Chapter 9
This is insane. This is… irresponsible, is what it is!
Nancy didn’t have the first idea of what to do with a baby, and such a small one, too. All babbling sounds and chubby cheeks and downy hair and sticky little fists.
It wasn’t as if Nancy had the steadiest hands either, after what had just happened in the stairwell.
She could still feel Hunter’s palm on her chest, the calluses rough against her smooth skin.
It hadn’t seemed like something sexual, not at first, but the longer he’d left his hand there, the more she’d doubted herself. And his intentions.
Was he trying to feel my heartbeat? He was probably checking if I had one, since he thought I was some witch or some unnatural creature.
She snorted, and the baby jolted in fright, her pink, pudgy little face scrunching up. Nancy might not have known anything about babies, but she knew what that face meant: an earsplitting scream was imminent.
“Oh, dearie me.” Isla swooped in and took the baby out of her bassinet, cradling the child with such casual ease, rocking her gently from side to side.
The motion was so hypnotic that even Nancy almost felt herself calming down.
Flashing the older woman an apologetic look, she murmured, “Sorry. I forgot they have sensitive ears. A big, brand-new world; everything must be terrifying.”
Isla chuckled. “It’s good for ‘em. Ye daenae want a bairn who cannae sleep through the smallest sound. This one is a wee bit more sensitive than most, but she’ll soon learn that nae every sound is a scary one.
” She paused, smiling. “Do ye want to hold her? Ye probably should if ye’re to be her nursemaid. ”
Dread coiled in Nancy’s stomach, although that might have been a lack of breakfast, too.
“About that.” She gulped. “I hope no one is expecting me to… You know, feed the baby. I don’t exactly have what she needs, if you understand what I’m saying.”
This time, it was Isla who snorted, and the baby barely flinched. Learning already.
“Mercy, I ken that,” the older woman said, still chuckling. “She has two wet nurses for that: one for the day, and one for the night. They’re bonny lasses. Ye’ll meet them in due course, I’ve nay doubt.”
Something like relief took a bit of weight off Nancy’s shoulders. Although now that she thought about it, it was probably a dumb thing to say. Of course, neither Hunter nor Isla thought she would have been capable of that. This was just a ruse, after all.
And I, apparently, have just one week to find a tapestry that hasn’t been woven yet.
Her stomach lurched again. She wished she had asked that art teacher just how long it took to weave a tapestry. Too long was her most precise guess.
“Well?” Isla prompted, holding the baby out.
Nancy shrugged and took a breath. “I promise, I’ll try my very best not to drop her.” She hesitated. “Actually, it’s probably best if I sit down to start with.”
“Ye willnae drop her, lass. I trust ye,” Isla assured, in a voice so sincere that it hurt.
The last person to say that was Emily, who might have picked up her voicemails and called the cops by now, or might not, and hopefully never had to know where Nancy was, because she’d be back before Emily sensed something was wrong.
Or I’ll be another woman who disappeared while searching for missing women.
She remembered that delivery guy outside the apartment building and the note about the Hawk that had sent her off to North Carolina in the first place, and shuddered.
Whoever had been keeping tabs on her, even they couldn’t have imagined what had befallen her.
“Hunter?” Jack’s fist rapped pointlessly on the open door of the garret that Hunter used as a study. A place where he could work through the endless requests and duties of a laird and keep an eye on the walls and soldiers guarding it, like the man-at-arms he used to be.
Hunter looked up from the letters he was writing to the clans east of Lochlann territory, to give to the envoys who would be traveling there soon.
He’d never been much of a diplomat, either in words or in action, and he was very close to ripping up every piece of correspondence he’d written in the past few hours, certain he must sound like an idiot.
His gloomy disposition brightened for a moment when he saw Beathan standing with Jack. Maybe he could convince his cousin to write the letters instead, a consolation for not being permitted to join the trade negotiations.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, somewhat blithely.
Then, he saw Jack’s face, and he sat up straighter, his mood taking a dive into darker waters.
Jack and Beathan stepped into the garret and closed the door behind them. Another bad sign.
“A scout came back from the border,” Jack said with a sigh. “Some MacLeaches crossed the valley. Killed two of our guards who were patrollin’ near the outpost by the stream. One of theirs dead, too.”
Hunter groaned and gripped his quill so tightly that it snapped. “Again?”
“Aye, again,” Jack replied.
Thus far, they had been keeping the minor ambushes quiet, so as not to stir panic in the rest of the clan.
Mostly, the Lochlann men had either chased off the enemy or had emerged with a few injuries, but in the past couple of weeks, the MacLeach soldiers had been getting bolder.
This would be the second time that he had been informed of dead men, and it was two times too many.
Then again, it was a more delicate matter than it seemed.
“Let ‘em come,” he sniffed as he set to cutting another pen from a feather, pouring his anger into every slice of his blade. “It’s how I want ‘em: cocksure and thinkin’ we’re weakened. That’s when they start makin’ mistakes.”
At that, Beathan squinted, a glint of anger hiding like shards of glass in his light blue eyes. “Ye cannae let this go unpunished, Cousin. If they think they can get away with it, they’ll keep killin’ our guards until there’s nay one left on the border!”
“His daughter died, Beathan,” Hunter replied, cold and firm. “That’s punishment enough for now. If he continues, that’s different.”
“So ye’re willin’ to let our men be a sacrifice because yer wife died?
In their hands, I might add.” Beathan’s nose turned up in obvious distaste, but then he’d never been able to hide his feelings well.
It was part of what made him such a good envoy, able to empathize and convey his emotions in a way that Hunter couldn’t hope to.
Hunter puffed out an irritated breath. “He has nay children left because of me. Say what ye will, but he deserves some grace. And nay, that doesnae mean I’m pleased that I have to tell two other families that their son or husband or braither is dead.
It just means I willnae take us all to war again over this. ”
It didn’t matter that it was his wife who had gotten her brother killed.
She hadn’t been in her right mind, and Hunter hadn’t bothered to notice, unaware of the letters she was sending to Patrick, each one filled with lies.
Now, Aaron Warren, Laird of Clan MacLeach, had no heirs to speak of, not from his own bloodline at least. The war took one son; Hunter took the other.
“I’m nae just a warrior now,” Hunter added, his voice hard.
One more word of dissent from his cousin or his friend, and he wouldn’t be held responsible for his actions.
Jack nodded reluctantly. “Aye, I daenae envy ye.”
“Nor do I,” Beathan conceded.
He had avoided the war altogether, left back at the castle to defend the women and children if the fighting came too close, and to be kept safe as a potential heir if his brother, the previous Laird, fell in battle.
Despite the council’s wishes, Hunter had offered the position to Beathan, insisting that he would stand aside for the rightful heir. The council had been concerned that there was madness in the bloodline and hadn’t been quiet in making their preference clear.
“I daenae want it. I’ve never wanted it.
I urged me braither to marry, to have sons, so I’d never have it fall on me.
I spent the war behind the castle walls, like a lass.
I’m nae the person to lead our people,” Beathan had said that day.
“It’s ye, Hunter. The man they trust. I daenae think there’s madness in me blood, but I didnae think me braither was mad either, and yet here we are. ”
Still, there were many moments where Hunter wished Beathan had taken the position anyway. Usually, while writing endless boring, infuriating letters to people who probably wouldn’t do business with them anyway.
“Jack, tell the families it was a territorial dispute gone awry, at that spot on the loch,” Hunter instructed. “And send more riders to the border. The ones who are good with a bow. A soldier on horseback with a bow and arrow in hand is harder to ambush. Send a few up there with muskets, too.”
He didn’t favor the cumbersome weapons himself, finding them too time-consuming and awkward, and prone to not working at all in the mercurial Highland weather, but they served as a decent repellent.
The trouble was, they didn’t have many. Then again, neither did Laird MacLeach, as far as Hunter was aware.
Jack nodded. “Aye, me Laird.” He paused. “Do ye think this is all happenin’ now because Laird MacLeach regrets leavin’ the bairn at yer gates?”
“I daenae ken,” Hunter replied, almost snapping his second quill. “But if he wants her, I’ll say it again, more plainly this time: let him come.”
He’ll have to rip her from me hands, and he willnae get close enough.
If he had to end the entire bloodline to keep his daughter safe, then so be it. He wouldn’t hesitate.
Jack smiled. “Ye’re a fine da, Hunter.”
“Though I wonder if havin’ a bairn has softened ye a wee bit too much,” Beathan teased. “Nae so long ago, ye’d have chased after whoever harmed those guards and cut ‘em in twain.”
Hunter narrowed his eyes. “Get out.”
“Och, ye hit him in his sore spot!” Jack laughed, elbowing Beathan in the ribs.
Beathan grinned. “Ye mean his soft spot?”
“Out with ye!” Hunter muttered sharply. “Or else it’ll be ye that I send after those MacLeach men.”
His cousin paled, while Jack tilted his head from side to side, as if considering the idea.
“Nae before me own bairn is born,” Jack said. “Elsie would kill ye, and dependin’ on what sort of day she’s havin’, she could do it too.”
Hunter resisted the urge to laugh, for he’d been witness to a couple of Elsie’s incensed moments, which seemed to come upon her at random and evaporated as quickly as they had appeared.
A symptom of her pregnancy, or so Isla had informed them all in a hushed tone, so Elsie would not hear and fly into a rage again.
Instead, he shot the two men one of his choicest glares and watched with some satisfaction as they backed out of his garret without another word.
But mentioning Freya had stirred the urge to go and see his daughter… and he was sick to death of writing letters anyway.
Tossing his quill onto the desk, he walked over to the trapdoor in the middle of the floor, heaved it up, and climbed down the ladder that would take him into the main body of the castle.
The room could also be reached from the castle walls, where Jack and Beathan had entered, but no one used the ladder except him. The last thing he needed was people popping up to make another demand of him.
He followed a warren of passageways and narrow staircases that reminded him of his earlier encounter with Nancy and made his way to the nursery. The door was partially open when he arrived, but he didn’t knock or enter right away.
Instead, Nancy’s soft voice and strange accent kept him rooted to the threshold, observing her. It was clear she didn’t know he was there, and he was glad of it as he saw her at the nursery window with Freya in her arms, pointing to things through the slightly open casement.
She was a little awkward holding the baby, clearly still getting used to it, but Freya didn’t seem to mind.
“Those are sheep,” Nancy said, and after a moment’s hesitation, made a low baa that brought an amused smirk to his lips. “There’s a mommy sheep and baby sheep and… I think those ones with the horns are daddy sheep. I’ll be honest with you, Freya, I don’t see a lot of sheep where I come from.”
The baby gurgled, and Nancy’s face brightened.
“There’s not so much greenery, either,” she continued, a fresh note of excitement in her voice.
“Can you see color yet? All of that out there is green. All the trees and the grass and the… I suppose the mountains aren’t green, but there’s some green on them.
And up at the top there, that’s snow. Yes!
Yes, it is. It’s snow, for building snowmen and making snow angels and throwing snowballs. ”
Freya gazed up at Nancy with wide eyes, and as Nancy stuck out her tongue and made a funny face, the baby chuckled.
“Throwing snowballs is funny?” Nancy grinned. “You must be born with that warrior spirit up here, eh? Not much else to do but raise sheep and pick fights.”
Freya giggled again.
“Am I so funny?” Nancy crooned, laughing. “Yes, am I so funny? Do I say funny things?”
She seemed genuinely delighted by the baby’s response, and though part of Hunter wanted to delight in it too, something else pulled him away from the door. It felt strangely like Nancy needed this, and if he were to intrude, he’d be shattering a moment. Shattering her peace.
So, with all the stealth that years of war and training for war had taught him, he drew back from the ‘enemy’ lines and crept away without her ever knowing he was there.