Forbidden Heart (Hearts of the Highlands #6) - Paula Quinn Page 0,24
the last of their fruit out of their supplies bag. But even if he had, she merely had to turn her gaze on him for him to remain quiet. She didn’t want to have to beg him for food to feed these hungry little ones, but she would.
She carried three apples, one for each child, and approached them.
“Sister!” Morgann called out to her, meaning to stop her. “They could be ill.”
She turned to look over her shoulder at him with her vision blurred from tears. “They are hungry, Morgann. Today, they will eat.”
He muttered something and then pulled out a few of the carrots they had left.
“We will not hurt you,” she promised the children as she and Morgann came near. They looked afraid but their eyes stayed on the food. They ranged in age from three to seven. “Are you hungry?”
The two younger girls looked up at the boy, unsure if they should answer.
“We will feed you,” she promised and moved closer.
Morgann stopped her from going any closer with a hand on her arm. “That is close enough, Sister.”
“Any coughing? Chills?” she asked the children. “Pain, here or here?” She pointed to her underarms and groin.
They shook their heads.
“What are your names?” she asked them as she stepped closer and handed them her apples.
“I’m Adam,” said the tallest, a boy with scruffy, dark hair falling around his face. “That is Katie, my sister,” he said, pointing to the middle girl with long, tangled, dark hair and huge brown eyes as somber as Morgann’s. “And that one is the babe, Bethany.”
Silene’s smile warmed on them as they bit into their apples. “I’m Silene.”
“I thought you were a man,” Adam confessed and wiped his mouth.
She laughed and turned to a smiling Morgann. “This is Morgann.”
Adam stared at Morgann’s sword with wonder and awe.
“What is this?”
Silene, Morgann, and the three children looked up at the captain returning with a sack tossed over his shoulder.
“They were hungry,” Silene told him, only slightly worried. She knew he wouldn’t be angry that she’d given the children the apples and carrots.
She noted Adam staring wide-eyed at all the weapons hanging from the Highlander’s belt.
“Where are yer father and mother?” he asked the boy.
“My father is at work in his shop. My mother is home.”
“Where is home?” he asked.
Adam pointed to a small cottage half-hidden beneath trees and two other bigger houses.
“Go and bring yer mother here. Tell her the high steward’s men are here.”
“My sisters…” Adam hesitated.
Silene moved forward and put her hand on Katie’s shoulder. “They will be safe with us.”
They watched the boy run off then Silene turned to the captain. “What do you intend to do?”
“Feed them.”
“Cap, we dinna have enough coin fer us and them,” Morgann pointed out, a worried look on his face.
Silene didn’t take her eyes off the captain. Would he—
“We will have enough,” he said with a flicker of resolve brightening his green eyes. She sighed when he left to get more food. Ten more Hail Marys.
She smiled and then turned back to the small, dirty faces before her. “Do you have a favorite story?”
They shook their heads.
Silene told them her favorite and while she was in the middle of telling, Bethany crawled into her lap to listen. Many times in the past, she had thought about having her own children, of being a mother. But that desire faded as her love for God grew, though it wasn’t gone completely.
Smoothing Bethany’s dirty curls away from her cheeks, the child stirred the desire in her again.
She didn’t notice the captain standing off to the side with two sacks in his hands, watching her in silence that was louder than Adam calling to them with a woman nervously in tow.
Silene set Bethany gently on the ground and stood up with a soft smile to greet the children’s mother.
“I am Sister Silene of St. Patrice’s Priory in Bamburgh.”
Adam’s mother narrowed her eyes on Silene’s hair and her clothes. “You do not look like a sister.”
Silene lifted her finger to her hair and looked at the captain—why him, she did not know.
He stepped forward with the bags and dropped them at Silene’s feet.
With a grateful grin, she bent to take a look inside. One bag was filled with grain and one with figs and other fruit.
“The captain has graciously supplied your family with food,” she told Adam’s mother. She let her gaze drift to him. All this must have come with a high price. “Thank you, Captain.”