pulled out the stitching today. If I’m well enough for that, I’m damn sure well enough to bed my wife. I’ve nay retched a time nor lost my balance in two days.” He turned from the window, pinning a fierce scowl on her. “I heard what that witch whispered to ye at the meal, and I canna believe ye put so much stock in that old woman’s imaginings. D’ye enjoy living with a man crazed because he canna pleasure his wife?”
He was certainly a cross one tonight. Sorcha couldn’t fault him for it, though. With each passing day, their celibate state had become more worrisome than a festering wound. Even with her sleeping in the lesser room, the nights had become pure torture. During the day, she did her best to exhaust herself with chores and somehow work away the frustration and aching she knew only Sutherland could relieve. But at night, even when she was bone tired, she lay wide awake, staring at the shadows, reliving his kisses, his touch, the feel of him beside her. And he had taken to singing to her every night, his gentle crooning floating through the door she always left ajar in case he should need her. Soft and low, his rich voice mesmerized her as he sang ballads written for lovers. Now, she understood why he had been aptly dubbed the bard.
“I need ye, mo ghràdh. I need to make ye truly my wife—to hold ye, to love ye, to make us one.”
Blinking away her own tortured musings, she set aside her mending and went to him. For whatever reason, old Aderyn had been adamant they wait at least one more day. Maybe, if she gave him the hope of when this suffering would end for them both, that might lighten his dark mood. She took his hand between hers and pressed it to her cheek. “One more day, aye? Just one more night of separate beds and separate rooms. I promise.”
Sutherland’s demeanor shifted immediately. “One more day?” he repeated. “Ye swear it?”
“I swear it.” She kissed his knuckles, then tucked herself against his chest and hugged him. “Tomorrow eve will be our proper wedding night. I promise.”
His arms tightened around her. “Ye’re killing me, woman,” he rasped into her hair, then nudged a kiss to her temple.
“Old Aderyn is never wrong,” she weakly defended. How many times had she uttered that mantra over the past few days? “But tomorrow night her edict ends. No matter what comes about, aye?”
A knock on the sitting room door halted the conversation.
“Who could that be at this late hour?” Sorcha moved to answer the door, but Sutherland caught her and held her back.
“Nay, love, I shall answer it.” He gave her a look that dared her to argue. They’d had several conversations about the fire, his injury, and several strange but thankfully harmless incidents that had befallen him over the course of the past few days.
The oddly jammed door to the whisky cellar trapping him inside until Magnus searched him out and heard his call. Tools falling from the hayloft and landing dangerously close, but no one around who could have dropped them. Neither she nor Sutherland considered these happenings coincidences, but neither had either of them been able to discover the person responsible. Rumors of wicked ghosts or curses ran rife through the keep, but she and Sutherland suspected Garthin Napier. Yet, they had no proof. Whoever was at fault was sly as a wicked fox.
Sutherland opened the door to Magnus. “What’s wrong?”
With a smile and a shake of his head, Magnus stepped inside. “Nothing. Forgive my intrusion at such an hour, but the chief shared that Mistress MacKelhenny has proclaimed spring has truly arrived, and the passes are cleared enough to set a date for a proper wedding feast. He proposes the celebration be held in less than a fortnight.”
“Who the hell is Mistress MacKelhenny?” A bewildered look furrowed Sutherland’s brow.
“Aderyn MacKelhenny,” Sorcha supplied. “Magnus is the only one in the keep who calls Aderyn, Mistress MacKelhenny.”
“I feel the woman deserves my respect,” Magnus said quietly. “She says she knew my mother. Has told me several pleasant tales about times they spent together. I would treat Mistress MacKelhenny with the dignity and respect my mother never received.”
Immediate regret for the levity of her words filled Sorcha. Sutherland had explained that Magnus’s mother had been tried and executed for witchcraft, and Magnus had arrived too late to save her. “Forgive me, Magnus. I assure