper.

“We need to read the family Bible again, just to make certain. It will keep my brothers and Rabbie satisfied.” He watched her closely, and she could almost hear the tangle of questions swirling in his mind. “Lark…ye said that Roylin Montgomerie is not your father.”

Lark swallowed and breathed deeply, unlocking part of her confession that she should have confided in him before they came together last night. “My father died before I was born. He was an English soldier. My mother and he fell in love.” She looked past his shoulder, not wanting to watch his face, her words soft. “They did not marry before he was killed. She came to her marriage with Roylin Montgomerie with me.” She swallowed. “A bastard.” She breathed deeply and bravely met his gaze. “You have created no bastards, Adam, but you married one.”

Adam’s face remained pinched, the lines in his forehead deepened from the slant of the shadows in the corridor. “Ye did not tell me.”

The heavy, teetering yoke that Lark always felt balanced on her shoulders, shifted as if it would crush her. “I meant to, last night, before…” Her words broke off as she ran out of breath. Standing against the wall in the curved tower, she felt a cold fall over her and wrapped her arms around herself. She waited.

“I will have Beck fetch the family Bible from Aunt Ida when he talks to Lady Maclean about helping with the birth.”

Her heart pounded. “What if what is written is exactly what your father said?”

Silence.

The silence stretched. “You said you do not believe in curses,” she reminded him.

“And ye said that trust was the most important thing to ye in a marriage.”

She opened her mouth and closed it. Twice.

“Trust goes both ways, Lark.”

What could she say? She had kept the secret of her birth her whole life, just like Adam had been told to believe the curse his whole life.

Adam’s face smoothed into an apathetic mask, making her stomach knot. He looked past her toward the door of the chief’s bed chamber. “We know nothing about this woman except that she lies,” he said. “’Tis unsafe for ye to sleep in there with her.”

She gave a little nod. “I will check on Rabbie and tend to Eagan’s lip.” She looked down at his large hand in a splash of light from the torch. It was strong, with calluses from his sword and work, fingers that had touched every inch of her last night. “Your knuckles, too,” she said, her voice low.

His eyes focused on his hand. “Aye, thank ye.” The tone was flat, almost defeated. She almost preferred anger.

“Should I sleep on the barge on the water, until you have had a chance to read Ida’s Bible?” She took a quick breath. “Although, then I suppose we would need to put Elspeth out there with me.”

“Nay, Lark,” he said, his tone crisp. “Ye will sleep with me here on the isle.”

“Rabbie and your brothers may have a problem with that.”

“Aye,” Adam said, his voice heavy. “They will.”

Her fingers slid against the rough wall from granite stone to granite stone as they descended. The castle had been there for hundreds of years, hands and fingers skimming these exact rocks. Even a reputed curse hadn’t toppled them. If only she could be as strong.