Chapter Nine

28th of December

Eejit.

James stretched and flexed his neck to rid it of the pinched muscles from sleeping in his chair when a perfectly good bed sat nearby in the next chamber. He shivered. His hearth was cold, and the chamber was as frigid as the edges of Loch Moidart. Feeble light rimmed his window shutters. What time was it? He shoved to standing, rubbing his arms through his tunic as gooseflesh prickled his skin, and unpinned his mantle to drape around his shoulders, shrouding himself in the wool. Contemplating taking a short nap before calling his soldiers for morning drills, he moved to the window to see how light it was. His head pounded. He’d drunk too much wine the night before as he wallowed in Aileana’s rejection, considering what to do about his desire for her.

Ye have to go see her, man. He had to make sure that after their kiss that had rattled her and flooded him with the type of lust that turned a stoic warrior into a beggar for a lass’s affection, that she was all right.

After pushing closed the shutter, he paused, then pulled it open again. A tiny woman upon the hill rising up from the loch moved among the headstones of the cemetery on her hands and knees, clearing each marker of snow and dormant weeds. Bright red-auburn hair hung loose, and a gentle breeze lifted the unruly tendrils. What was she doing?

“Sir Lewis!” James hailed a soldier below in the bailey, one of his skilled archers, who was striding to the well from the barrack, still disheveled from sleep.

“Good morn, my laird!” he called back up.

“Ask the sentry what the Lady Aileana is about so early this morning!”

Sir Lewis glanced to the open portcullis—though from his vantage, he likely couldn’t see her—and shrugged. “She left nay long ago, telling the guards she wished for some fresh air and solitude!”

A walk among the headstones of MacDonalds for solitude? Sakes, if he wanted to find her, he had to go there? He would wait for her to return. Although, by the look of it, she’d only cleared a few headstones and had a row and a half to go. He might be waiting a while, and his apology needed to be swift, not belated.

Nay be a coward, man. Marjorie has been laid to rest for years.

He freshened his teeth with a pinch of mint, chewing on the leaves while he stripped and changed into a fresh tunic that didn’t smell like yesterday’s celebration. After strapping his calves and feet into sturdy boots for hiking, he fastened his leather doublet and drew his mantle down over his shoulder.

The morning meal was still being prepared—the fresh, savory smells permeating the hall from the kitchens—and though his stomach growled to ease the headache he’d brought on himself, he resigned himself to stop at the well on his way out of doors to drink from the bucket and ladle.

His thirst quenched, he strode through the bailey, beneath the portcullis, and across the promontory toward the mainland, rising the path to where he saw Aileana’s tracks diverge into the snow. Sunlight broke in the east and cast shards of bright light through the crystalline trees above them. His heart pounded as the first headstone came into view, but he climbed onward until the stone cross protruding from the roof of the kirk rose above the horizon, too. He glimpsed Aileana’s hair again—a beacon so bright and fiery, it gave her away—and noted her old gown, once more donned.

Slowing, he took in the sight of her working, as if the manual labor eased pain she might be feeling. Pain he’d caused by kissing her and daring to put into words his desire for more? He stopped in his tracks. Aileana faced Marjorie’s headstone, and she’d brushed the snow away from it to read the carved inscription. After a moment, he resumed his climb again, and the crunching of snow beneath his boots caught her attention.

She glanced over her shoulder, her face brightening when she realized it was him, though she didn’t smile; then she quickly turned away, shoving to her feet. But he’d spied the pink cresting her cheeks and nose, making it difficult to determine if she had blushed or if it was simply from the cold.

“Remembering our kiss, lass?” he jested as he came to stand beside her.

A mittened hand came up to cup her cheek. Aye. Blush.

“I’m sorry if I was untoward last night,” he added, crunching up beside her.

She glanced at him at his apology, her face softening and a hint of a conciliatory smile lifting the corner of her mouth. “I’m sorry if I was skittish. I was just overwrought. I worry every day for my folk and felt selfish, indulging as I was.”

“Ye needna’ apologize. I asked ye for a kiss in front of my people to placate them. I didna’ expect ye to want it.”

“Was that all it was, though?” she breathed. “A kiss for their benefit?”

He shook his head and drew a deep breath, running his glove through his hair tied back in an uncombed knot. “’Twas for my benefit, too. I wish it was also for yers, but ye’ve been clear from the beginning ye intend to return home.”

“It was for mine, too,” she whispered, like she were admitting something to herself instead of speaking for him to hear, her hand migrating to palm her belly as if butterflies fluttered within her.

It was what? It was to her benefit? She had enjoyed it? He’d felt that she had, up to the moment she’d stung him with her shame.

His pulse ticked up. He’d felt something in that kiss, and he’d worried all damned night that she’d not felt what he’d thought had passed between them like a river current.

“What are ye doing here?”

She shrugged. “In sooth, as strange as it may sound, I was homesick. Being close to my parents in our cemetery often makes me feel better. I have no family here, but the dead are always welcome listeners.” She held out her skirts and knelt back down to push more pillows away from the remainder of the headstone so that the dormant grass beneath poked through. “I hope ye do nay mind. At Urquhart, I often tend my parents’ graves, and felt compelled to do the same here. Yer cemetery is neglected, James.”

He looked among the rows, from the oldest MacDonalds of Clanranald to the empty space beside Marjorie at the end of the second row meant for him someday. His legacy, denied him by a thread due to his bastardy. All that money would be gone in a matter of days, and it would never be bequeathed to a MacDonald again.

“I havenae come here in years,” he admitted. “’Tis my fault it’s neglected.”

“Why have ye left it so?”

He shook his head and shrugged, squinting into the morning light. “Memories I wish nay to dwell on, I suppose.”

Still kneeling, Aileana brushed a fingertip over Marjorie’s name, tracing the script. “I can tell how much ye looked up to her. Was she like a mither to ye, being so much older?”

James frowned but felt Aileana’s gaze fall upon him. He nodded. “She never cared that I was bastard born. It meant something, to have both my sisters’ acceptance when I’d never have my stepmither’s. I wish I could have done more to protect her.”

“Ye were still a lad, Jamie. How could ye have protected her?”

Jamie. The moniker was growing on him again. And as he stood here, before Marjorie’s resting place, it felt oddly fitting. He turned and dropped down to his rear, too, the coldness of the snow biting through his kilt and nipping at the bare skin behind his knees, though he kicked his legs out and leaned back against his stepmother’s headstone, to Marjorie’s other side and next to his sire’s.

“I was old enough to ken the sharp end of a blade from the hilt. Old enough to fight if needed. And fight I did. We tracked her husband down, attacked, and made sure the MacLeod whoreson knew it was us before we drove our dirks into his chest. I’ll never forget the look upon his face, and I nay think I’ll ever regret that moment of justice.”

“Marjorie’s death brought out the devil in ye.”

James pondered her apt remark. He supposed it had. He’d never killed a man before that moment. He’d found his battle cry that day, and he’d used it ever since. Hell, the whole of the Highlands called him the Devil MacDonald.

“I imagine if anything happened to ye or Lady Peigi that Seamus would do the same.”

He laced his fingers together to rest upon his belly.

“Aye, he would. And yet ye do nay seem much like a devil to me. Nay anymore.” A gentle smiled creased Aileana’s lips—a small favor he would tuck away with the other memories he was compiling of this woman. “What was she like?”

Memories of Marjorie’s kind face; blue eyes; soft dark-blonde hair, which she’d always worn carefully plaited as a child and perfectly coiffed as an adult, swirled to life. The way she’d sung to him as a bairn, or cheered for him alongside Brighde at the occasional fair when he’d participated in a contest, had always warmed him and given him a sense of belonging among his siblings.

“She was much like Lady Peigi seems to be. Dutiful, never thoughtless. Somehow, she was always perfectly mannered, knew perfectly what to do or say in each moment. She was obedient, but she always defied her mither when it came to me. My sire’s wife would have preferred her daughters shun me, but they never did.”

“It must have been difficult, growing up as ye did.”

But Aileana was prying deep down into the memories he wished not to speak of.

“Harder than some, easier than others.” He shrugged. “What about ye? What was it like growing up a Grant?”

A wistful smile turned up Aileana’s lips, and she huffed into her mittened hands to warm them further, staring into the distance as she thought. “Idyllic, I suppose, except for the occasional reave. Those were terrifying. But it seems everyone has wanted to get their hands upon Urquhart, and sadly, being prepared to hide during a reave became a routine. The first I remember, I was a wee one. Peigi and I were frolicking along the shore of the loch, collecting pebbles—well, I was collecting them and had my skirts tied up so I could touch the waters with my bare feet, though I could never submerge them for long. . . the waters are always freezing,” she added with a smile.

He smiled, too, at the thought of a young Aileana, before freckles and beauty and dowries designed to capture a suitor had mattered and only a child’s happiness had been the ambition. Her smile fell, and she began to swirl her mitten in the snow, making an idle spiral pattern.

“There was a commotion. My faither’s sentries upon the wall were shouting. Our crofters were running though the crops, screaming, trying to take shelter within the walls. Peigi and I didnae ken what to do and stood frozen. Should we thrust ourselves in the water rather than be taken prisoner, as we’d been told to do should we ever face an enemy’s kidnapping?”

His heart clenched, and without much thought, he took her hand. This wasn’t what he’d bargained for when he’d asked about her childhood. Hurt skittered through him for the frightened lassie she’d been, contemplating drowning in the icy depths of the loch instead of being taken prisoner, and yet after she’d endured listening to the hardships his people had suffered, he felt compelled to let her speak about this now.

“And then they did see us. And a massive horse galloped our way, a man in furs and with a claymore strapped to his back, bedecked in a metal breastplate, spotting us. He abandoned the crofters he was chasing and put us in his sights. Peigi screamed, nay knowing what to do. I tugged on her, panicking, and cried that we needed to jump in the waters, though I couldnae uproot her. And then Seamus was there, as valiant as a king. He was barely old enough to carry a sword, still gangly, nary a whisker growing upon his jaw and certainly had earned no titles yet. And yet he thrust himself in front of us, shouting at our assailant to nay lay a fingertip upon us. And so, ye see, I believe he would have defended us exactly the way ye sought justice for Marjorie.”

James squeezed her hand, and she squeezed his in return.

“My faither arrived to defend us next, and distracted him whilst Seamus tossed Peigi and me upon his shoulders to run us to safety behind the castle and through the water gate, whilst my sire fought off the attacker, though the skirmish left him maimed. I remember Seamus telling us to stay hidden in a trunk, to nay make a sound, and told us to play a game, that we were mice trying nay to get caught by a lion, and the way he kissed each of our foreheads before closing the lid had Peigi and me terrified, for it felt like a goodbye—”

James dragged Aileana to him, wrapping his arm around her.

“Who attacked ye, Allie?” Gruffness laced his whisper as he pressed his lips to her crown.

She wrapped an arm about his waist, like a comfortable lover, nay the nàmhaid she’d once been. Yet he feared the answer, and for a moment, she fell silent.

“Jamie, it might be best nay to speak on those details,” she muttered.

“’Twas my sire, was it nay?” He croaked. How dare Aileana have sympathy for him right now and try to shield him from the truth.

She said nothing, simply nodded, her hair brushing back and forth against his lips.

The air left his lungs. Gut punched.

Aileana looked up at him, but his jaw clenched, and he fixed his eyes upon Loch Moidart’s wintery water.

“Are ye all right?” she asked.

He barked a preposterous laugh that she would be asking him that, after all she’d just revealed, then cinched her closer, burying his nose in her tresses and pinching his eyes. To imagine his father, of all the men—who’d once bounced him and his sisters upon his knee and allowed them to wrestle him playfully into submission in mock battles—terrorizing two wee bairns flooded him with fury. How dare the man? He’d never thought his sire would attack a child—and that one of those children had grown into this woman that he’d kissed thoroughly, held sweetly, and fantasized about a life together—ached. When Grant had attacked Tioram, his folk had felt this same fear. Had the children of Urquhart feared him in the same way, too, when he’d gutted Urquhart and claimed it for his own before the Earl of Huntly evicted him? He couldn’t bear the thought. Couldn’t shake the awful feeling making his body tremble and his stomach twist with regret.

Aileana squeezed him in return, nestling into his embrace as if she needed it.

“We sat in that darkness for what seemed like eternity, Peigi once in a while pushing up the lid to see if anyone was yet coming for us and to give us new air—”

“I need no’ hear more, lass,” he breathed gruffly, pecking her head, her cheek, her ear.

Distaste rolled up James’s throat, envisioning a wee Aileana, probably no bigger than Maudie and with the same bright hair, shaking and crying in a trunk, hidden away from grown men striking fear in their hearts with every swing of their sword.

She glanced up at his show of affection, and in spite of the shame coursing through him, his gaze dipped down to hers.

“I worry, James. I fear that if the king’s order for a recompense doesnae come soon, or if it’s nay favorable in the way my brother needs, that my people willnae last the winter. I worry about Lady Elizabeth’s babe, starving in her womb and killing Elizabeth in the process. My brother will never recover from the loss, he loves her so. ’Tis hard to think on fond memories to share amid so much suffering—”

His lips pressed to hers as they sat in a pile of skirts and tartan in the snow while the winter breeze stung their cheeks. Though this time, lust remained at bay. Desperation fueled him now. How did a man beg apology when he couldn’t even make his voice work? How did he show how much he was sorry? He cupped her face, covering her reddened ear with his glove, and partook of a kiss he needed just as much as he needed to silence her with it so that the flood of guilt dragging him underwater would abate, so he could breathe again.

Slowly, he lay her down in the snow, leaning over her, his gloves still cupping her ear and head, as his kiss deepened. Her breath hitched as she received the stroke of his tongue between her lips and returned the gesture, holding him, her mittens kneading his hair and nape. Their torsos pressed together, he wanted to absorb her memories so they tormented her no more.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured with his lips still smushed to hers, their noses cold and pressed against one another’s, and she nodded, gazing up at him; then she resumed their kiss, held him close, and he relented to what she was silently asking of him.

He knew what to do now. The solution should have been obvious. It hit him like a wave crashing on the shore. Blast it, he’d sat up until late, drinking away his hurt, wishing he could somehow make this right. Aileana had saved wee Maudie’s life. She’d given wishes to his people. She’d crowned the child the Abbess of Unreason and brought such joy to his folk in doing so. She was winning their hearts, slowly but surely. And here she’d been, clearing away the snow and reviving the fond memories of Marjorie that he should have tended to all these years. As he held Aileana here, the pain of Marjorie’s demise was bearable for once but the realization of the depth of Aileana’s scars wasn’t. And he had to change that, for the sake of his conscience.

Whether or not he ever gained her true affection.