Page 9 of Moon Craving

being taken to a nunnery. But surely the abbess would have said something in her last

letter if that were to be the case. Abigail had asked her mother if she would be seeing

Emily.

Sybil had replied that it was possible. Abigail had thought she was just being coy.

Now, she feared the older woman had meant exactly that. It was possible, not probable.

Finally, Abigail found the letter from the king and read it with growing panic.

It could not be possible. Her mother would not be so cruel. But the missive from the

king said otherwise. Sybil, damn her avaricious soul, had said nothing of the true reason

for the upcoming journey, but the letter laid out her mother's greed and treachery in ink,

sealed by the king himself.

How could a mother plan something so nefarious for her blood offspring? Worse,

how could she do so without warning Abigail of what was to come?

A hand grabbed her shoulder, fingers that felt like claws digging into her. Her heart

stopped and then began beating faster than a rabbit's.

She was spun violently around and came face-to-face with her livid mother.

Sybil demanded, "What do you think you are doing?"

She could not hear the words, but Abigail had no trouble reading the anger or the

question coming from her mother's lips.

At first, shock and fear at being discovered paralyzed Abigail's thoughts. She tried

to speak, but could tell no sound had made it past her throat from the disgusted

expression twisting her mother's features.

That disgust sliced through Abigail, leaving a bloody trail of inner pain behind.

However, instead of the shame she usually felt at her inabilities, fury at her mother's

betrayal boiled up inside Abigail.

More than two years had passed since the first edict from the king that had torn

Abigail's world apart for the second time. Because of Sir Reuben's miserly response to

the king's call for soldiers from his landed knights, the king had demanded his vassal

provide a marriageable daughter. He and Scotland's monarch wanted to intermarry

English nobility with the hard-to-control Highland nobles.

Emily had been sent to Scotland to marry Talorc, Laird of the Sinclairs. Only she