Moon Craving Read Free Page A

the world who loved her and truly desired her presence.

    Abigail spent most of her days in her own company. Thankfully, Emily had taught her to read letters as well as lips. Though few and far between, letters from her sister had been her only link to Emily since going north to marry her Highlander. Abigail studied the books Sir Reuben allowed her to read and the letters Emily had left behind from her friend, the abbess. In the past six months, Abigail had begun her own correspondence with the learned woman as well. Her inability to hear had no power to tarnish a friendship carried out in writing.

    Their housekeeper, Anna, was kind, but she was a busy woman, and Abigail did not like to be a bother. She only continued to work on improving her Gaelic with the old woman born in Scotland because she refused to give up hope. Eventually Sybil would allow the daughter she considered useless to join Emily in the Highlands. She had to.

    Indeed, Abigail had been sure that time had come when Sybil had taken her aside these seven days past and told her that she would be leaving the keep with Sir Reuben and Sybil on a trip. Abigail believed Sybil had finally acceded to Emily's entreaties and thrown herself into preparations for the trip with excitement she had not felt since her sister had been taken from her.

    Of course, Abigail had experienced some trepidation at the prospect that she was being taken to a nunnery. But surely the abbess would have said something in her last letter if that were to be the case. Abigail had asked her mother if she would be seeing Emily.

    Sybil had replied that it was possible. Abigail had thought she was just being coy.
    Now, she feared the older woman had meant exactly that. It was possible, not probable.

    Finally, Abigail found the letter from the king and read it with growing panic.

    It could not be possible. Her mother would not be so cruel. But the missive from the king said otherwise. Sybil, damn her avaricious soul, had said nothing of the true reason for the upcoming journey, but the letter laid out her mother's greed and treachery in ink, sealed by the king himself.

    How could a mother plan something so nefarious for her blood offspring? Worse, how could she do so without warning Abigail of what was to come?

    A hand grabbed her shoulder, fingers that felt like claws digging into her. Her heart stopped and then began beating faster than a rabbit's.

    She was spun violently around and came face-to-face with her livid mother.

    Sybil demanded, "What do you think you are doing?"

    She could not hear the words, but Abigail had no trouble reading the anger or the question coming from her mother's lips.

    At first, shock and fear at being discovered paralyzed Abigail's thoughts. She tried to speak, but could tell no sound had made it past her throat from the disgusted expression twisting her mother's features.

    That disgust sliced through Abigail, leaving a bloody trail of inner pain behind.
    However, instead of the shame she usually felt at her inabilities, fury at her mother's betrayal boiled up inside Abigail.

    More than two years had passed since the first edict from the king that had torn Abigail's world apart for the second time. Because of Sir Reuben's miserly response to the king's call for soldiers from his landed knights, the king had demanded his vassal provide a marriageable daughter. He and Scotland's monarch wanted to intermarry English nobility with the hard-to-control Highland nobles.

    Emily had been sent to Scotland to marry Talorc, Laird of the Sinclairs. Only she had ended up kidnapped and wed to his rival, the laird of the Balmoral clan.

    When Abigail had learned of this situation, she had assumed that would be the end of it. Scotland's king should be happy one of his Highland lairds had taken an English wife. Naive as that thought might have been, she was certain she had been right.

    According to the king's letter, Abigail's planned upcoming marriage to the original