Chapter 10
The Great Hall was crowded the night after the attack on the distillery, the atmosphere was hushed. As if all the clansfolk felt they needed to gather to remind themselves that they were still here, still unharmed.
Ciaran couldn’t blame any of them for feeling the weight of the day so heavily. He felt it, too. He had felt this way for the past months.
“The distillery itself is undamaged?” Ailsa asked her husband—for the benefit of those gathered, Ciaran surmised, as it seemed unlikely that the laird and lady of the keep had not already conferred on this matter.
Ewan nodded, but his frown lingered.
“Aye. The structure is secure. Our work will be able to continue.” He paused, as though uncertain that he wanted to speak more.
“But I dislike the breach of our borders. It discomfits me that these men got so close to our keep, to our women and children. It does not sit easy to ken that treachery is so close.”
Closer than ye ken, Buchanan, Ciaran thought bitterly, stabbing a boiled potato so fiercely that it split in two. The sound of his fork against his plate made an unpleasant clang in the anxious hush of the hall, and when Ciaran glanced up, Ailsa was giving him a curious look.
He didn’t dare look over at Eilidh. He still had that scrap of bloody Gunn tartan to remind him of the dangers of getting too close to her.
“Well.” Kirsty’s voice was too loud for the atmosphere of the room, and Ciaran hid a wince. “I think that ye are all forgetting something verra important.”
“What’s that, my lady?” Ewan asked, not quite able to summon enough politeness to hide the weariness in his tone.
Kirsty beamed at the laird, either unaware of his mood or unbothered by it.
“Ye started a new production today,” she chirped.
“And when ye start a new batch of whisky, ye must drink to your success. If ye fail to do so, you willnae find that the drink comes out smooth. Come along, then,” she chided, raising her cup and waving it around until some others began to cautiously copy her. “Raise a glass. Come on.”
They all murmured a toast. Ciaran even heard a couple of amused chuckles when Kirsty made a show of throwing back her entire glass.
“Ach, that’s more like it,” she said, putting her cup down with an audible clink, like she was a feudal lord of old.
“Why, I remember the revels we used to have when the Gunns turned out a good batch of our whisky. The men would spar and they’d be quite brave about it after they’d had a few drams in them, so it would be quite a show.
I remember the young ladies betting wee tokens—hair ribbons, sweet meats, whatever we had on hand—that the lads that we each fancied would come out on top.
” Kirsty shot an outrageous wink at Vaila McGregor.
“And I’m nae ashamed to say that when it was my sweetheart—well, whoever I liked best at the time; I confess to a fickle heart—who came out on top, I would reward him with a tender favor. ”
She pursed her lips in a sketch of a kiss, making it impossible not to understand what kind of tender favor she meant.
Vaila shook her head, laughing slightly.
“Incorrigible,” she commented, the word sounding like praise.
Kirsty took it as such. “Why thank ye, Mistress McGregor. I was quite a bonny wee thing in my day, and we would all dance until dawn, until we could scarcely feel our feet from all the stomping and twirling about.”
“You’re still bonny!” This came from a man on the side of the room who had to have been eighty if he was a day. A ruddy-faced woman who looked to be his daughter swatted at him while everyone around him laughed.
Kirsty blew a kiss in his direction this time.
“And don’t ye forget it!” she commanded pertly.
The atmosphere in the room was noticeably lighter, and Ciaran paused to reflect on why he loved his aunt, even when she spent most of her time driving him mad. Kirsty might be frequently absurd, an inveterate flirt, and a shameless matchmaker. But she did know how to make people smile.
Hell, even he was tempted by the memories of the scenes she described.
He could recall being a wee lad himself, holding his father’s sword.
He hadn’t even been able to lift the thing at the time, but his father had perched Ciaran on his knee and helped him hold the blade while he’d explained to his son all the strategies that the sparring men were using.
He’d whisper advice in Ciaran’s ear, “This man ought to have done this; och, that will cost him the battle, don’t you see, mo graidh?”
Ciaran had hung onto his father’s every word, certain that there was no fiercer warrior in the world than Laird Gunn, beaming with pride that he was this man’s son.
“Did ye compete, Ciaran?” Mairi Buchanan’s question drew him out of his reverie, and he saw the woman leaning eagerly towards him, her eyes alight.
Kirsty, seated several people away from Mairi, gave Ciaran a suggestive—and completely obvious—eyebrow waggle, but somehow Ciaran gathered that Mairi was more interested in the story in general than she was intrigued by him in particular.
“Nay,” he said, shaking his head. “The times that my aunt recalls, I was too young to compete myself, though I can remember watching from my father’s side.”
And by the time he was old enough to play at battle, he had been shipped off to war to shed blood for his clan’s honor, not that he’d been terribly successful.
Mairi seemed unwilling to let his silence linger, though.
“But surely ye have some grand tales to tell,” she prodded. “Ye arenae famed for nothing. Please. Regale us.”
He almost refused, but some foolish pride that still lingered within him urged him to speak. He wanted them—wanted Eilidh, even though he still did not dare so much as look at her—to know that he was capable. Or that he had been, once.
“I warn ye,” he began, all too aware of the many ears hanging on his every word. “It isnae the kind of tale that reminds ye of the pride of Scotland. We were honorable men, those of us who took up arms against the tyranny of the English, but our work was inglorious more often than not.”
He shook his head, the memories coming back to him as they always did—in crushing waves that made him feel as though he might blink and realize that every moment of the years since he’d marched with the Jacobites was no more than a dream, that he was actually still there, broadsword clenched in his hand, facing down what was likely certain death.
Facing down the British army, which had brought death to so many of the men he’d called friends and comrades.
“We saw near every patch of mud in Scotland as we marched to face the English,” he said.
He could almost smell it, that damp, earthy smell that wasn’t unpleasant until you considered that it clung to everything.
“I recall the marches more than the battles, in truth. The battles were fast, brutal. Ye fought and ye survived, or ye fought and ye died. That was all there was to it. But the marches were bloody eternal.”
Nobody spoke when he paused. Nobody so much as breathed.
“We were proud, we men of the Black Watch,” he said. “We knew we were likely to die. Most of us did die. But we believed, and that… it was no small thing.”
This time, when he found himself unable to summon more words to describe it, that strange and meaningful time in his life, Ewan offered his piece.
“Ye should be proud,” he said, the words surprisingly gentle. “It takes a great deal of bravery to face the kinds of odds that ye did, to defend your home even when hope is so scant.”
Proud. Ciaran barely managed to choke back the bitter laugh that wanted to escape him. Aye, he’d been proud then. But there was nothing left in him that was good enough to deserve that pride.
If only they kenned the truth, he thought, his inner voice perilously close to despair. If only they understood that I am no hero but merely a pawn of their enemy. How differently they would look at me then.
How differently she would look at him… He didn’t even dare to think it.
Suddenly, he could take it no longer. He could feel her there, so beautiful and good, even when he was the most terrible little pest. Christ, how he wanted to be the kind of man who deserved to know her.
But he wasn’t even the kind of man who deserved to sit in the same room as her.
He looked up at Eilidh—he simply could no longer stop himself—and he saw sympathy in her gaze and the bitter determination to bear witness to anything he had to say.
One look from those sea green eyes, and Ciaran felt the walls begin to close in around him.
“I beg your leave,” he managed to grit out in Ewan’s direction as he stood and strode from the room.
Let them think him overcome with the memories of war. Let them think him shattered by his past. They could believe what they wanted. Nothing they might mutter behind his back would be nearly as bad as the truth.
When he burst out into the cool night air, he sucked in a breath like he’d been drowning, the crisp bite in his lungs reminding him that he was alive, for all that he scarcely deserved to be.
He let the darkness bathe him in its forgiving shadows, his chest heaving with the exertion of constantly bearing this shame upon his back.
Christ, he could recall the faces of a hundred men who deserved to live more than he had, but who had died in the mud of Culloden anyway. It was the bitterest irony that he was the one who had survived only to now betray everything that he and his fallen comrades had once held dear.
“Ciaran?”
When her voice broke the dark, Ciaran didn’t know whether to laugh or sob. Of course she’d followed him. She had never known when to leave someone well enough alone. She’d never treated him as a lost cause, even though he had been one long before he first laid eyes on her.
“Eilidh,” he muttered, not turning to look at her. “Leave me.”
Instead of retreating, however, her light footsteps grew closer, and he had little time to brace himself before a gentle hand was laid on his back.
It almost crushed him, that touch, far more than any fist or blade had ever done.
“Eilidh,” he repeated, the word cracking with emotion.
“It may unburden ye to speak of it,” she said, her confidence suggesting a wisdom that went beyond her years. But that was war, wasn’t it? It made you grow up far too quickly.
He shook his head once, roughly. He couldn’t. He could not confess his sins, not without risking his people. And yet…
He could not send her away, either.
They stayed there for a moment that lasted an age. Ciaran wondered if he would finally break when she removed her hand, when she finally realized that he had nothing to give and gave up on him once and for all.
But the wee sprite surprised him, as she always did.
She didn’t remove her hand; she just trailed it over his shoulder and down his arm until she could lace her fingers in his.
He would no doubt burn in hell for letting her offer him comfort when he was nothing but a danger to her, but it would be worth the fires of damnation.
“What do ye need?” she asked quietly, and it was such a simple question, but he wasn't certain that anyone had ever asked it of him before.
He closed his eyes tight against the feelings that he simply could not afford to have about this wonderful, wonderful lass.
“Come with me,” he urged after a moment in which his selfishness overtook his honor. He could steal just a few moments with her. Just this one thing that he could take.
And because she was perfect and lovely and light—even in the faint glow of the moon, her golden hair shined like a star—she just let out a laugh and let him tug her along.
“Where are we going?”
She followed before he replied, and God help him if he’d ever done anything to merit that trust.
“For a ride,” he said, guiding her toward the stables.
She laughed again. “At night?”
“The moon is full,” he said, gesturing up at the cloudless sky with his free hand. It wasn’t really the moon that cast the light around them, though, he was certain. It was her; she practically glowed from within, and each delighted laugh made her shine all the brighter.
The moment Shadowbane saw Ciaran, he let out an excited whinny and stomped his foot; even though the mount had been cared for by several doting hands over the past week while Ciaran recovered, he’d been neglected by his master.
As Ciaran offered whispered apologies to Shadow, Eilidh crossed directly to a stallion with a pale coat, who gleamed nearly as brightly as his mistress.
“This is Grian,” she said proudly, stroking the horse’s nose. “He’s the most spoiled horse in these stables, but he’s never once let me down.”
They each saddled their horse, quiet as thieves, which Ciaran supposed was fitting; he was stealing this time with her.
God knew he hadn’t earned it. They made quick work of it, and it was mere moments before they each led their mounts to the yard.
Eilidh looked so happy, so beautiful as she stroked Grian’s nose that Ciaran briefly wondered if maybe she didn’t need this just as much as he did.
“Allow me,” he said, stepping close, ready to lift her into the saddle.
Eilidh glanced at his extended hands, then burst into laughter, tossing her long braid over her shoulder. God, the crimes Ciaran would commit to feel that rope of hair between his palms.
“Ye forget,” she said saucily. “I am a Donaghey.”
And then, with so little effort that it looked as though she floated from the ground, she mounted on her own, in one swift motion. She grinned down at him from the saddle, fierce and radiant, a warrior princess atop her steed.
“My mistake,” he managed through the catch in his throat. He pulled himself into his own saddle, grateful for the twinges from his unused muscles. He needed some kind of distraction.
She was too lovely, too strong, too bright. It almost hurt just to look at her, and yet he couldn’t make himself look away, not for more than a moment.
“Let’s go,” she urged, kicking her mount into a trot with expert grace.
He followed instantly. She was too good for the likes of him, not that he hadn’t known that already. She was everything…
And he was going to soak in every moment of their scant time together, for all too soon, they would reach the time when the regard in her eyes would turn to hate, and he would lose her forever.