Page 20 of His Stubborn Mate

“What?” her voice was too high-pitched, and she was trying to sit upright again. “I have been trying to deduce his motives for months!”

I shifted her to a more comfortable position. “Love, he’s using yer banishment to break yer independence, yer will. He assumes ye will come crawling back after this first snow, desperate for his protection.”

“Protection?” she snorted against my chest, and my lips curled.

“He’s planning on marrying ye.”

“What?” This time her voice was too shrill as she jolted upright, and on his pallet, Ewan muttered and stirred.

I hushed her, but she was staring at me with pale-faced shock.

“Cataline, ye must rest.”

“Marry me? Why?”

“Och, because he’s a fool who thinks he can control ye, dkaar,” I murmured, nudging her head toward my shoulder while I moved my touch to gentle strokes of her arm, feeling her slowly relax beneath my caresses.

“He said he plans to marry ye so he can raise Ewan. I thought it strange, because he referred to the lad more than once as brat.”

“Aye, he—” A yawn interrupted Cataline, and I glanced down to see her eyes closing. “He does not like Ewan. You must have misunderstood.”

“I asked him again to confirm, because ‘twas odd…but aye, John said he would be the one to raise Ewan, once he married ye.”

And he didn’t even want Cataline, the fool.

“I would do aught to save Ewan from such a fate,” she confessed with a weary sigh. “John would try to raise the boy to be petty and controlling and cruel.”

“He could never be those things, no’ with a mother like ye, lass. Unless his father had that kind of blood?”

“Richard?” Cataline tried to shrug. “I do not know. He did not speak of his past. He was new to town, with a surprising amount of coin, when he entered my father’s shop and met me. We were married and expecting Ewan before he confessed he did not want to share his past, only his future. I thought—” Another yawn interrupted her. “Richard was a dreamer, not fit for a farmer’s life, bless him.”

“Aye, may the gods keep him,” I agreed quietly, still stroking her arm. “He sounds like a good male, if misguided.”

And weak, I added in the quiet of my mind.

“He was conflicted, but I cannot imagine even he—” Yet another yawn. “—would want John to raise Ewan. I would take him far from here if I could.”

I stroked her arm for another minute, then moved to her neck, then her hair. I could feel her relaxing beneath my touches, slowly allowing herself to succumb to sleep.

“My world is about as far away as you could get from John,” I finally murmured quietly. “Consider it, Cataline?”

She hummed, then roused herself for a final sleepy, “I will,” before she pressed closer and relaxed into sleep.

I sat there in the darkness, holding her, caressing her long after she could feel it, because it made my Kteer and my heart happy.

And praying she would see the wisdom in my offer.

‘Twas only as I myself was falling asleep that I realized she’d never told me whatever ‘twas she wanted to say to me.

CHAPTER SIX

Cataline

‘Twas not ‘til after we broke our fast the next day that I remembered I had intended to tell Maardok the truth last night, and I nearly blurted it out right then and there.

But with my hand on my belly as the babe kicked enthusiastically—I believe he or she liked movement, so was content when I was up and about and only gave me hell when I was still—I watched Maardok instruct Ewan on how to wash the porridge bowls, and I hesitated.

This was not the sort of news to blurt out.