“Good. I have come to sit with him for a while and Mab will follow me. Ye go and visit with your lads, get some rest, or go and enjoy this rare sunny day in the gardens.”
Arianna forced down the reluctance she felt, the need to stay at Brian’s side. Fiona was right. She did need to get some rest, to leave the room and breathe some fresh air. She would do Brian no good if she exhausted herself. With a nod to Fiona, Arianna stood up and walked out of the room, intending to find Michel and Adelar.
Two hours later, Arianna sat down on a stone bench in Fiona’s garden. She knew she would have to seek her bed soon. The visit with the boys had quickly revealed to her just how tired she was. But, the sun was shining, the gardens were full of the signs of new growth, and she needed to savor that for a while. She leaned back against the tree behind the bench and let the sun warm her.
“Ye would probably be more comfortable sleeping in a bed.”
Blinking rapidly, Arianna sat upright and looked at Callum as he sat down next to her. A glance up at the sun told her that she had fallen asleep for a while, but her body was demanding a much longer rest. She was a little surprised that her cousins were still at Scarglas.
“I had thought ye and the others would have left by now,” she said, a little embarrassed that she had paid so little attention to where her cousins were after they had come to help her.
“We are waiting on ye,” Callum said.
“Ah, weel, I cannae say when Brian will be fully recovered.”
“Actually, we are waiting to see what ye wish to do when he is. Stay or leave. I can see by your face that he has ne’er given ye a hint of what will happen about that. So, ye and the rest of us will wait until he does.”
Callum was too astute, she decided. He always had been. Arianna suspected the horrors of his childhood had something to do with how easily he could see into a person’s heart. Orphaned and abused, he had known the worst of humanity until her cousin Payton and his wife, Kirstie, had saved him. He had gained a true skill at judging what a person was or what they wanted from those dark days. Now accepted by his paternal family, the cherished grandson of a powerful MacMillan, he had fulfilled his boyish pledge to grow strong and learn to fight so that he could protect the innocent. She did not believe she needed his protection, however.
“There has been little time to think about the future,” she said, and was not surprised by the way he just cocked a brow at her for the thin excuse was worthy of derision.
“Nay? He found time to be your lover.”
She could feel the heat of a blush stinging her cheeks but ignored it. “That is none of your concern.”
“Ah, but it is. Arianna, we failed ye.”
“Nay!”
“Aye, we did. All of us. We didnae stand by ye as we should have as a family. Ye were in France for five years, lass, and not one of us came to visit.”
That still stung but she told herself not to be a child about it. “Ye didnae ken that I wanted ye to. The Lucettes didnae let ye see the letters that might have made ye want to come to see how I was faring. They didnae let me see any letters from my family that might have spoken about visiting, either, so ye couldnae have kenned that I wished to visit home or have ye visit me. As far as all of ye kenned, I was content.”
He moved closer and put his arm around her shoulders. “E’en if ye were truly content, someone from the clan, from your family, should have gone to visit you. The verra fact that ye ne’er asked us to visit or asked if ye could come home for a visit should have made us wonder why. We definitely should have had some suspicions roused by the occasional missive from your husband or his family telling us that ye were far too busy to visit with us.”
They should have and Arianna suspected the fact that they had not would hurt for a while. She knew how the days could pass, how long a journey it was, and how many obligations her family had. Soon that would be enough to soothe the sting. They had written so they had not forgotten her. And with the Lucettes watching all letters coming or going, her family must have begun to wonder if she cared about any of them anymore. The wound she had suffered had mostly been inflicted by the Lucettes and it would heal.
“I didnae ken that the Lucettes wrote to any of ye.”
“Only now and then. I believe it was at those times when they saw something in our letters to you that told them we were becoming unsettled by the lack of any invitation to come to France or your unwillingness to visit with us here. They kenned verra weel that we wouldnae have tolerated the way ye were being treated. That doesnae excuse us, though. Someone should have traveled there to see how ye fared, nay just taken the Lucettes’ word for it.”