Chapter Thirty-Five

T hough Liadan did her best to keep busy all that day, it did not help her state of mind. Her longing for Ardahl and her tendency to relive all they’d shared remained alive within her. She swept the hut out again, shook out the blankets from her parents’ bed—not before inhaling from them the last of Ardahl’s scent—and fought the desire to walk past the training field, where he worked.

Like some green girl.

She was no longer a girl but a woman. He had made her so.

Maeve came home around noon, mentioned the hard fight she and others of the women had staged to save Seona’s babe, and went off at once to sleep. Left alone, Liadan fell prey to her thoughts once again.

Relentless thoughts and desires.

She had supposed—hoped—that having Ardahl once would be the cure. Would render her satisfied. But she would need to have him again. Once touched, constantly desired.

Whether that would happen—whether she would ever again lie in his arms—she could not say. It did not seem likely. They had so few opportunities to be alone. And the future—

Well, try as she might, she could not quite see a future for them.

At last, unable to bear the hut any longer, she went out. The sun had emerged, and a stiff wind chased the lingering clouds eastward.

Welcome as the sunlight was, it exposed the widespread ruination of the settlement. The great hall, no more than a pile of charred timbers. The dwellings that had once clustered around it, likewise. The armory, the pony sheds—thanks be to Brigid that whatever ponies not away with the chariots had been in the field that night, and so saved.

Other structures half ruined in the second attack, roofs collapsed, belongings strewn far and wide.

Some women worked at sorting through those belongings while children wailed and pulled at their skirts. Anger reigned here, and despair.

Across the way, near the spring, Liadan spied Flanna in company with Lasair. When Flanna saw Liadan approaching, she turned her face away.

“Sister?” Liadan beseeched her.

“I do no’ wish to speak wi’ ye.” Ready tears began to flow from Flanna’s eyes.

“We need to speak, do ye no’ think? To heal this misunderstanding that lies between us.”

“’Tis no misunderstanding. Ye left Mam alone. To die.”

“I did not know—”

“Abandoned her, a woman who was ill, on her own. Wi’ no protection.”

“’Tis because she was ill that I went. ’Twas but a few steps.”

“Enough! Enough for her to be alone when they came.”

And where were ye? Liadan wanted to ask. Off taking your own comfort with your friend. Leaving the hard task to me.

But she could not say that. Flanna was but a child. And it would only widen the rift between them.

So she bit back the words and said instead, “Ye will ha’ to forgive me. We have only each other left. Da, Mam, Conall, all gone.”

Flanna turned on her, face flushed and eyes awash with tears. Folk stared now, the women swiveling where they stood. “I do no’ have to forgive ye.”

“At least come home so we can talk together.”

Lasair’s mother, close by, stepped forward. “Flanna, my dear, mayhap ye should go wi’ your sister. Are there not enough wounds that we should no’ heal those we may?”

Flanna began to tremble. “Mistress MacDragh, If ye no longer want me with ye—”

“I did not say that.” Mistress MacDragh’s gaze met Liadan’s with regret and a measure of understanding. “To be sure, ye are welcome wi’ us. Perhaps in time—”

Liadan did not stay to hear her sister’s further reproaches, or to be pushed further away. Instead she turned and went home, a heaviness on her heart.

Maeve was at the hut and needed but one look at Liadan’s face before sitting her down beside the fire.

“Lass, what has happened?”

Liadan put her head in her hands.

“’Tis never Ardahl?”

“Nay. I ha’ not seen him.”

“Then what?”

“Forgive me. I canna speak of it.”

Silence fell between them, but it was an easy silence, one that let Liadan think and breathe. The hut quieted as Maeve prepared a meal, and some of the tension fled from Liadan’s body.

“Ardahl should be home from the practice field soon,” Maeve remarked softly, at length. “He will be hungry with the working. He always is.”

It struck Liadan that Maeve had, in a curious way, got her lost son back again. But only because their world had shifted so completely that nothing was as it had been.

“Mistress MacCormac”—Liadan lowered her hands from her face—“what has become o’ our lives?”

Maeve made a soft sound in her throat. “Life has been spun on its head, I do not doubt. The floor pulled out from beneath our feet, and the roof open to the sky.”

“I must admit, I canna see my way forward.”

“Nay. Mayhap not now. But ye will.”

“Every touchstone I had is gone.” Should she tell this woman Ardahl had become not so much a touchstone as the rock at the center of her life? That even the word love did not describe what she felt for him?

Neither she nor Ardahl had pledged that one thing to each other, love .

“We ha’ lost much,” Maeve agreed. “But let me tell ye somewhat. I thought the worst day o’ my life had come when I lost Ardahl.” She paused in her work and looked at Liadan. “When he was given to ye and your Mam and taken from me. Now I am with him again. There is always hope. We have lost much, but not hope.”

“Aye, so. I did not ask—did Seona’s babe survive the ordeal?”

A beautiful smile spread across Maeve’s face. “She did. It was, as I said, a hard fight, but Seona has a bonny wee girl at the end.”

Sudden longing pierced Liadan’s heart. Would she ever have a child of her own? Ardahl’s child. It did not seem so.

Yet her heart would cling to him. Even if it meant she must forsake having a husband and a family, a home of her own. She belonged to him, lifelong.

He did not return until late, the practice in the field having stretched long. When he did come, he looked weary, shoulders slumped and skin streaked with sweat.

As was his custom, he deposited his weapons inside the door.

“Mam,” he said. But it was at Liadan he looked, and she saw the change come over him as their gazes met, the weariness lifting from him and light seeping in.

He went out to wash. She waited but a moment before snatching up a cloth and a pot of soap and following him.

Around the side of the hut she stood, her back pressed against the wall, and watched him. Watched as he stripped off his tunic and bent over the basin.

He was filthy, and new bruises and scrapes showed on the skin thus revealed. It did not matter. She held out what she’d brought and let her eyes touch him, as her fingers had the night before. There, and there, and there .

“A new pot o’ soap. Go carefully wi’ it. There is not much to spare.”

He took the pot and the cloth from her, their hands brushing. She relived the feel of his hand at her breast, the thumb sliding over her before his mouth followed.

“I missed ye,” she said. Simple words, but they caused him to stop washing and raise his head, caused the light in his hazel eyes to flare.

“I missed ye also, full well.”

Not much of an exchange—it was all she was permitted. Just to have him near her this evening, to watch him wash and eat and smile and speak. It would have to be enough.

To last the rest of her life.

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