Chapter Sixteen
Rose gave up tossing and turning in her bed, threw back the covers, and went to sit in the chair by the window.
Dawn was breaking out over the ocean, the sky clear and the sea calm, but Rose’s emotions were anything but.
She’d not slept. Now she pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes to try and keep in the emotion that tightened her chest. It did no good.
The tears came anyway, leaking from beneath her eyelids and running down her cheeks.
This could not be happening. It couldn’t.
Images of Catriona’s tortured expression flashed through her head, and her stomach knotted with dread and despair.
Why her? Why a nine-year-old girl? What had she ever done to deserve this?
Rose knew it was futile to ask such things. Through the years of treating sickness, she’d learned that there was no rhyme or reason to it and that it could strike at anyone, young or old, fit or unfit. Asking such questions only drove you mad.
Yet she couldn’t help it. The despair she’d seen etched on Cailean’s face broke her heart. He didn’t deserve this either.
Rose thumped her fists down on the arms of her chair in sudden fury. It was better to feel anger than the sick sensation that bubbled underneath it, the sensation that would rise up and swallow her whole if she let it.
Guilt.
Was this her fault? Had she caused this? The rational part of her mind wanted to deny it. Yet some deeper, more instinctive part whispered that this was because of her. Because of what she’d done that afternoon.
Her thoughts went flitting back to that moment on the headland. That moment with the storm crashing around her and the waves lashing the rocks and that voice in her head whispering, “Come to me.”
But she had not. Cailean had stopped her. And in response, she’d felt a burning anger from whatever lurked beneath the waves. Anger led to vengeance.
Was this that vengeance? Was Catriona being punished for what she, Rose, had done?
The tears came again, and she leaned forward, curling over her stomach as the sobs wracked her. She wasn’t strong enough for this. How had she ever believed she was? She was just plain old Rose MacFinnan, and despite everything she’d tried to do to help these people, she had failed.
Now Cailean’s daughter was going to pay the price for that failure.
No, she thought. She won’t. I won’t let that happen.
She wiped away her tears, straightened in her chair, and took a deep breath. From her seat she could see the sea in the distance at the bottom of the hill, looking quiet and tranquil now that the storm had passed. The sea. It all started and ended with the sea.
And in particular, with a goddess of the sea.
“Lir!” Rose bellowed, rising to her feet. “Lir! Attend me! I want some answers, damn you!”
The sea goddess had brought her here, asking for her help. Well, now she needed some help herself.
She turned in a circle, her fists clenched at her sides. “Lir!” she bellowed. “Where are you?”
There was no response. That ember of anger deep in her belly began to burn again, flaring to life and washing away Rose’s grief.
Instead, fury filled her veins. She was tired of being used.
Lir had asked for her help but had offered none of her own.
Well, enough was enough. It was time for answers, and if Lir wouldn’t respond to Rose’s call, then she would make her.
Rose’s gaze flicked to the desk and the platter that held the crumbs from her breakfast. But it wasn’t the platter she was looking at.
It was the knife that sat on it.
Her nostrils flared, the anger burning hotter. Oh yes, there was a way to make the goddess answer. It was dangerous, appallingly so, and she had been taught never, ever to try such a thing. She no longer cared.
She had promised Cailean she would save Catriona, and she intended to keep that promise. No matter what it took. She glanced out of the window at the waves beating against the shore in the distance.
Then she grabbed the knife, clasped it hard in her fist, and strode out the door.
*
Cailean placed the flowers he’d picked from the meadow on the mound at his feet and knelt, the grass wet with morning dew against his bare knees.
He bowed his head, allowing his hair to fall forward to curtain his face.
All night he’d sat by Catriona’s bedside, but as dawn came and he’d found himself falling asleep in his chair, he’d forced himself to come here, to face what he’d been avoiding.
Around him, the wind hissed, making the tall grasses wave and sending whispers through the branches of the trees. To Cailean they sounded like accusing voices.
Traitor, they whispered. Betrayer.
He lifted his head and looked at the mound in front of him. A tiny alder tree grew from the head of it, bravely battling the wind. There was no name to mark who lay beneath, no carved cross or other marker.
But Cailean didn’t need any of that. The name of the person who lay here was carved across his soul.
“Mary,” he whispered, barely able to speak the word. “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”
The cold weight of guilt settled on his shoulders, heavier than an anvil. He had loved his wife. He had promised to hold to her for his entire life, but he had broken that promise. And when their daughter had needed him the most, he’d been in the arms of another woman.
Rose’s face flashed through his mind. With it came that lifting of his soul he felt whenever she was near, that brightening of the world around him. Just for an instant. In the next, the guilt crashed back in and that lightness was replaced with self-loathing.
Dear God, what sort of man was he? What sort of man took his pleasure with a woman while his daughter lay ill? What sort of man put his own lust before the needs of his people?
Dark despair washed through him, closing his throat.
“My laird?”
He looked up to see Sister Beatrice standing nearby. Alarm spiked in his belly. “What is it? Is it Catriona?”
“Nay, laird,” Beatrice replied, holding out a placating hand. “Maggie is with her. There has been no change. She’s sleeping soundly, thanks to Rose.”
Thanks to Rose. Just the sound of her name sent a tremor along his skin. Oh, how he ached to be with her now. How he ached to feel her arms around him, ached to hear her telling him everything was going to be all right. And that only made him feel all the guiltier.
“Then what do ye want?” he snapped more forcefully than he intended. The last thing he needed right now was any of her preaching.
Instead of replying, she knelt on the ground by his side, ignoring the mud that dirtied her pristine white habit.
“She was a fine woman,” she said. “We all miss her.”
Cailean did not respond. He was in no mood for talking, especially not about his wife.
“She was strong-willed, decisive, a fit match for the laird of Barra,” Beatrice continued. “But do ye know what impressed me the most about her? The way she put others’ happiness before her own. Her daughter’s. Yers.”
Cailean scowled. “What are ye getting at? If ye have something to say, sister, spit it out.”
“Do ye think Mary would want ye to be unhappy? Do ye think she would begrudge what ye have found with Rose MacFinnan?”
Cailean looked at her sharply. “What are ye talking about?”
“Oh, I think ye know. I may be a nun now, but I wasnae always wedded to God, ye know. I have some experience of matters of the heart, and even if I didnae it wouldnae be too difficult to see what ye feel for her. It’s written in every line of yer face whenever ye look at her.”
Cailean opened his mouth for an angry retort, to tell Beatrice to mind her own business, to tell her that she didn’t know what she was talking about. But his anger drained away under her knowing gaze. There was no judgment in her eyes, only a steady, deep compassion.
He hung his head. “What am I going to do, Beatrice?” he whispered.
Her hand caught his and clasped it. “Firstly, ye are going to let go of this guilt that sits like a shadow in yer eyes. Ye loved Mary, we all know that. But it isnae a betrayal to let another in to yer heart.”
A shudder went through Cailean. He felt like weeping. He felt like bellowing. He felt like roaring his frustration at the sky. But all he did was squeeze Beatrice’s hand in response.
Was she right? He didn’t know.
“And if I canna?”
She fixed him with a stern glare. “Then ye will have lost something precious, something most of us never find in our lifetimes. And it will shrivel ye inside. Ye wish to be a good laird? A good father? Then ye need to be happy. Open yer heart, Cailean MacNeil. Allow the sun to shine inside. Allow Rose MacFinnan in.”
Cailean didn’t know how to reply. These were the last words he’d expected from her. He’d expected her usual words of fire and brimstone, proclaiming that what had happened to Catriona was some sort of judgment from God and that it was his fault for giving into the sin of lust.
But it wasn’t lust, he realized suddenly. Not lust. Something else entirely.
It was love.
*
Rose ignored everyone who waved to her or called her name as she descended along the winding path down the hill through the village.
Cailean’s work crews were out helping to clean up the mess from the last storm. Rose stepped around crates of supplies, piles of blown debris and collapsed rubble, and kept herself focused on her destination.
She reached the bottom of the hill and kept going, picking her way through the tussocky grass and then down the sand dunes, onto the beach, and right up to the water. She didn’t stop until the cold waves were lapping around her ankles, soaking the hem of her dress.
“Lir!” she screamed into the wind. “Answer me, damn you!”
There was no response except the hiss and whoosh of the waves. Rose’s nostrils flared, and a hot surge of anger went through her. Fine. She would rather it hadn’t come to this, but she was left with no choice.