Was it near dawn? She feared they were too late and that the boat had left them. Margaret felt as if she’d died a thousand deaths since she entered the castle and had lost all sense of time.
When she finally saw the end of the tunnel, her heart sank. The first streaks of dawn lit the sky. After all their efforts to escape, they had made it out too late. Struggling under Finn’s weight as he leaned on her shoulders, she stumbled to the mouth of the cave.
The boat was there. The good fishermen had waited.
CHAPTER 35
“You’ll heal,” Una told Finn, “but you’ll carry the scars from George Sinclair’s whipping,tuiteam gun èirigh dhut.”May he fall without rising.
Finn gritted his teeth while Una cleaned the wounds on his back and applied fresh bandages.
“Look at my baby,” Ella said from where she was playing on the floor with the dog,Cù-sìthe.
Finn tried not to laugh when he saw she’d put a wee bonnet on him.Cù-sìthegave him a pained look with his one eye. Like Finn, the dog would do anything for Ella, but he made one ugly, hairy-faced baby.
“Do your owies still hurt, Da?” Ella asked.
His heart melted whenever she called him that. Hell, he’d put on a bonnet for her too if she asked.
“Nay, not anymore,” he lied, and winked at her.
“Did ye hear that Curstag left?” Una asked him. “Told me she found someone to take her to Edinburgh. She plans to become a famous courtesan there and cater to wealthy noblemen and merchants.”
“Good luck to her,” Finn said. “That would suit Curstag. I hope she succeeds and stays there.”
He waited until after Ella scampered off with the dog to ask Una about Margaret.
“I’m worried about Maggie,” he said. “It’s been a week since we returned from Girnigoe, and she’s still so tired. I fear it was all too much for her.”
He felt racked with guilt that she’d put herself and their babe at risk for him.
“’Tis common for a lass to be tired in the first weeks,” Una said. “As I’ve told ye before, Maggie is stronger than she was when she was married to the foul man.”
Finn did not doubt that his wife was strong. Hell, she’d gone into Girnigoe alone to get him and then dragged him out with the sheer force of her will. But this was different.
“Ach, her husband should have been hung by his bollocks for what he did to her that last time she miscarried.”
“The last time?” Finn asked. “Ye mean during the Battle of the Causeway?”
“That was bad enough, but I’m talking about when he threw her out,” Una said. “On death’s door, she was.”
Finn jumped up, sending a roll of linen bandages across the floor.
“Death?” Finn gripped the old woman’s arms. “Maggie almost died from a miscarriage?”
“Oh, aye, she was verra close indeed,” Una said. “If she’d been properly cared for, I don’t believe—”
He left Una and burst into the other bedchamber, where Margaret was sitting with her feet up.
“Ye should have told me ye nearly died from your last miscarriage,” he said. “I would never have taken ye to bed if I’d known.”
“Ye wouldn’t have?” she asked, raising one eyebrow. “Then I’m verra glad I didn’t tell ye.”
“I wouldn’t have risked your life.” Finn knelt beside her and took her hands between his. “What if I’ve murdered ye by planting a child inside ye?”
“I’ve had three years to recover my health,” she said. “I’m strong now.”
She told him a harrowing story of becoming pregnant too soon after a previous miscarriage because her swine of a husband refused to wait the prescribed period for cleansing.