The Frost Maiden's Kiss Read Free Page B

rounding belly, she suggested only that she could let Catriona’s family know of her location. One cold insistence that her business was her own had been enough to silence any more questions, though it had sparked a considering light in the lady’s eyes.
    Ruari, the laird’s faithful servant, drove the cart Catriona occupied with the children and the baggage. The older man’s chatter and complaints were both ceaseless and reassuring in their familiarity. He had a good heart, did Ruari, but Catriona knew her lack of a husband while her belly was so ripe was a sore point with him. His was a firm moral code and even though Catriona found herself on the wrong side of his line, she admired that trait. That plus his age meant she felt comparatively safe in his company.
    It did not hurt that she alone could provide respite from his aches and pains, with a salve she had learned to make from wolf’s bane years before. Her treatment encouraged a tolerance from him that might not have been readily won otherwise.
    “My lady is a marvel, to be sure, but she believes herself more strong than any woman can be, Catriona,” Ruari groused now and shook his head. “She should not be in the saddle, not any more than you should be, but there is naught a man can say to change her thinking.” He shook a heavy finger. “My lady has a will of iron, to be sure.”
    “Lady Vivienne is not so close to her time as I am, Ruari.” Catriona spoke mildly, knowing that her companion’s complaints were born of affectionate concern.
    The older man’s lips tightened at the reminder. “But still, I would have forbidden the journey in my lord’s place.”
    “My lady was not to be refused in this,” Catriona reminded him. “She wished so much to see her family.”
    “And why not a year hence, when she can show them a healthy babe?” Ruari clicked his teeth and the two palfreys took that as encouragement to increase their pace. “There is no understanding the whim of a woman, that much is certain.”
    Catriona bit her tongue, guessing readily why the lady would see her kin before she labored to bring her child to light. Daughter of a midwife, she had witnessed more than her share of sorry endings.
    “Why is it only women who have whims?” asked Mairi. She was the eldest of the laird’s children and had seen ten summers. Astrid at eight summers, Catherine at five and William at three were all asleep, nestled around Catriona. Swaddled in Catriona’s arms was the infant Euphemia, even at a year of age as serene a babe as ever drew breath. Catriona wondered whether she would be able to bear the company of these sweet children after giving her own child away.
    She dared not think of it, not now.
    Mairi crawled forward, remaining low against the rocking rhythm of the cart, and seized Ruari’s knee. “You never speak of a man with a whim, Ruari.” This child could say whatsoever she willed to the gruff servant and never hear a sharp word in reply.
    There was the truth of his measure. Children instinctively trusted those with no violence in them.
    “Because it is not natural,” Ruari replied with rare patience. “Men have plans and schemes, while women have desires and whims.”
    Mairi frowned. “Is that so, Catriona? I have plans!”
    Ruari snorted at that.
    “Indeed, I believe both men and women can have all of those things,” Catriona said. She liked this one’s curiosity well. Mairi was a pretty child and forthright in nature. Catriona suspected she would give some man a merry chase in coming years and ensure her father grew a clutch of silver hairs.
    “But women show the mark of whim and desire,” Ruari insisted, sparing a glance for Catriona’s rounded belly.
    Catriona held his gaze, unrepentant for what was not her fault. “Regardless of whose whim and desire it was that planted the seed.”
    Ruari’s lips tightened before he turned back to the road, his gaze fixed upon the laird and lady riding ahead of them.
    “What do you