the night. Kinswomen, her mother included. Why?
“Oh Maggie,” Muireall swooned upon the bed. “Are you not thrilled? Are you not the luckiest lass in the whole of the Highlands?”
Still muddled, Maggie rubbed her eyes.
“Oh aye,” Leitis smiled, “if Nigel had courted me like that, I don’t know what would have happened.”
“I do!” Sibeal brought on a chorus of laughter that the older women tried to hush in deference to Maggie’s innocence. Quick as the flicker of a candle, Maggie understood why her kinswomen were here, why they spoke the way they did.
Come daylight she would be riding away from this place, her home. “What’s the time? Is it anywhere near to morning?”
“You’ve an hour at most.” Fiona sat beside her daughter, shooing the other women off.
They had all worked late into the night, deciding what Maggie could take with her, what would need sending, what would be saved for her children. They had teased and sighed and ooh’d over Maggie’s fate. Only Maggie didn’t take to the fussing. She remained practical; it was the only way to get through what she needed to get through.
It was bad enough that she would have to marry a warrior who came with the near promise of widowhood. God forbid she be left as hungry for male company as Muireall. And with a warrior, a great huge beast of a man, well . . . she would have to be just as strong in spirit. If not, he’d trounce her in every manner of will-- just as he’d done last night when she was fighting for life as she knew it.
The worst of it was that he didn’t know her, and when he did come to see who she really was, when all the grand stories proved to be no more than a blown up grain of truth, would he want her? Or, would he turn to all those other women who swooned at the mere thought of him?
Could she ever hope to hold a man such as Talorc the Bold?
As if to spite Maggie’s thoughts, her mother took her hand, “He’s a splendid man.” Then she brushed the hair from Maggie’s forehead, a gesture of comfort that had Maggie pulling back. How many times in the past had her mother done just such a thing to ease an illness, a pain or to soothe the frustrations of the young? But those gestures would be too far away to be of any comfort when Maggie faced the confusion and fear of a new home.
“She’ll be the envy of every woman?” Caitlin cawed, unaware of the sudden wariness between mother and daughter.
“Oh, aye,” Siobhan responded, “he makes me quiver.”
“How I wish I could be you on the bedding night.” Someone else said and they all sighed and nodded.
The words poured around Maggie, too many to take in, too forceful to ignore. Confused, shaken, she lifted her head to knowing smiles. They jostled each other with elbows, raised eyebrows, their comments, now whispered, growing more suggestive by the moment and suddenly Maggie found a new emotion, a new fear, to completely overwhelm all the others she’d ever felt since meeting this man.
If they were all so eager, why hadn’t they asked to be sacrificed? Why hadn’t they saved her, possibly the only woman who didn’t want to be in this place?
Fiona must have sensed what was happening, for she wrapped a protective arm around her daughter's shoulders, quieting the others.
“Don’t go frightening her, now.” Fiona warned, but the protective care had come too late. Maggie yanked free of her mother's hold.
“You knew what he was up to, didna’ you?” She snapped and saw her mother's guilty start. So that was the way of it. “Last night, before we even sat to dine, you knew. You led me into that, without a word of care.”
Throwing off the covers, she scrambled out of the far side of the bed and yelled. “How could ya’ do that? How could you let him put me in that corner, where there was no turning back no matter how I felt?”
“Oh Maggie, I didna’ think . . .”
“You should think! I’m your only daughter and now I’ve no home here. Why do I wait to be bathed and dressed? Why don’t I just go down there and take his hands and make my promises and leave? For you’ve sent me away from the only home I’ve ever wanted to know. To a place where who knows what waits?”
Although she paused, to gather