Moon Craving (23 page)

"There were many signs, I cannot believe it took me so long to realize the truth."

"I had many years' experience learning to hide my affliction." And she had had a compelling reason to keep it hidden, one that grew more important each day—her love for and desire to stay with the man who now hated her.

"How is it that you speak?" he demanded.

"I did not lose my hearing to a fever until my tenth year."

"And you have lied about the truth of your condition since then?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"Emily."

"I should have known."

"Don't you denigrate her. She was the only one who cared enough to try to save me. She worked with me, hours every day, so I would continue to speak normally. I learned to read lips with her help and constant guidance. No one in our keep knew of my affliction except my mother and stepfather. And eventually, my sister Jolenta." She hated sharing the pain of her past but owed her husband as much truth as she could give him.

He did not ask if her deafness was why her mother hated her so. He must realize it was.

"I told Osgard there was no deception in you. I was a fool." She could have stood it if only anger showed in his eyes, but hurt lurked there as well.

Abigail's heart broke. "No."

"Yes! Perhaps your bitch of a mother convinced you to lie to me initially, but you have had ample opportunity since then to admit the truth."

"I was afraid."

"Just like the rest of your countrymen, liars and cowards, every one of them."

"No, it's not like that."

He looked at Guaire. "Take her to our chamber."

"Talorc, please." She grabbed his arm, but he shook her off.

"You have already made a fool of me, will you add to my humiliation by disobeying me in front of my warriors?"

"Why not? You revealed my secret in front of them."

"You deceived them as well; they deserved to witness the truth, too."

"I wanted a chance to fit in." She didn't expect him to understand or care. The only one who ever had was Emily, but she told him the truth anyway.

"There is no place in our clan for deceivers and cowards."

She felt the words like blows and went to her knees from the pain.

A gentle touch landed on her shoulder. She looked up through eyes swimming in tears to find Guaire's face covered in compassion.

He put his arm out. "Come, my lady."

Before she had a chance to take it, she was being lifted with jerky movements into Talorc's arms. He carried her toward the stairs, his entire body radiating fury and repudiation.

Unwilling to hide from anything any longer and needing to face the full ramifications of her situation, she looked toward the table of Sinclair soldiers. They were glaring at her. The expression on Osgard's face was one of smug satisfaction, but that did not hurt nearly as much as the revilement she read in Niall's eyes.

He had been her first friend among the Sinclairs. Now he was her enemy.

Talorc dropped her onto the pile of furs in their bedchamber. "If you value your safety, you will stay here."

She could think of nothing to say to such a threat being issued from the lips of the man she had come to equate with her safety.

He turned and only then did she realize Guaire had followed them up the stairs.

"Stay with her. Allow no one in this room until I return."

Guaire nodded without a word.

Then Talorc left. Guaire locked the door.

"Am I prisoner?" she asked, making no effort to modulate her voice.

But Guaire heard. He frowned. "Nay. Talorc does not want you hurt. The clan will need time to adjust to the knowledge that you have been hiding the truth about yourself. If you want my opinion, most of the Sinclairs will understand, even the Chrechte. Only those who saw how much you hurt our laird with your deception will hold it against you."

"I did not mean to hurt him."

Guaire sighed and leaned against the door. "I believe you."

"He won't."

"I have never seen him so happy." Guaire looked away from her, though she could still read his lips. "I did not believe he would ever grow to trust an Englishwoman. Not even if she was his wife."

"I destroyed that trust." Desolation blanketed her. Would he ever call her his angel again?

"Aye."

"I did not want to be sent away."

"He would not send you away, no matter what. You are his true mate."

"I do not think Talorc considers me his friend any longer."

"Unfortunately, I think you are right."

Talorc's fury was only a thin mask for pain so deep it would buckle his knees if he let it. His wife, the paragon of virtue he claimed as his sacred mate, the woman he had come so close to admitting love to, was a liar. A coward.

Osgard made a sound of disgust echoed among the other warriors at the table. "I guess you canna expect anything better from an Englishwoman."

"I expected better," Talorc gritted out.

Just as his father had with Tamara. Talorc had spent years proving himself to his clan, protecting them and being so careful not to share in his father's act of criminal stupidity.

To discover he had been deceived just as neatly by a woman he had grown to trust hurt more than Talorc would ever admit out loud.

Without a word, Niall pressed a cup of mead in front of Talorc and without another word, Talorc drank it.

Osgard left the table and returned several minutes later with a small cask filled with drink much stronger than mead. Talorc proceeded to imbibe in more than his share over the following hours and through dinner. At some point he called for one of his soldiers to take a message to Scotland's king, telling him of Sir Hamilton's treachery and demanding redress.

He was deep in his cups when Barr said, "You've got to admire her ingenuity."

Talorc turned on his second-in-command with a glare.

Barr merely shrugged, not appearing nearly as drunk as his laird. "She didn't just fool you, she fooled everyone at her father's keep and within our holding as well. Tamara hoodwinked only your father, and that was only because he was thinking with his little head, not the big one. Our lady is a clever one, not just a woman used to manipulating men with her pretty face."

"She's a sight more than pretty," Earc said, slurring his words. "Our lady is beautiful."

Osgard probably would have argued, but he was slumped over the table, snoring.

He'd never been able to hold his whiskey as well as Talorc's dad.

"Aye, beautiful and smart," Fionn intoned drunkenly. "Just like an angel."

Talorc frowned at his soldiers, Fionn's words stinging in a way he would never admit. "She lied to us all."

"She hid a frailty. Like a good soldier," Barr said. "We do not reveal our weaknesses to others."

"She is no soldier," Talorc roared, though perhaps not as impressively as he would have before that last cup of rotgut. "She is my mate."

"Aye, she is that."

Airril looked at Talorc blearily. "Did you ask her why she hid her affliction?"

"'Tis not an affliction. She is deaf, not diseased," Talorc responded angrily.

"He didn't ask. We were all right here when he tested her." Earc was looking distinctly green.

If he was smart, and all Talorc's Chrechte elite were intelligent, Earc would not drink any more tonight.

"Nay, I did not ask. What could it matter her why's of lying to me?"

Barr guided Earc to the floor as the man lurched alarmingly. "You won't know until you learn what they are."

"She said she was afraid," Fionn slurred.

"There. She's a coward." Though the words felt hollow as he said them.

"She's your mate. 'Tis your responsibility to find out what had her so feared." Barr's tone left no room for argument.

And that was one of the reasons Talorc valued him so as his second: the other warrior was not afraid to speak his mind when it was needed. Not that he always agreed.

Right now, he wasn't sure what he thought. Except that the table looked damn comfortable as he slumped forward to rest against it.

After a sleepless night in which Talorc did not return to their bedchamber and Guaire did not leave it, Abigail returned to the great hall just after sunrise. She'd left Guaire sleeping on the pallet she'd insisted making with some of the furs from her and Talorc's bed.

She had a feeling her husband wasn't going to like that, but then he could have come back and told Guaire the man could go to his own chamber for the night. As it was, no matter how many times Abigail assured the seneschal she would be all right on her own, he refused to leave her.

His presence had stopped her from collapsing in sobs. As much as she might have wanted to do so, she was grateful to him for inadvertently helping her keep her strength up. Then again, considering how astute the man was, his help might have been entirely deliberate.

At least she still had one true friend among the Sinclairs.

The stench of stale whiskey assaulted her nose when she was halfway down the stairs, so she was not wholly unprepared for the sight that met her eyes as she looked up after reaching the bottom. The soldiers from the night before, every one of them members of the elite Chrechte, were passed out in various poses of drunken disarray.

Talorc slept slumped over the table, but at least he was not passed out on the floor like Osgard. And Niall.

The big, scarred warrior's eyes opened as Abigail stood staring, contemplating her next move.

She opened her mouth to speak, but he turned away with clear intent to ignore her presence. He rolled to his feet and left the hall without once looking back or speaking to her. So, that was it then. His attitude had not softened with the passage of a night, or drinking a great deal of whiskey apparently.

His twin brother, Barr, woke next. His eyes looked clearer than Niall's had, his expression more open as well. "Good morning."

"Good morning," she whispered, not sure she wanted to wake the others.

"I do not see Guaire."

"I left him sleeping."

Barr nodded. "Talorc is going to have kittens when he realizes you descended the steps without escort again."

"I believe that is the least of my worries this morning."

"You deceived him and he feels stupid because of it."

"He's not stupid."

"Aye, I ken. And he knows it, too, but what he knows and what he feels are not always the same. 'Tis the same for all of us, don't you think?"

"I suppose." She wrapped her arms around herself and surveyed the sleeping warriors. "It looks to me as if they are all feeling drunk at the moment."

"Or not feeling anything at all."

"Sometimes I wish I could achieve that," she admitted, barely giving sound to her voice.

But Barr heard. These Chrechte had the hearing of a predator. "Dinna try it with rotgut. The headache the next morning is not worth it."

"Perhaps it would be best to speak to Talorc later, then."

Her husband's head came up from the table then, his blue gaze bloodshot but still piercing. "What is there to talk about?"

She could not believe he had asked such a foolish question. "The revelations of yesterday."

"You mean my discovery that you have been lying to me since the moment we met?"

"I never told you I could hear."

"You never told me you couldn't."

"No, I didn't."

"Why?"

"I would prefer to discuss this in private." Once again, she let her eyes skim the passed-out warriors around them. "Enough of this drama has been played out in the great hall for your soldiers to enjoy."

"I see no need to discuss this at all."

She crossed her arms. "I have a right to know what my future holds." She'd spent most of last night thinking and had come to several conclusions. The most important being, if she could convince Talorc to let her stay, she wanted to remain a Sinclair.

She knew it would not be easy, but nothing in her life had been since the fever that had nearly killed her as a child.

She had also decided she would not hide from the truth, whatever it might be. So, her husband would talk to her. And that was that.

Talorc did not reply, but he got up from the table, said something to Barr she could not see and headed up the stairs. Abigail followed, unaccountably disheartened by the fact that he had not insisted on her taking his arm for the ascent.

She'd taken two steps when he stopped and spun around, stomping back to her and grabbing her hand. "I'm probably less steady than you." But he did not let her hand go.

"I do not know where you get this idea that I am clumsy," she said to his back.

If he replied, Talorc did not bother to turn his head so she could see it.

When they reached their bedchamber, Guaire had left. Relief was quickly replaced by disappointment as Talorc released her hand and stepped away. His body jerked when he spied the pallet the soldier had slept on. Talorc glared at Abigail.

"Don't look at me like that is my fault." She waved her hand at the makeshift bed.

"You are the one that ordered him to stay with me. When you did not come to our chamber last night, he was forced to sleep here. I tried to convince him to leave, but he refused to do so."