CHAPTER 30
Finn walked the last few miles back to Helmsdale with rain and wind pelting his face like accusations. Now that Alex was safely away and Finn had lost the Sinclair men following him, he could no longer avoid thinking about his mistakes with Margaret.
With time and distance, he recognized that he could have responded better to the revelation that she was able to conceive a child. And he definitely should not have shouted at her and told her she had to marry him. That was not at all how he planned his marriage proposal to go.
He’d forgotten all about the wee dog until he whimpered.
“What do you have to complain about?” he said as he reached in to pat the dog. “You’re warm and dry in there.”
After another mile, he thought about the miscarriage she suffered during the Battle of the Causeway. It can’t have been easy for her to share her pain from that day, and all he could hear at the time was that she was not barren. He thought she’d lied to him.
For the first time, it occurred to him that perhaps she had not rejected him because he was not good enough or because she did not care, but because she was afraid.
Afraid of being under a man’s authority again.
Afraid of being mistreated and taken advantage of.
Afraid of losing a child again. Afraid of being abandoned.
After what she’d been through, he should have known, but he’d been blinded by his own past. Though he pretended his family’s rejection and Curstag’s betrayal did not affect him, they made him believe he was unworthy of love and could never truly belong.
What if Margaret was with child now? His child. Surely many women who had miscarriages also had healthy children.
God knew he never expected to be a father, and Gilbert had set a poor example. But Finn would try his best. He wanted to be the kind of father he did not have. The kind who saw the good in his children, who laughed with them, and who was always there for them when troubles came.
But if Margaret lost the child, he could not bear for her to suffer alone. He needed to be with her, no matter what happened.
He leaned into the wind. The storm had not let up, and it was full dark now. He could not explain it, but an uneasy feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. A warrior learned to trust his instincts, and his instincts told him Margaret was in danger.
He started to run. He did not stop until he reached Helmsdale. He was out of breath as he passed through the gate.
“Finn—” The guard tried to speak to him, but Finn ignored him and continued across the yard without pausing.
Though he tried to tell himself he had no cause to fear for Margaret’s safety, his pulse pounded, find her, find her, FIND HER! He burst into the hall, but she was not there. He took the stairs at a dead run.
When he opened the door to their chamber, it was empty. His stomach dropped to the floor when he saw that all her belongings were gone. He opened the door to Una’s chamber and found it empty too. He sat down on the bed he’d shared with Margaret and held his head in his hands.
She had left him.
He was overwhelmed with regret. Regret that he had not told her he loved her. Regret that he had not made the most of every moment he had with her. Regret that they would not live to old age together and watch Ella and the other children they might have grow up.
The dog poked his head out of the bag and nudged Finn with his paw, as if prodding him to get up and do something. Here he was wallowing in remorse when Margaret could be in danger.
Even if she still wanted to leave him, she promised not to go before he returned. Something must have happened to make her decide she could not wait for him. Margaret would not break her word lightly, so that something must have been serious and unexpected.
And how did she leave? A beautiful woman like Margaret could always persuade some man to take her where she wanted to go. But would the man she chose keep her safe? Would he be a danger to her? Margaret was altogether too trusting.
Finn needed to find her and make sure she was safe. If she did not want to come back with him, he would see her safely to the MacKenzies himself. He started for the door, but something on the floor just under the edge of the bed caught his eye.
His hand shook as he picked up Ella’s rag doll.
The wee bairn had carried it across half of Scotland and could not sleep without it.
They must have been in a terrible hurry to leave without it.
He examined the room more closely now, looking for clues, and found Margaret’s cloak wedged between the bed and wall.
O shluagh, she had gone out on this cold and stormy night without it.
He was more certain than ever that something terrible had happened. Moving quickly, he tucked his axe in his belt, gathered her cloak and the other things he might need, and ran down the stairs to the hall.
“Has anyone seen my wife?” he shouted at the group gathered around the hearth.
Everyone, except for Isabel and Curstag, shifted their gazes to the floor or the ceiling, anywhere but at him. Curstag gave him a pitying smile and drew him aside.
“How well do ye really know this Maggie?” she asked.
“Why would ye ask that now?”
“I want ye to hear this from a friend who cares about ye,” she said. “I’m afraid there’s speculation about her since she disappeared tonight.”
“Speculation of what?” he demanded, though he could guess that they all thought she’d run off with another man.
“I’m not saying I believe it,” Curstag said in a hushed voice, as if everyone in the hall did not already know what she was about to tell him. “I like to see the best in people, but her sneaking away does appear to prove it.”
“Prove what?” Goddammit, would the woman not get to the point?
“That your mysterious bride is the one who did it, of course,” she said.
“I’ve no time for your games.” Finn resisted the urge to shake her. “Speak plainly.”
“They’re saying Maggie is the murderer,” Curstag said. “She used ye, and now that the black deed is done, she’s gone and left ye.”
“She is no murderer.” He turned and shouted at the others, “I need men to help me search for my wife!”
He waited for someone to come forward. None did.
“There’s no sense in looking for her till daylight,” one of the men ventured. “Even if she’s out there, we won’t find her tonight in this storm.”
Between the darkness and the storm, the odds were against finding her. But what these men were really thinking was that, whether Margaret was the murderer of no, she had left him and did not want to be found.
Belatedly, it occurred to Finn that someone in this room could be the reason she left in a rush without her cloak and Ella’s doll. He could not take any of them with him, even if they offered. He needed to do this alone.
When he reached the gate, the guard was there.
“I was here when your wife left,” he said. “She didn’t seem right to me.”
“What do ye mean, not right?”
“At first, I thought she’d had a few too many nips of whisky, but I don’t believe that was it,” the guard said, drawing his brows together. “Usually she greets everyone with a smile and a few words, but she was real quiet-like and acted as if she did not really see me.”
“Did she say anything?”
“Just one thing,” he said, after pausing to think. “After I told her the weather was turning bad, she said, ‘I must hurry.’”
Was Margaret in a hurry because of the weather or some other reason?
“I was surprised to see her without that wee lassie of hers,” the guard said.
“Ella wasn’t with her?” Finn asked, alarm coursing through his body. “You’re sure?”
“Aye,” the guard said. “I saw Una take the bairn out in the afternoon, but I assumed they’d come back long since.”
Questions swirled in Finn’s head as he saddled Ceò.
Was Margaret worried because Una and Ella were late returning with a storm brewing?
If so, why had she not alerted the men and asked them to help her look for them?
Instead, she had slipped out quietly on her own as it was growing dark without mentioning to the guard that they were still out and she was going to fetch them.
The guard said she acted strangely. Was she ill? Afraid?
Finn wondered again if she was trying to evade someone, to leave without that someone realizing she did not intend to return. If anyone saw her leave without Ella, they would assume she was going out for a short time, not departing. The same was true if they saw Una and Ella go out.
Why the subterfuge? As Finn was away at the time, it could not be him Margaret was attempting to evade. Who was she afraid of? And in this storm, where would she go?
He had to think. If Una was helping Margaret and Ella escape, he thought he knew where the old nursemaid would take them. He hoped to God he was right and that they were not out in this storm without shelter.
“We’ll see if you’re a hunter,” he said, holding Margaret’s cloak to the dog’s nose. “Help me find her.”
He tucked the dog inside the fold of his plaid with Ella’s ragdoll then led Ceò out into the driving rain.
Holding the lantern in front of him, he followed the path that led to Lachlan’s cottage.
It was four miles, a fair distance for an old woman with a young bairn, but Una knew every inch from walking it for sixty-odd years.
And unlike Margaret, Una and Ella had left in daylight and before the storm.
Every few yards he called Margaret’s name and paused, hoping to hear a response over the sound of the rough sea pounding against the cliffs.
Ruff! Ruff! Ruff! The wee dog stuck his head out of Finn’s cloak and barked.
“What is it, laddie?”
The dog leaped down and sniffed frantically around Finn’s feet. Before Finn could grab him, he darted off the path into the darkness. Where in the hell was he going?
“Get back here,” Finn shouted.
Ruff! Ruff!
Ice lodged in Finn’s heart. Surely, Margaret knew better than to wander off the path in the dark. But she was not from Sutherland. Had he warned her about the danger of the bogs here in the flow country? He could not remember.
Ruff! Ruff!
Finn went after the dog, stepping through thick gorse and slipping on moss-covered rocks. If the dog was chasing a damned rabbit, Finn was losing precious time—not to mention risking falling into a bog himself—but he had to take the chance that the dog had picked up Margaret or Ella’s scent.
Surely, Margaret could not have gone more than a few feet before realizing she’d gone off the trail. He raised the lantern and peered through the rain but saw nothing that could give her shelter and entice her to come this way with darkness falling and the storm growing worse.
Annoyed with himself for letting the dog divert him, he turned around.
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The sea had reached Margaret’s perch on the highest part of the rocky floor and lapped around her as she lay curled on her side. But Margaret felt at peace. She was not cold anymore. She had ceased to feel her body some time ago.
As she felt herself drifting away, she saw Finn holding her sweet Ella on his lap. That made her heart glad—until she saw that Ella was weeping and Finn’s face was etched with grief. When she tried to reach for them, she floated farther and farther away…
Maggie! Maggie! In her dream, she heard Finn calling to her. His voice was far away. She wanted to get up and look for him, but her body was so very heavy…
And she could not hear him anymore.