When Emilie had left the abbey, she had not yet taken her vows. Despite all of her wishes, she had never fully become a nun. In fact, the only vows she had ever made had been to her husband.
And wasn’t marriage a sacred bond, exalted by God and blessed by him? Did God not command wives to honor and obey?
Had Emilie not been honoring her husband, honoring the bond between them when she had allowed him to kneel before her, feasting on the flesh that she had promised to him?
This is the entire reason why I ken that I have to leave. Listen to me, rationalizin’ the things that I’ve done, the ways that I’ve changed.
But that was the thing, though, as much as she knew that she should leave, she truly didn’t want to. Not anymore. Not after the way she’d grown to love the children, and the pleasure that she’d experienced at the hands of her husband.
What did the abbey have in store for her that could be more fulfilling than all of that?
“Can ye come look at me paintin’ Emilie?” Louis asked, grabbing Emilie’s attention from the spiral that she had been falling into. “I need help with me castle.”
“Ye’re paintin’ a castle?” she asked, pushing herself out of the chair and crossing the room in a few quick strides.
Louis nodded, pointing toward something on his canvas.
“A castle that’s under siege from a beithir,” he said excitedly.
As Emilie walked around him, standing behind the small boy so that she could get a good look at what he was working on, she chuckled.
Sure enough, Louis had painted a castle. Its resemblance to Castle McGregor was quite uncanny. The long, black blob in the center of it, though, she never would have been able to make out for herself.
Emilie was glad that Louis had told her what it was, lest she have a mishap like she just did with calling Aurora’s bird a fish.
“What part are ye needin’ help with?” she asked, and Louis raised his brush.
He pointed it toward what Emilie assumed was the head of the creature.
“I need help with its face,” he advised. “Right now, it just looks like a really big, really ugly worm. I need to make it clear that it’s nae a worm attackin’ the castle, but a fearsome beast.”
Emilie nodded, taking a step back to admire the painting.
“Ye ken,” she began, her tone contemplative. “With the legend of the beithir, they’re known to live around water in caves and in valleys. Ye could try paintin’ the sea just beyond the castle. And then some lightnin’ as well.”
“Why lightnin’?” Louis asked, cocking his head to the side as he glanced over his shoulder in Emilie’s direction.
“Well,” Emilie explained, “some legends claim that the beithir comes out of its cave only when there is lightnin’. Some say it’s because they’re afraid of it, some say it’s because the sound of the thunder disguises their roars. But whatever the reason, beithir are often depicted in the middle of a lightnin’ storm.”
“So the sea and some lightnin’?” Louis clarified, grinning when Emilie nodded. “I can do that.”
He turned back to his painting, clearly no longer needing her help. And, when Emilie glanced in Aurora’s direction, she found the girl exactly where she had just left her a few moments ago.
Aurora was huddled over her painting, tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth as she dragged her brush back down her canvas. Even at a distance, Emilie could see the large glob of blue paint she was smearing down the painting.
The thick strokes had looked like waves, and that was why Emilie had been so certain that what she’d been looking at had been a fish.
She chuckled to herself as she walked over to the window. She stood within its frame, looking over the grounds. From this particular window, she was able to see some of her favorite parts of Castle McGregor so far.
The rose garden was below, the red, white, and yellow blooms visible even at a distance. To the right, she could just make out a corner of the hedge maze, and she knew that if she leaned forward a bit, she’d be able to make it out entirely.
And then there, to the left, was a sliver of the sea, its waves capped in white and its waters sparkling in the evening sun.
How could I do it? How could I leave this place and these bairns if I was even able to convince me husband to get an annulment? Nae that I’d ever be able to convince him of that, nae at this rate.
Sighing again, Emilie shook her head. She’d fallen woefully behind on her plan. Not that she had been doing a very good job of it in the first place.
But she couldn’t face Archer again. Not until she knew for sure what she wanted to do. Either she was going to come up with a new plan to get an annulment, or she was going to commit to this marriage.