Chapter 12 #2
“Ye’re a gruff one,” Sister Agnes said without sympathy as she approached.
“How long do I have to stay here?” he groused.
She lifted a shoulder. “Ye’re no’ a prisoner. Ye can leave as soon as ye’re hale and hearty enough to do so.” She arched a brow, and the lines along her brow crinkled like aged parchment. “And by hale and hearty, I mean ye dinna fall into a stupor and drop from yer horse.”
He grunted in irritation at her unwelcome assessment.
Aye, he wasn’t held in place with chains, but he felt a prisoner just the same with the women clucking and fluttering around him every time he stood to relieve himself.
“Clara should have returned by now,” he said. “She may have need of me. I should be there. To protect her.”
Sister Agnes scoffed. “To get yerself killed, more like.”
He glared at her.
She tossed him a look of bored disinterest in return. “Do ye really think ye could fight in yer condition? That ye could save her if need be?”
He scowled.
Sister Agnes nodded. “’Tis as I thought.” She lifted a strip of linen and wound it with a maddeningly slow precision as if everything in the convent moved at an interminable pace. “Ye care for her, aye?”
“Of course,” he replied bitterly. “She’s my sister.”
Sister Agnes lifted her blue eyes heavenward as if seeking help for patience from the Almighty himself. “If ye knew I dinna believe that…” She lowered her head and settled a pointed gaze on Reid.
He said nothing.
“I believe ye truly do care for the lass.” Sister Agnes set aside the bound linen and picked up another bit of linen. “It’s obvious she cares for ye as well.”
Reid’s chest tightened. “Aye,” he admitted grudgingly. “She does.”
“Well,” the older woman huffed as she began to wind the linen. “I know I’m only a nun and dinna understand such things as matters of the heart, but I canna see why ye’re no’ married to the lass.”
“Because she’s my sister,” he hedged.
Sister Agnes sent him a long-suffering look that was not at all what would be expected from a nun.
It was Reid’s turn to roll his eyes. “Fine,” he conceded. “’Tis complicated.”
“Aye, it always is.” She set the neat linen on the table and looked into the small jars one by one as though taking stock.
“She’s to join ye here at the abbey.” He kicked his legs where they dangled over the edge of the bed, sending the narrow cot rocking gently.
“Does she want to?” Sister Agnes asked in a manner that was almost innocent.
Almost.
Reid didn’t answer.
“Surely ye’re no’ that daft.” The nun gave an exasperated sigh.
He smirked at her assessment. “’Tis no’ my place to say.”
She nodded in understanding. “But ye know what she wants, dinna ye?”
He swallowed.
There was no point in feigning ignorance. The older woman was far too perceptive and clearly intended to continue digging until she had the truth. With him having nowhere to go, he was at her mercy.
“I canna give her what she wants,” he said at last.
“Does she want all the gold in Scotland?” Sister Agnes asked. “A unicorn? A castle floating in the clouds?”
“Ach, who wouldna want such things?”
Sister Agnes’s mouth twitched. “Ah, he does have a sense of humor after all.” She winked at him and continued checking the jars, pausing to add one to a pocket somewhere in the voluminous folds of her habit. “So, what does yer lass truly want?”
What Clara longed for was simple and natural. Saying her desires out loud made him feel foolish, and so he remained silent.
A man on the other side of the room cried out in his sleep. Sister Agnes didn’t so much as glance at the other man, but remained by Reid, her stare unbreaking. “Well?”
The man cried out again, hoarse and rasping.
“Should ye no’ go to him?” Reid asked.
Sister Agnes shrugged. “He has night terrors. He does this all the time.” She looked over her shoulder to the sleeping man. “Ye’re fine, Richard. The English are no’ here.”
The man quieted, and the nun turned back to Reid with a cocky smile. So much for the sin of pride…
Reid dragged a hand through his hair. “She wants a husband. A home. Bairns.”
Sister Agnes nodded, her brow furrowed. “I can see how such a request would be lofty. She’s no’ even verra nice or even bonny at that.” She gave an exaggerated eye roll.
“Dinna ye have work to do?” he asked.
“Ach, I’m doing it.” She pointed to the jars with a grin. “Ensuring they’re well-stocked.”
“I know ’tis foolish to no’ want what she does.” He looked down at his hands.
“Even with her?” the nun pressed. “For her?”
He shifted on the small cot, and the ropes beneath his mattress squeaked and groaned. “Ye’re meddlesome, ye know that?”
“Aye,” she said without even bothering to appear remorseful. “Is it fear holding ye back, lad?”
“Of course no’.” He’d responded too quickly, and she knew.
Like a vulture of the truth, she descended upon him.
“Are ye afraid she’ll leave ye?” Sister Agnes innocently checked over the jars once more.
Ones she’d already perused earlier, he noticed.
“Or that ye willna be a good husband to her?” She slid her gaze to him and narrowed her eyes. “Ye dinna beat women, do ye?”
“Nay,” he exclaimed.
“Are ye afraid then that she’ll be taken from ye?” Sister Agnes asked.
Reid clenched his jaw.
The nun nodded. “That’s it, then.” The older woman put her hand over his. Her hands were soft and dotted with brown flecks; her nails trimmed so close that only a sliver of white showed above her fingertips.
He was studying her hands intently, he knew. It was easier than meeting those keenly perceptive eyes and having this difficult conversation.
“My family was slain in a raid,” Sister Agnes said softly. “They meant to kill me too, but I ran and hid. I stayed where I lay beneath some brush and watched as they killed my whole family. It wasna my proudest moment.”
“They would have killed ye too,” Reid said without looking up.
“Aye. I tell myself that a thousand times over, but it willna ever heal that emptiness in my heart.” She withdrew her hand from his and resumed her tasks, examining the jars.
“I grew up here after the nuns took me in. I enjoy my life here because I’ve no’ ever known anything different.
I never had the opportunity for love. No’ like yer Clara. ”
He nodded and finally lifted his eyes to meet the woman’s gaze, a kindred spirit bound together by the trauma of their childhood.
“I dinna know yer story, my lad.” She held up a hand to keep him from talking, not that he’d planned to, and continued, “’tis yer story.
But I think mayhap ye ought to tell it to her so that she can understand.
And I think ye should set yer fears aside and take a risk that ye might both be the happier for. ”
“And if they raid my home?” Anger and fear mixed into one, the effect so overwhelming it made breathing difficult.
“Then ye kill them, and ye protect yer family.”
But if he couldn’t?
The question arose from the darkest depths within him, the ugly dread he never wanted to acknowledge. Even its presence in his thoughts made his heart constrict in such a way that he could scarcely draw breath.
He couldn’t lose those he loved again. Not when it was still so easy to recall that visceral loss; the emptiness of knowing all those he loved were dead.
His gentle da, who worked hard so they always had food on the table, and who promised days by the stream when the sun rose high and bright.
His mum who had the sweetest voice as she sang him to sleep.
Wee Ewan and how he followed Reid everywhere.
“Do ye know what happens if ye dinna let yerself choose the possibility of happiness?” Sister Agnes asked, breaking into those unwanted memories. “If ye never grasp the opportunity for love and a life fully lived?”
Reid shook his head.
Her eyes narrowed, no longer friendly but glinting with malice. “Those bastards win.”
“Sister Agnes,” the man on the other side of the room called. “My bandage.”
“Ach, did ye undo it again?” She called out pleasantly. With a serious nod to Reid, she went to the other man’s side, crooning over him with attentive interest.
Reid lay back in his bed, no longer bored as much as he was agitated. The nun had given him much to think on. He wished Clara were there, that he might speak with her, so she would know she was not the cause.
And yet, even as Sister Agnes’s words sank in, even as his head acknowledged the sound logic, his heart stubbornly refused to yield.
He knew what he had to do to protect himself. To protect Clara.
It would be better to have her leave him now for the convent than wait until they had built a life together, when there would be so much more to lose. When having it all stripped from his life would be his undoing.
It was the only way to truly avoid ever feeling that pain again. Because he did not know if he could survive it a second time.