Chapter 15
“I didna know ye’re married.”
“I’m not. I said I was a husband. My wife died.”
Elspeth stroked Fingal’s head in silence for a moment, then met Rob’s gaze. “D’ye wish to speak of it? Mayhap it will help.”
“Women are ever quick to say such, but words dinna change a damned thing.” He turned away in self-loathing. “We could talk all night, but Fiona will still be dead.”
“I’m sorry for it,” she said softly.
“’Tis no’ your fault, lass.”
Yet he was making her pay for it. He supposed he owed her the truth.
“Did your parents arrange the match?” she asked.
He snorted. As if he’d allow someone else to make that kind of decision for him. “No, my parents are long gone. I’ve been laird since I was sixteen. Fiona was my choice.”
Elspeth sighed. She’d already confessed that her wedding was more a joining of clan interests than two souls. Did she envy Fiona and him their love match?
“Did she bring ye much land and cattle in the marriage?” she asked. “I’m told men value such in a bride.”
He shook his head. “Not an inch of earth or a single hoof.”
“Then why did ye choose her?”
He shrugged. “I married her because she wouldna live with me in sin.”
“Ye can’t fault a woman for that.”
“No. I wouldna fault Fiona for anything. I simply couldna live without her.”
“And yet ye do.”
The waves washed along the hull of the boat, filling the silence. Once he’d have fancied he heard Fiona whispering beneath the sound, but now there was only the shushing of the loch against the wood.
Fiona would never speak to him again.
“What I have now isna life, Elspeth,” Rob finally said. “’Tis but breathing.”
“What—” She stopped herself as if she feared asking something too personal, but because she was a woman, she couldn’t bear not to finish the question. “What was your wife like?”
Rob smiled. He rarely spoke of her, but he suspected he should do it more often. Fiona always lifted the darkness of his heart.
“She was…” He finally found a bard tucked in his soul. “Fiona was sunlight on the water. A warm hearth while the wind roars outside. She was—”
“Tall and willowy,” Elspeth interrupted, straightening her spine. “And she had long red hair.”
“Aye. How did ye know? Did Angus tell ye so?”
She shook her head. “I…guessed.”
“Well, then, since ye brought the matter up, aye, she was lovely. And her beauty ran clear to the bone. She was kindness itself.”
He could still see her in his mind’s eye on the day of their wedding, her cheeks flushed, her green eyes glowing. Then he remembered the last time he saw her, and his chest tightened so he couldn’t draw breath.
Once the dark moment passed, he found that his lungs still craved air. “I didna deserve her,” he said roughly. “Like the water horse and his bride, I damned her on the day I made her mine.”
“What happened?” Elspeth asked so softly, Rob wondered if he heard her only think the question.
“Come Christmas, ’twill be two years past. I married her on the day of our Lord’s birth, and we celebrated Christmastide in roaring fashion,” he said with a melancholy smile. “Then just before Twelfth Night, Fiona wanted to visit some of the outlying crofters with baskets of food, but my friend Hamish had seen a wild boar, a monstrous big fellow, he said, and he wanted me to go after it with him. So I told Fiona the crofters could wait till we had some fresh pork to add to the bounty. But she’d set her heart on going that day.”
“’Tis tradition for the laird and his lady to visit the distant crofters before Twelfth Night,” Elspeth pointed out. “My father and mother do it each year because their people expect them to provide their feast.”
“So Fiona told me,” he said. “This was her first Christmastide as my chatelaine, and she wouldna be turned from her duty. We had our first and only row over it. Lord, she was a sight when she was angry.”
“Sounds as if she had a right to be,” Elspeth said, narrowing her eyes a bit. “At least now I ken ye make a habit of irritating all the women ye know.”
Come to think of it, Rob decided, Elspeth Stewart is fine to look upon when anger bites her cheeks too.
“Did ye still go hunting?”
Rob nodded. “And we ne’er saw so much as a cloven hoof of that damned boar. But Fiona slipped past the men I’d left to guard her and rode off to see the crofters on her own. While she was out, Lachlan Drummond and some of his cronies came riding by and saw her unescorted.”
One of Elspeth’s hands crept to her chest, and Rob figured she could guess what was coming.
“Drummond carried her off to his stronghold, and there the coward had his way with her,” Rob said, the words more bitter to his tongue than the vinegary wine. “Now d’ye see why I say I was doing ye a favor to steal ye from your wedding?”
Elspeth wisely said nothing.
“Of course, wee Lachlan denied anything untoward. He claimed the abduction was just a bit of Twelfth Night high spirits, but I’m certain the blackguard must have shamed her,” Rob said. “’Tis the only thing that explains what happened.”
“What?”
“Drummond locked her up in his tower, but she found a way to escape.”
“Oh. I’m glad.”
“Don’t be,” Rob said flatly. “Fiona escaped by throwing herself from the highest tower window onto the cobbles of his bailey.”
Elspeth gasped. Rob had never been good at reading what a woman was thinking based on her expressions, but her eyes darted about as if she was searching her memory for something, while distress marred her face.
“You’re right,” he said as if she’d spoken her thought aloud. “A suicide canna be buried in holy ground. Drummond’s priest said she was damned because she knowingly committed a mortal sin, for which she couldna receive absolution.”
His shoulders sagged, but he’d started this. He was determined to drive the sorry tale to its bitter end. Unshed tears burned behind his eyes. He swallowed hard, forcing down the ache in his throat. “I dinna even know where she lies.”
Elspeth didn’t say a word. She simply stood, walked over to him, her step steady in the swaying craft, and put her hands on his shoulders. Then she leaned forward and kissed his cheek.
It was just a simple kiss. No more than the buss of soft lips on the roughness of his cheek, but something inside him splintered.
A sob escaped his throat. The tears he never let himself cry came with no way to stop them. He put an arm around her waist and pulled her close, burying his face in the crook of her soft neck.
He was so ashamed. A man didn’t weep. But he couldn’t stop his shoulders from shaking with grief.
Elspeth wrapped her arms around him, making small comforting sounds.
“’Twas my fault,” he repeated.
“No.”
“If I’d gone with her…”
“’Tis done. Hush ye now.” Her hands were cool on the feverish skin of his neck.
Rob struggled to regain control over himself, but so many bits and pieces of him were shearing away, he couldn’t grasp any of them. The hard lump in his chest melted and reformed several times. The only things that kept him from leaping out of his own skin entirely were Elspeth Stewart’s slender arms and soft voice.
She stroked his hair. She hugged him with fierceness. She rocked him, whispering tender things he couldn’t quite hear. But his soul understood them and quieted. The ache of loss, the fury of impotent rage, and the guilt flowed out of him, leaving only broken-hearted peace.
Finally, he stilled.
She wiped the last of the salty tears from his cheeks. Then she kissed him again. On the lips this time, firm and sweet. Like a blessing. Like a benediction.
“Ye are no’ to blame,” she said with conviction.
He didn’t have the heart to contradict her, but he didn’t believe it for a moment. “After all that, I’m sure ye believe me a madman now.”
“’Tis no’ madness to weep for someone ye loved.” She shook her head. “If ye had no tears, I’d think ye less a man. Never because of them.”
“Ye’re a strange lass, Elspeth Stewart.”
“And ye’re a silver-tongued demon.” She laughed, obviously trying to lighten his mood. “Dinna think to turn my head with such compliments.”
He smiled at her, confused but strangely comforted. He still grieved for Fiona, but the serrated edge of unexpressed mourning and guilt that threatened to send him spiraling into insanity was gone.
Elspeth returned his smile. He shook his head in wonderment. He’d stolen her from the altar, taken her prisoner, and tormented her body with a wicked lover’s touch. And here she was giving him comfort. If he lived to be a hundred, he’d never understand what went on in a woman’s head.
Then while he was watching her, her eyes glazed over, and she stared sightlessly over his shoulder.
“Elspeth?”
She gave no sign that she’d heard him.
He let go of the tiller and grasped both her shoulders, but she continued to stare unblinking. He gave her a little shake. She looked at his face then, but he sensed no recognition in her eyes.
“The each uisge comes, reaching up from the depths to snag his bride,” she said in a voice devoid of all expression. “And a bolt from the dark finds its mark.”
“Elspeth!”
Then he was nearly knocked off his feet, thrown forward as the boat stopped dead in the water.