“Aye, I gave you up. I'd failed Aidan, you see, and I saw suffering in solitude as a sort of penance. And then the war happened. ”
“What happened in battle to change you so?”
“You have no idea the sins I have to atone for. But you, Ree, you've committed no such sin. Are you to grow old, alone, and with no one to care for you?” The thought infuriated him, lighting tinder beneath his words. “You need more. A home of your own, bairns aplenty. ”
Her loneliness was a tragic waste. She was a woman of such passions. The way she ignited at his touch, it was clear she longed for completion. She should have a man to share her bed. He scowled, despising the thought as it came to him. “Don't you want a man about?”
“Perhaps it's the man who'd never want me. ” She leaned up, angrily plumping the pillow beneath her.
“No man would ever—” Realization dawned. And it was devastating.
Cormac had once thought he'd never be worthy of her. He once thought he'd never be capable of feeling the joy of it if he did. But now he knew differently.
Though he couldn't imagine himself ever being deserving of Ree, now he had a fantasy of what it would be. He remembered the sight of her splayed before him, innocent in body but with lust in her eyes.
“Och, Ree, to be with you… “ He considered it, and he knew joy and loss in the same instant. “'Twould be wrong.
To sully your pure soul with my dirtied hands. ”
“They call you the devil, Cormac, and I think you are. Who are you to say what I need? What happened to you at war? What are the shadows in your eyes? Who are you now? When did you become this” —
frustrated, she adjusted
herself, kicking the sheets from her legs — “this… man?”
He'd kept his past cloaked in shadow for so long now, he no longer knew who he was protecting with his secrecy.
He was too tired to fight it any longer.
“Fine, Ree. You wish to be my confessor; so be it. ” He lay on his back, bringing his arm to rest over his head, stealing a glance at her from the corner of his eye. How would she hear his story? Would she offer perfunctory reassurances with eyes gone cold and a smile grown false? There was only one way to find out. “I became this man when I went to war, a boy of thirteen. ”
Marjorie's stomach fell.
Thirteen. The bald fact of it gutted her. She remembered Cormac as a boy of ten. Just three years after Aidan's disappearance, and he'd gone off to battle? She tried to picture him as he'd been, all lanky limbs, a fringe of long eyelashes around grinning eyes.
She pictured the boys of Saint Machar. How might Paddy look, a musket slung over his back? To imagine young Cormac trudging far from home, off to God knew where, to fight in the Civil Wars… her stomach churned at the thought.
She schooled her face. She was being squeamish. Many boys fought for their clan at such an age. “So young,” was all she managed to say and keep her composure.
“Young,” he agreed. “But not in my own head, aye? It always was vinegar not blood that coursed through my veins. ”
She gave him a gende smile. “I remember. ”
“But it turned sour after Aidan. ” He stared blindly up at the ceiling. “After I couldn't save him. ”
“How could you possibly have saved him? You were only ten—”
“Hush, Ree. You asked my story, and it's my story I'm telling. ”
She nodded mutely, wondering how he could blame himself. It was a wonder they hadn't lost Cormac that day, too, suffocated in that godforsaken chimney.
But hadn't she also been blaming herself all these years? The thought was too painful to touch. Instead, she gently prompted, “So you had something to prove, then. When you went to war?” He shot her a look with brows raised, as though she'd just given voice to the greatest of all understatements.
“I always had much to prove. The battle, this battle,” he amended, studying the scars on his arm, “was in '51.
That's one year after my da died. ”
“You'd have thought you were man of the house,” she said, understanding. She struggled to make sense of males, and yet sometimes their reasoning could be so simple. “You and Gregor both. You'd have thought you needed to prove yourselves men. ”