Beloved Highlander

Shona was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, her lovely face tired and serious, and showing its age.

Alison nodded brusquely, moving about, preparing food for the morrow, keeping busy. The men would need to take something with them, and she meant to make certain they were well provisioned. Besides, she did not want to stop, because then she would have to think. She did not want to think.

“She must be worried,” Shona went on. “Captain Grant is a braw man, but even the bravest can be hurt, and worse.”

“He will be safe,” Alison replied stubbornly.

“They say ye have the sight,” Shona said. “Do ye see that then, Alison? Do ye see that he will be safe? Tell me what ye see.”

Alison cast her an agonized look.

Shona went still and then sighed. “Aye, ye see something, don’t ye, poor lassie. Tell me what it is; such things are easier to bear if ye share them.”

Alison’s hands stilled, and she stared into space. I dinna want to know, she thought. Please, I dinna want to know. But the words came anyway.

“There is a death. I’ve known it since the wedding, but I dinna know who will die. It might be the Laird, it might be another. I canna tell Lady Meg. How can I tell her that her man might die?”

“Dinna tell her,” Shona advised, her eyes on Alison’s pale, tense face. “What of ye? Does yer man ride to the duke’s castle tomorrow?”

Slowly, Alison continued with her preparations. “I have no man, Shona.”

“I thought,” she began, but when Alison turned and glared at her, she changed her mind and shrugged instead. “Well, of course not. I’ll leave ye to yer work. Good night, Alison.”

After Shona had gone, Alison stood still and quiet. She should go to bed, she supposed. She should. But all she could think was that Malcolm Bain would be riding tomorrow to the Duke of Abercauldy’s estate, and he might not come back. He had already left her once, and now he would do so again. The last time, she had grieved for twelve years, and when he had finally returned, she had done nothing but abuse him.

She put a hand to her eyes and rubbed them viciously.

He deserved to be treated badly! He had abandoned her, with Angus on the way, and…and…He had left a letter for her. Duncan had finally told her the truth about that. He had not walked out on her without a word, he had left a letter to tell her why he was going, begging her understanding, asking that she forgive him. Telling her he loved her.

It made a difference.

She had loved this man all her life, and even when she hated him it had been an all-consuming passion. He was a part of her, and Alison knew she could not let him go away again, not without making some sort of effort to reconcile their pasts.

With a soft, hissing curse, she flung down the bunch of kale she was holding and hurried from the kitchen.

He was in the stables. She had learned from Angus that that was where he slept. Running so that she could not slow down and think and maybe change her mind, Alison reached the dark building, entered it, and went straight to the ladder up to the loft. It rattled a little under her weight as she climbed, her mouth set in a straight, determined line. By the time she poked her head through the opening, he was wide awake.

H

e was sitting up, straw sticking to his hair, his eyes sleepy and blinking, his hand on his sword.

“Alison?” he said, and there was complete shock in his face. As he watched her climb off the ladder and step toward him, a mask of wariness hid all other feelings.

“I’ve come to say I do understand,” Alison said, and her voice was breathless and wavering and strangely high. “I do understand why ye had to go with the laird, why ye couldna just leave him. Ye had a duty. Ye had to look to him, and put yer own feelings and wishes aside. If ye had not done that, then ye’d no’ have been Malcolm Bain MacGregor.”

Malcolm Bain rose slowly to his feet. He was watching her intently.

“But ye put my feelings and my wishes aside also, Malcolm Bain. Ye sacrificed yer life to the laird, and that was yers to do, but ye sacrificed me and Angus, and that was no’. Ye should be sorry for that.”

“I am sorry,” he said quietly. “Ye canna know how sorry, Alison. I look back, and I wish I could change what I did. I wish so much I could change it.” His voice broke and he swallowed, bowing his head.

Alison blinked, and suddenly the spell was broken. His shoulders were shaking. Malcolm Bain was crying!

“Malcolm? Mo nighean?”

He didn’t move, his face hidden from her, his wild hair hanging down to shield him. It was as if he had been stripped bare. “I have nothing,” he said now, in a harsh, angry voice. “I left ye and now I have nothing. I will die alone, and my son will never know me.”

“Malcolm,” she whispered, and found that by taking one step, and then another, she was close enough to stroke his arm, and then close enough to place her hands, one either side of his bowed head, and raise it upward.