Duncan walked toward the small clearing with something close to dread filling his stomach. He had never come back here, not once, in all the months he’d spent on this mountain. It surprised him how little of an impact centuries of time had had on the small meadow. It looked much the same as it had that November afternoon he and Mairi had started across it. They had never made it to the other side.
Early on in purgatory, when he’d made it clear he had no interest in returning to this place, They had made it, known to him that small markers had been erected by the family Mairi had traveled across the ocean with. The same family had helped her find the small hunting cabin after their arrival and had taken turns tending to her when she was so very ill. For the first time he wondered what it must have been like for her. To him, her decision to leave her clan had been the mindless act of a coward.
During his trip over and the subsequent hunt for her in America, he’d thought only of her betrayal and the cost it would levy on both their clans. Never once had he considered that she could not have been either mindless or a coward to have made such a journey with no fellow clansmen to see to her safety.
He’d seen her illness as a manifestation of her foolish act and her just due for her betrayal. He had not listened to one word of her attempts to explain her actions to him. She was his betrothed and, as such, his property. To his mind, her rights began and ended at that point. He had refused her even the basest courtesy, not even demanding she return, but simply arriving and exercising his rights by taking possession of her. His only goal had been to return them both to Scottish soil where they would be married and thus end the long feuding between their clans.
Duncan hadn’t expected to find the small stones still standing. And, in fact, he found only one. It was small and rounded, blackened with time until the name etched in the stone was almost unreadable. Almost. But to him the letters and numbers shone as if lit from an inner fire. Mairi Claren. Born 1680. Died 1698.
Eighteen. Had she really been so young? She’d been considered well past the age suitable for marrying and he’d never given thought to the difference in their ages. Almost eleven years had separated his birth from hers.
He sank down in the cool dampness of the grass, heedless of the gray skies and chilling air. There was no sign of his stone or that he had ever walked this meadow. Why that made him feel hollow he could not have said. He frowned, irritated further by yet another sign of his sudden sensitivity.
He certainly was a man who was clear about his contributions to his family and his time on earth, deeds both good and bad that had shaped the man he was. That there was no mark of his time spent on this continent should not concern him in the least. Scotland was his country, his home, his heart. He would have given his life for it without pause. This land meant less than nothing to him. It had taken and not given. He felt no true loyalty to it … or to the woman whose bones lay beneath it.
He wondered where Mairi’s spirit had ended up. He’d been certain upon learning of his destiny in purgatory that she was burning in hell for her sins to her countrymen and to him.
Now, for the first time, he was not so certain. Who had been sinner … and who had been sinned against? That uncertainty was what had driven him from the cabin. It had eaten at him, badgering his mind and soul with questions he did not wish to ponder.
He had first blamed Maggie. All her talk of her mistreatment at the hands of Judd had made him think and react in ways completely foreign to everything he’d previously believed of himself. Then to compound things, The Key had shown up. This was faery trickery he was certain. They had wearied of his stubbornness and contrived to force him into madness and complete his descent to hell by putting these Claren women in his path.
And yet it was a path from which he did not seem able to stray. When Maggie walked out of the cabin earlier that afternoon, he’d actually worried that he’d not see her face again, hear her laughter, taste her lips. He’d worried of this obsession for days now, taking care to steer clear of her presence all together until he had his thoughts once again under his control. And yet one glance, one word, and his heart and thoughts and desires were no longer his to master.
His first impulse had been to restrict her from leaving by using his greater strength. If she was too foolish to see to her own safety, then he would see to it for her! But he had listened to her words, taken her promises … and trusted her to act on them. Trust a Claren? What spell had she cast?
Was this how Alexander had been drawn to his death? Had his younger brother, John Roderick, fallen to a Claren Key as well, or a Claren sword? After Duncan’s failure, it would have fallen to Rory, the last of Calum’s sons, to bind the clans in some way. What did it matter? They’d all ended up dead.
It was because it did indeed matter that he had finally ended up here in this spot, certain he would come back to what he knew and had always known as truth. He had done the right thing in trying to take her back. Never before had he questioned his actions and he would stop this insurgence now before it went any further.
“Aye, so ye’ve finally come.”
Duncan froze, then forcibly relaxed. Her voice was soft, the lilt musical where he’d only remembered shrillness. Mairi. Had his thoughts conjured her?
Mairi gathered her roughly woven skirts and sat down beside him in the grass. “From yer frown I’d say yer not here to grieve me.” She paused and he felt her silent censure. “Some things no amount of time will change.”
He should have been surprised by her sudden appearance, yet he was not. “A thousand years could pass. I’ll no’ grieve the death of a woman who killed my family, my clan.”
“ ’Twas no’ my act, but your stubbornness and that of every man in both our clans that killed them.”
Because he was terrified to look at her, he made himself do so immediately. She was taller, broader of shoulder, less fragile, than he remembered. Where he remembered it pinched and tight, her mouth was wide and generous, as if made to smile often, though he couldn’t remember a single one. It was not that he found her lovely where he’d only remembered ugliness, that shocked him. It was that, with few exceptions made for the decade or so difference in their ages, she looked like Maggie.
“Ye look like yer seein’ a ghost.” She smiled faintly. “Perhaps yer seein’ now what you didna let yoursel’ see before.” She reached out a hand and it took all his considerable will not to shrink away. Her touch on his arm was not weak and grasping, but surprisingly warm and firm.
“Yer beauty or lack of it doesna change your actions,” he said coldly.
“Nor does yer sudden appearance here change yer brutality and arrogance,” she said evenly.
“You condemned us to death, Mairi. No’ just you and me, but our clans as well.” He looked her in the eye. “Is that the sin yer paying for in purgatory? Why are ye no’ rotting in hell where ye belong?”
She seemed shaken by his accusation. “Our union would no’ hae stopped the killin’ or the feudin’.” She spoke fervently. “Ye still havena seen that in all this time? Our clans were destined to decimate each other.”
“And yet rather than stay and fight alongside yer kinsmen, you fled, compounding the sin of death with tha’ o’ shame as well.”
There was a fierceness in her blue eyes he had never seen before. It reminded him of another set of blue eyes, ones that had moved him as Mairi’s never had. Had the fault of that been Mairi’s alone?
“Aye, I grieve for what happened to them,” she said heatedly. “But ’twas their own foolishness and misplaced pride that warred them to their deaths. I couldna make them listen. Nothing ever would. I knew that, as my sister had before me.”
“Doona speak tae me o’ Edwyna!”
“They killed her ye know. After we left. Raped and murdered her, yer clansmen did. Because of their fear of her ‘kind’ and what she tried to tell them. Should I have stayed and endured the same fate?”
Duncan hadn’t known. It shouldn’t have bothered him, she’d been the cause of Alexander’s death after all. But no woman deserved such a fate. Not even Edwyna.
“I tried tae make ye understand that marryin’ alone would not end the wars, that we had to do more. Ye wouldna listen to me. Tae you I was chattel. I didn’t expect yer love, yer admiration, or even yer respect. But because I truly wanted to save my clan, I had planned to earn them over time. Together, we might hae saved them, Duncan. But if ye wouldna grant me so much as a second of yer time, how was I tae earn anything in yer eyes? How would we ever forge the bond necessary tae truly end the anger and begin to heal the pain o’ so many years o’ death and destruction between us?
“Marrying me was only an act of faith tae our clansmen. It was wha’ we did wi’ that union that could have changed history. But you made it clear that was no’ tae be. I refused to let you condemn me to die by your side.”
Duncan flung her hand from his arm and stood. He walked a good distance across the field before stopping.
“As it was, ye killed us both anyway,” she said.
She was standing behind him. He could vanish, but he was certain she would follow him through all levels of hell.
“If ye want to lay blame, it belongs as much on yer soul as it does mine,” she said. “But it also lies wi’ each of our clansmen. They knew they were warring themselves out of existence, yet their foolish pride wouldna let them seek any other solution than a marriage bond.”
Duncan spun around and gripped her by the arms. His rage was so complete he envisioned himself simply snapping her in two. And yet her calm acceptance of his violence proved the stronger weapon. Her knowing visage was like a mirror thrown up to him. He was barbarian first, acting with strength of hand instead of strength of mind, just as she had accused.
He released her, his hands curling into fists at his sides. Swallowing centuries of hate and anger was like acid on his throat, making his voice rough. “Why di’ ye no’ come to me before this?”
“Would ye have heard my words?”
He didn’t bother to answer.
“Ye had to come to me,” she said.
“I did no’ come to ye.”
“Did ye no’?”
He didn’t answer that either.
“It has taken me a long time, though not as long as you, to understand and accept my faults and the sins committed because of them. I have done so. My sentence on earth is finished.”
He looked at her then. She smiled and he almost cringed at what he saw in her eyes. He saw understanding. He saw supreme knowledge.
He saw forgiveness.
“I am no’ here for me, Duncan. I am here now because ye needed me tae be here.” Concern colored her eyes. “Be warned. I willna be here for ye again. If ye hae any last questions of me, ask them now.”
So many thoughts and revelations vied for attention, and with such fury, none could surface. One thing he could not deny. Now that he had seen her again, spoken with her, he would forever think of her differently.
She smiled and reached up to place a soft kiss on his cheek. “Good-bye Duncan MacKinnon,” she said softly. “May your soul find its final resting place.”
As she stepped back, he understood more than he wanted to. “God rest yer soul, Mairi Claren.”
“Fear not. I willna be burnin’ in hell, Duncan. There is forgiveness for you as well if ye but seek it.”
Her image shimmered and he stepped forward and gripped her arm with unnecessary strength. He tempered his hold on her even as desperation crawled through his heart. His eyes burned into hers, the sting behind them unexpected but accepted. “I do have one final request,” he said gruffly.
“Aye?”
“Alexander and Rory. What happened to them?”
“Tha’ I canno’ tell you.”
“Find them, then. Tell them … I’m sorry.”
Her smile surfaced once again, serene and knowing. “Ye’ll be tellin’ them yersel’ soon enough, I think.”
“Promise me!” He struggled yet again to temper his desperation. “In case I dinna make it there.” Pride was an awesome burden to fit down one’s throat. “Ye dinna owe it tae me,” he said roughly. “But ye asked … and I’m …” His voice broke deep. He squared his shoulders, chin jutting forward. “I’m beggin’ ye.”
She seemed more stunned than pleased by his humbling. It made it no easier.
She moved out of his grasp easily like the wraith she was. “Trust me, Duncan. All will be as you wish it. But you must wish.” She stepped back and her image shimmered once again, then was gone before he could speak again.
He stood there for several long moments, feeling oddly empty.
“Good-bye, Mairi Claren,” he said finally.
He bent down and plucked a late bloom, then knelt beside her grave. He placed the slender-stemmed flower on the soft ground in front of the stone.
“May ye rest in eternal peace,” he said quietly. After a moment, he added, “May we all one day.”
It was a long time before he rose and began the walk back to the cabin.