Chapter 25 #2
Questions he could scarce face without flinching.
Then his input ceased to be requested. The evening waned.
Ian took Jane and their children home to bed.
Margaret gathered hers up and took them upstairs to put them to bed in a guest room.
Elizabeth had long since disappeared with little Patricia.
Jamie’s lads, who had sat valiantly near Jamie, trying to look as fierce and forbidding as their father, had fallen asleep on that father.
Even Zachary had succumbed to the slumber granted a man who had ingested too few vegetables. Joshua pushed Zachary out of his chair.
“You’re snoring,” the minstrel said.
Zachary rubbed his eyes, got to his feet, and sought his own bed upstairs.
The front door opened and closed. Ian sat down at the table and refilled his cup.
“Any decisions made whilst I was gone?” he asked.
No one spoke. Patrick looked at the men of his family and felt their concern, unspoken though it was. They offered no solutions, for there were no easy ones. They sat in silence for some time.
Alex broke the silence first. “What will you do with McGhee?” he asked. “It seems as if he bears some responsibility for precipitating this situation.”
“We should kill him,” Ian said firmly.
Jamie scowled him to silence, then looked at Patrick. “Aye, that is an important question.”
“What has that to do with this?” Patrick asked. “Madelyn is the one lost. She’s the one we must think about.”
“The other must be solved,” Jamie insisted.
“Then what would you have me do?” Patrick asked.
“Kill him,” Ian repeated.
“Shut up, Ian,” Patrick said, turning away from that very tempting idea. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t kill Lisa.” He looked around the table. “She was half dead when I found her.”
“We know that,” Ian said with a sigh. “By the saints, Pat, we know that.”
“You should tell Gilbert as much,” Jamie said.
“He knows.”
“But he doesn’t know why she put herself in that condition,” Jamie said. “Tell him that. Tell him what you left out of the inquest.”
“For what purpose?” Patrick asked. “Will thinking of me being cuckolded by his promiscuous daughter cause fond feelings for me to sprout in his breast? He’ll think I was lacking, that I drove her to another man.”
“He’s no fool,” Alex said. “He’s just obsessed with finding a scapegoat.” He looked at Jamie. “There’s no point in trying to appease the man. He’ll be after Pat until one of them is dead.”
“Give him the name of her lover,” Ian advised. “Let that lad bear the brunt of Gilbert’s anger. Or,” he added, “kill him. That would be easier.”
Patrick rolled his eyes. “Pull yourself into the present, Ian. I cannot kill the man, much as I might like to.”
Jamie pursed his lips. “As entertaining a notion as slaying Gilbert is, it isn’t one we pursue with any benefit.”
“Then, by all means, let us return to the true problem,” Patrick said. “Finding Madelyn.”
“ ’Tis all part of the weave of the same cloth,” Jamie said. “Gilbert’s actions. Madelyn’s flight. Her obvious trip through the forest. Your inability to follow her.” He looked primed to begin a lecture. “There is a reason Patrick cannot bend the gate to his pleasure, and we must discover it.”
Patrick snorted, but Jamie was not to be deterred by such a mild expression of disgust.
“If you find her, what will you do with her?” Jamie demanded.
“Rescue her, dolt,” Patrick said shortly. “What do you think?”
“To what end?” Jamie pressed. “Do you love her? Have you searched your heart for your motives?”
“Must I have motives?” Patrick demanded. “Can it not be enough just to wish to save the poor wench a goodly bit of suffering?”
Jamie looked as if he itched to stroke his chin in the manner he usually reserved for deep thought. Fortunately Patrick was spared that by two sleeping lads who currently pinned their father’s arms down.
“The gates are at times fickle,” Jamie announced. “Alex can attest to that.”
“True enough,” Alex said. “I tried to get home from Margaret’s time initially, but couldn’t. Probably because I still had something to do there for her.”
“Aye, such as fall in love with her,” Jamie said. “Love is a powerful thing.”
Patrick could hardly believe his ears. His brother, whose only love had once been a finely sharpened sword and a few tales of bloodshed and destruction put to music in a manly way, had obviously lost his mind.
“What in the bloody hell has love to do with any of this?” Patrick demanded. “I’ve a task to see accomplished, not a ballad to provide fodder for!”
“Your motives must be pure,” Jamie insisted. “You’ll never reach her otherwise.”
“Are you telling me,” Patrick said in exasperation, “that I’m supposed to fall in love with her before I can get the forest to work its magic for me and allow me to rescue her?”
“I daresay the falling has already happened,” Ian offered with a smile.
“Shut up, Ian,” Patrick growled.
Alex snorted out a half laugh. “You’ve hit a nerve, Ian,” he said.
Patrick threw Alex a glare, then looked at his brother, daring him to add to the foolishness already being spouted. Jamie only rubbed his chin thoughtfully against his son Ian’s dark hair.
Close enough to his accustomed thinking aid, apparently.
“ ’Tis worth further thought,” Jamie said.
“ ’Tis worth nothing,” Patrick said. “I care for Madelyn, true, but ’tis hardly love.”
He said it forcefully.
As if he actually believed it.
But it sounded hollow, even to his own ears.
“Hmmm,” Jamie said, rubbing his son’s head again with his chin.
Alex stood and stretched. “Come to grips with it, Patrick. It’ll go easier on you if you do.”
Ian rose as well. “She’s a good girl, Pat. Make a good mother for your children.”
“She’s a lawyer.”
“Ouch.” Alex laughed. “Slandering my profession. You know, Patrick, it could be worse.”
Ian punched Patrick rather firmly in the arm on his way by. “Don’t be an idiot,” he said affectionately. “Mind the path on your way home, if you’re coming to bed down with us.”
Patrick scowled at the both of them, cut off anything Joshua would have said before he retreated to his bedchamber, then looked at Jamie across the table. He pursed his lips.
“And you?” he asked. “Nothing more to say? No more advice to bludgeon me with?”
Jamie was silent for several minutes, long enough that Patrick began to concede that his brother was actually giving his answer some thought, not just blurting out the first bit of fluff that frothed out of his empty head.
“I think,” Jamie said slowly, “that only you can decide what lurks in the depths of your heart.”
“Thank you—”
“But I also think,” Jamie continued relentlessly, “that you should stop punishing yourself for Lisa’s foolishness.”
Patrick gritted his teeth. “Gilbert—”
“Will meet his own unpleasant end in time,” Jamie said. “Mayhap he’ll wander one too many times on my land and find himself in a place he’ll dislike quite thoroughly. Ignore him.”
“Easier said than done. You didn’t bring your bride into a life with him as part of it.”
“Can you change the past?”
“’Tis damned tempting.”
Jamie rose, settled his sons more closely, and gave Patrick a look that said he planned to deposit his sons into their beds and himself into his thinking chamber where he could further speculate on the sorry state of affairs in Patrick’s heart.
“Think on what I’ve said,” Jamie said meaningfully.
Patrick watched his brother walk across the hall, turn and give him one final, pointed look, then disappear upstairs.
Patrick snorted. Jamie would be far happier if he spent less time worrying about everyone else’s ills and more time worrying about his own.
He banked the fire, then left the hall. He retrieved his horse and rode not to Ian’s, but to a humble hut on the edge of the forest. There was a faint light spilling out through the window. He tethered his horse and walked to the door.
Moraig opened it before he could knock. She looked him up and down. “Future gear,” she said succinctly. “You must rid yourself of it.”
“I have medicines—”
She gave him a look of supreme disappointment. “What need you with modern medicines?” she demanded. “There are herbs aplenty for your use. Let them serve you as they were meant to. Leave your things here. They’ll be kept safe until your return.”
He sighed, entered her hut, and dumped everything he’d kept under his shirt onto her table.
“But the chocolate I’ll keep,” she said with a gap-toothed grin. “Ah, laddie, ye ken my weakness.”
He smiled, then curled up on her floor just as he’d done the first night he’d found shelter at her fire.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“You’ll try tomorrow,” she said.
“Aye.”
“And the day after that, if you need to.”
And the day after that, as well. He would continue to try until he was successful. And perhaps at some point, enough hope would enter his heart that he would manage it.
He could only pray it wouldn’t be too late.