CHAPTER 35
“You’ll heal,” Una told Finn, “but you’ll carry the scars from George Sinclair’s whipping, tuiteam gun èirigh dhut.” May he fall without rising.
Finn gritted his teeth while Una cleaned the wounds on his back and applied fresh bandages.
“Look at my baby,” Ella said from where she was playing on the floor with the dog, Cù-sìthe.
Finn tried not to laugh when he saw she’d put a wee bonnet on him. Cù-sìthe gave him a pained look with his one eye. Like Finn, the dog would do anything for Ella, but he made one ugly, hairy-faced baby.
“Do your owies still hurt, Da?” Ella asked.
His heart melted whenever she called him that. Hell, he’d put on a bonnet for her too if she asked.
“Nay, not anymore,” he lied, and winked at her.
“Did ye hear that Curstag left?” Una asked him. “Told me she found someone to take her to Edinburgh. She plans to become a famous courtesan there and cater to wealthy noblemen and merchants.”
“Good luck to her,” Finn said. “That would suit Curstag. I hope she succeeds and stays there.”
He waited until after Ella scampered off with the dog to ask Una about Margaret.
“I’m worried about Maggie,” he said. “It’s been a week since we returned from Girnigoe, and she’s still so tired. I fear it was all too much for her.”
He felt racked with guilt that she’d put herself and their babe at risk for him.
“’Tis common for a lass to be tired in the first weeks,” Una said. “As I’ve told ye before, Maggie is stronger than she was when she was married to the foul man.”
Finn did not doubt that his wife was strong. Hell, she’d gone into Girnigoe alone to get him and then dragged him out with the sheer force of her will. But this was different.
“Ach, her husband should have been hung by his bollocks for what he did to her that last time she miscarried.”
“The last time?” Finn asked. “Ye mean during the Battle of the Causeway?”
“That was bad enough, but I’m talking about when he threw her out,” Una said. “On death’s door, she was.”
Finn jumped up, sending a roll of linen bandages across the floor.
“Death?” Finn gripped the old woman’s arms. “Maggie almost died from a miscarriage?”
“Oh, aye, she was verra close indeed,” Una said. “If she’d been properly cared for, I don’t believe—”
He left Una and burst into the other bedchamber, where Margaret was sitting with her feet up.
“Ye should have told me ye nearly died from your last miscarriage,” he said. “I would never have taken ye to bed if I’d known.”
“Ye wouldn’t have?” she asked, raising one eyebrow. “Then I’m verra glad I didn’t tell ye.”
“I wouldn’t have risked your life.” Finn knelt beside her and took her hands between his. “What if I’ve murdered ye by planting a child inside ye?”
“I’ve had three years to recover my health,” she said. “I’m strong now.”
She told him a harrowing story of becoming pregnant too soon after a previous miscarriage because her swine of a husband refused to wait the prescribed period for cleansing.
“The herbal tincture would have stopped the bleeding,” she said, “but he forced me to leave before it could do much good.”
Finn wanted to throw a chair against the wall as she described how she had ridden in the back of a horse cart, bleeding and with the storm pelting her face. If he did not have to leave her to do it, he would ride right now to her former husband’s castle and put a blade through his black heart.
“I survived the sea cave and Girnigoe Castle,” she said. “And Una is a gifted midwife, ye said so yourself. The babe and I will be just fine.”
“Aye, ye will,” Finn said, because he did not want her to worry, and he needed it to be true.
But he was terrified.
###
Several months later...
Margaret stood on the shore in front of Dunrobin Castle with her husband and daughter watching two boats on the horizon.
“Alex is sailing home on one of those boats,” Finn said, leaning down to point them out to Ella.
“Alex! Alex!” Ella shouted, dancing from foot to foot.
Finn put his arm around Margaret’s shoulders and rested a protective hand on her swollen belly. “This reminds me,” he said, “of when we sailed across the firth and landed on this beach.”
“And you tried to make me look like a tavern wench,” Margaret said with a laugh.
“I had no notion how you’d change my life and bring me so much happiness,” Finn said, and nuzzled her neck.
Margaret sighed and leaned back against him.
“I don’t know why the Earl of Moray felt he had to bring Alex himself,” Finn said. “I assured him it was safe for Alex to return to Dunrobin, and I sent twenty warriors to escort him here from Huntly.”
With his uncle dead, the men of Sutherland had turned to Finn to lead them in the fight against the Sinclairs.
First, Finn captured Dunrobin, just as his father Robin Sutherland had done years before.
Then, under his leadership, the combined forces of the Sutherlands, Gordons and Murrays pushed the Sinclairs out of Sutherland altogether.
Finn did not do it for his own enrichment, but to protect the ordinary folk of Sutherland—and for Alex, the brother of his heart.
Margaret was worried that Finn had succeeded so well that Moray might have other uses for him.
She put her hand over her belly, their miracle child, and prayed that Moray would not interfere with their plans.
Once Alex was ready to assume his duties as laird alone, they wanted to set up their own household and keep as much distance as possible from royal politics and power struggles.
She still worried that Garty had too many ghosts for her husband, and she wished it was farther away from Edinburgh, but it would do.
“I better go inside before the boats get any closer,” Margaret said.
She had made sure everything was prepared for a visitor of royal blood, but she could not sit in the hall beside her husband to serve as hostess.
Moray had seen her too many times at court for Margaret to take the risk that he would recognize her, even in her current, enormous shape.
She hoped Moray’s visit would be a short one.
“I’ll take ye in,” Finn said.
“I’m pregnant, not injured,” Margaret said, and kissed his cheek. “I think I can manage to waddle inside all by myself.”
She might tease him about being a wee bit too protective during her pregnancy, but after how little concern the men of her past had shown her, she was grateful to have a husband who was so thoughtful and caring.
“Go rest, m' eudail,” Finn said. “I’ll come up as soon as I can after the feast and my talk with Moray.”
Two hours later, Margaret pressed her fist against her aching back as she walked back and forth across the bedchamber, waiting to hear the outcome of Finn’s meeting with Moray.
The feast she had meticulously organized should be over soon, and Finn and Moray would retreat to the laird’s private solar.
When she heard the door latch behind her, she spun around, expecting Finn.
Instead, a stunning woman of perhaps forty, dressed in expensive silk brocade that showed her voluptuous figure to advantage, stood in the doorway.
Jewels glinted on the woman’s fingers and at her throat, and the emerald green of her gown matched her eyes and set off her famous red hair, which was still striking, despite the streaks of white.
“God’s blood!” The woman’s hand went to her throat. “You’re Margaret Drummond’s niece, the missing Margaret Douglas.”
Margaret hid the panic rising in her throat behind an outward calm.
After keeping her identity secret for so long, she had been found out.
She knew who her visitor was as well. This was none other than the infamous Lady Janet Douglas, the late king’s mistress.
She had not expected the Earl of Moray to bring his mother.
“Ye look so much like your aunt that I thought I’d seen a ghost,” Janet said. “I heard ye bore a strong likeness to her, but the resemblance is rather startling.”
“’Tis best we speak in private,” Margaret said, and closed the door behind Janet before a passing servant overheard her. “Won’t ye sit down?”
Janet’s decision to enter her and Finn’s private chamber uninvited was not only inexcusably rude, but it also imperiled their future. Margaret eased herself into a chair, folded her hands over her huge belly, and waited for what the woman would do next.
“Forgive my intrusion, but I was curious to meet the woman my friend Finn wed,” Janet said.
Margaret suspected from the way Janet said friend that she had been more than that to Finn at one time. Was there no end to his former lovers? She reminded herself the past was behind them, and she had him now.
“In truth,” Janet said as she sat down and smoothed her skirts, “I thought Finn had made you up entirely to keep me from pestering him.”
Pestering was an interesting choice of word.
“I can’t believe you’re Finn’s wife!” Janet threw back her head and gave a throaty laugh. “I’m pleased he took my advice to marry a wealthy woman, but I did not expect him to take it so far as to wed a Douglas.”
“Please, no one can know who I am,” Margaret said. “My brothers believe I died of a fever at Blackadder castle, and I don’t want them to learn otherwise.”
Exchanging letters with her sisters and Lizzy was difficult, but she had eventually received word from Alison telling her of the lie she and Lizzie had told to explain Margaret’s disappearance.
“Now that ye mention it, I did hear a rumor that you were dead.” Janet leaned forward. “’Tis best we keep your secret between us and not tell my son.”
Margaret drew in her first easy breath since Janet appeared.
Janet already knew the gossip about Margaret’s first husband annulling their marriage, and Margaret told her briefly about her brothers’ plans to use her before she escaped.
Janet listened intently, tapping one manicured finger against her cheek.
“I don’t want my brothers finding me and interfering in our lives,” Margaret said.