Or perhaps she had merely been preoccupied? She lost all sense of her surroundings when her husband started touching her.
He brushed a lock of hair back from her face. “We must go down for the evening meal, angel.”
“I am not overly hungry, are you?” she asked, placing her hand on his neck and caressing the sensitive spot she had discovered earlier.
He needed more time to calm down in regard to Una. Abigail still hoped to convince Talorc of her plan to give the clan a month to get used to her.
“I might be convinced to forego the evening meal if I thought other, more pressing appetites were going to be fed.”
She made no comment about how they had just been fed, but leaned up to press her lips to his throat. Many aspects of her new life were precarious, but not this.
The marriage bed was everything he had promised it would be and more. So much more.
Here, she felt like a complete woman, like her deafness did not matter. She did not need to hear to make him shudder above her like he was doing now while her lips moved along the strong column of his throat.
In this one place, where touch ruled, the silence of her world meant nothing.
The next morning, Abigail was both chagrined and relieved to wake alone. Again.
She had not managed to extract a promise from Talorc to allow his clan time to accustom themselves to their new lady, one who had been born and raised in England. A country and its inhabitants even he expressed nothing but disdain toward. She worried that even now, he was banishing Una. Abigail would feel terrible if that happened.
She knew too well what it was like not to have a secure place to call home, one in which she belonged without question.
However, as much as that possibility distressed her, Abigail could not regret having the privacy to face a more personally terrifying prospect—the risk she was going mad. Perhaps the Church was right in teaching her deafness meant she had an affliction of the mind, that her fever had robbed her of her reason as well as her ability to hear.
Though why such an infirmity should take so many years to show itself, she could not begin to comprehend.
Abigail refused to believe she was possessed by a demon, as the priest taught such impediments indicated, but she could not deny something was amiss.
The night before, Abigail had once again been certain that she heard Talorc’s voice. It was a wonderful, masculine voice, one that made her giddy with warmth and filled with joy. Even the memory of it caused her to lament her perpetual silence more intensely than she had for many years. Only the voice could not be real, for just as in the hot springs cave, she heard nothing else.
The voice had to be completely conjured by her imagination, which was a disquieting enough thought. She refused to entertain the other possibility that the voice was that of some demon that supposedly caused her deafness. The fever had stolen her ability to hear and that was that.
According to Emily’s friend the abbess, priests were too quick to point to a demon when faced with the inexplicable. The learned woman had said so in one of her first letters to Abigail. They had continued a correspondence with each other that Emily’s move north had forced Emily to drop.
Now, Abigail had no more notion of how to maintain the friendship than her sister had done. It was the single relationship she truly regretted leaving behind. The abbess had known of Abigail’s deafness and never thought less of her for it. Other than Emily, the abbess was the only person who had ever been so accepting.
However, for the first time since losing her hearing, Abigail felt a niggling worry that the priests might actually be right. Because in addition to imagining she heard Talorc once again shouting her name during climax, Abigail had also heard the howling of a wolf.
Her stomach cramped at the implication of her mind playing such tricks on her.
She covered her face, wishing she really could hide so easily from what ailed her. She couldn’t and pretending never made reality any easier to bear in the long term. Fighting back the tears, she made herself face her fears. She had not gotten this far by giving in at the first sign of adversity.
The voices in her head were simply one more thing she had to hide from those around her. It was not as if imagining she heard her husband’s voice, or even that of a wolf, could cause her or the Sinclair clan any harm. In some ways, it was no different than being deaf.
It did not make her a demon instead of the angel Talorc claimed her to be. It didn’t! But how she wished she had her sister here to talk this over with, or some way to correspond with the abbess.
Loneliness swamped Abigail, but she refused to acknowledge the low feeling. Forcing herself to face the day before her, she crawled from the furs and stood to survey the bedchamber. She was gratified to discover a pitcher of what must be water beside a large wooden bowl already half-filled with it. Both sat under the window on a small table that had not been there the day before.
Who had thought to provide her with such a kindness?
It didn’t really matter if it had been Talorc or Guaire who had thought to provide this most welcome nod to civility; Abigail was just thankful someone had.
She wasn’t surprised she had not woken when the table was brought into the room. She had discovered that her tendency to wake at the least sense of someone nearby had flown the first night she slept in Talorc’s arms. Her husband made her feel safe. She did not even feel any anxiety at the thought that someone had been in the room while she slept. They would not dare to be there without her husband’s sanction.
If only he could protect her from her own weaknesses.
What would she do if the voices in her mind persisted? What if they got worse? Could she risk having children, knowing that her mind was so unstable?
Abigail tried to banish the unanswerable questions, but the implications of this new affliction plagued her through her ablutions. Her worries grew until her hands shook so badly it took three tries to get her pleats to stay tucked into her belt, much less straight.
This would not do. She had to get ahold of herself. She could not change her circumstances; she could only pray she did not hear the voices again. With that thought firmly in mind, she left the room.
Abigail was halfway down the steps when she sensed she was being watched.
She looked away from the steps in front of her toward the great hall. At first she thought it was empty, everything was so still. Then she noticed the old man who had vocalized his displeasure at Talorc’s marriage the day before. He was glaring at her from his place at the far end of the nearest banquet table. And if looks could catch fire, she would be singed for sure.
She tried a tentative smile, but his glower did not waver. Already upset by her earlier thoughts, Abigail came close to stumbling on the stone steps but caught herself in time.
Suddenly, Niall was there. He said something to the old man Abigail could not catch. The gray-haired warrior frowned at her and shook his head.
Niall looked up at her, his own disapproval evident. “Talorc said you were to be accompanied coming down the stairs.”
“I’m perfectly capable of walking down a set of stairs,” she said, but she could tell by his look that she had not projected her voice enough to be heard.
Wonderful. She put her hand against her throat and tried again, glad the vibrations grew stronger, which meant her voice was louder.
Sure enough, Niall’s confusion cleared, but he did not look appeased by her words. He crossed the room and was taking the stairs two at a time before she’d come down two more steps. His features set in implacable lines, he put his arm out to her.