Children of the Moon 04 - Dragon's Moon

definitely not ready to talkabout it. Caitriona gave her a look of commiseration, as if she knew exactly what Ciara was thinking and feeling.
    Perhaps she did. Ciara hadn’t been actively masking her emotions since the men’s departure.
    “How are the boys?” Emily asked, as if she’d never made the leading comment about Ciara and Eirik.
    Ciara forced a grin. It wasn’t that hard. Thoughts of the twins always made her happy. “As full of trouble as their father.”
    Tsking, Emily shook her head, her long, golden brown curls swaying against her back. “Did you know I came to the Highlands to protect my sister from the horror of being married to Talorc?”
    Caitriona chuckled, proving she had indeed been listening. “If she doesn’t, she’s deaf. The warriors of my former clan still gossip like grandmothers about the day you likened him to a goat.”
    “I eventually conceded he wasn’t that bad,” Emily offered in her own defense, but the laughter in her voice said the memory amused more than concerned her.
    Ciara had heard bits and pieces of the story. Like Caitriona had said, how could she not? “Funny how you came north to become my father’s wife but ended up the lady of the Balmoral.”
    Caitriona took in a sharp breath and Emily looked at Ciara with the sappy expression she usually reserved for her children. “You called Talorc your father.”
    She shrugged. “He is.”
    Caitriona laughed with her head thrown back. “You may not share his blood, but you are so like him, no one could doubt you are his daughter.”
    The words made Ciara warm inside and she didn’t hesitate when Emily indicated they should join Caitriona and the girls in the chairs under the window.
    “It’s a good thing Talorc refused to marry me,” Emily said as she adjusted her plaid. “We would have killed each other, I’m thinking. And my sister would never have known the happiness she does now.”
    Ciara could do nothing but agree. She had met few couples as perfectly suited as her mother and father. Though to hear Abigail tell it, their first year was rockier than the cliffs of Balmoral Island.
    Emily handed Ciara a handkerchief to embroider before taking up her own project.
    Ciara accepted it gratefully, happy to have something to do with her hands as the need to be in search of the stone made her jittery. “You had another sister, didn’t you?”
    Any topic was better than dwelling on what the elder Talorc who had sent them to talk might have to say. Laird Lachlan had known exactly who Talorc had meant. Boisin was an old man with a big family, who knew all the old stories and shared them with any Chrechte who would listen.
    He was purported to be a master storyteller, so most of the Chrechte, old and young alike, spent time at his cottage in the course of a year.
    “We did.” Emily frowned, her memories of the other woman clearly not fond. “She wasn’t kind to Abigail. Jolenta was our mother’s favorite once Abigail lost her hearing from the fever.”
    Ciara’s adopted mother never spoke of her family in England and the femwolf thought she knew why. Abigail refused to speak ill of others, but clearly there was little good to say about the family she had left behind.
    “Tell Ciara what became of the vain little dunce,” Caitriona suggested with a not-well-concealed smirk.
    Emily gave her heart-sister a reproving look. “She married a minor baron. Sybil wrote of the nuptials when they happened. I suppose she thought we’d be jealous.”
    “Jealous, of being married to an Englishman?” Ciara asked with stunned disbelief.
    Both Caitriona and Emily laughed, and Emily said, “I was once English. It is not quite the blight so many in the Highlands believe it to be.”
    “That is not what I wanted you to tell our dear niece about the vain little Jolenta, and you well know it.”
    Emily sighed but gave her dear friend another chastisingglance before speaking. “We heard word that Jolenta had been engaged to a lord of much higher standing, but he withdrew from the arrangement.”
    “She was caught playing the games at court with another gentleman entirely.” Caitriona shrugged, looking quite a bit like Talorc herself. “I don’t understand these court games and am only glad my brother never sent me to live among the entourage of the Scotland queen.”
    Ciara could only agree. The last seven years had been difficult enough; to have spent them in the company of people who considered truth naïve and