Chapter Nine The Ashes of Home #2
Instead darkness surged at the edges of her vision and took all strength with it.
The last thing she heard before the world fell away was Hamish beginning to sob in the middle of the yard.
When Eilidh woke, it was dark.
Not the dark of unconsciousness. The dark of a chamber with one lamp burning low and shutters closed against evening. For a few confused heartbeats she did not know where she was. Then the smell of lavender and old linen told her it was her room at Kincaid.
Memory returned all at once.
Jardine. The gate. Dead.
A sound broke from her throat, so raw and low she did not at first recognize it as her own.
Mairead was at her side instantly. “My lady.”
Eilidh turned her face away. “Do not call me that.”
The words came scraped raw.
Mairead went very still. “Eilidh.”
That was worse somehow. More intimate. More real.
She pressed both hands to her mouth because if she did not, the room would fill with some animal cry that would never end. For a moment she managed it. Then the cry came anyway, torn loose from somewhere beneath speech, beneath dignity, beneath anything she had ever called herself.
Mairead gathered her and let the grief take its first true shape.
It came in waves so violent Eilidh thought she might choke on them.
Her uncle. The keep. The fields. The root cellar passage.
Ross alive perhaps, perhaps not, a handful of women and children in the hills, hunted because neutrality had proved itself too feeble even to buy time.
And her father’s memory there too, threaded through it all.
When the first storm of weeping passed, it left her hollow and shaking.
Mairead sat beside her on the bed, one hand still around hers. “Morna gave you a draught,” she said softly. “You slept for some hours.”
“What hour is it?”
“Near midnight.”
One whole day gone from the world while grief had blotted her out.
“Who else knows?” she asked.
“All the keep by now.” Mairead’s voice roughened.
“Gavin sent riders to gather any Jardine survivors found on allied roads. Hamish sleeps under guard in case more details are needed. Donal has kept the hall from becoming a pit of rumor. Morna threatened to strike the first man who used the word opportunity in her hearing.”
That last might have drawn a bitter laugh on another night.
“And Kenan?” The name escaped before she could choose otherwise.
Mairead’s grip shifted slightly. “He asked after you. Twice. I sent him away.”
Eilidh closed her eyes.
Good, she wanted to say. Good. Let him stay away. Let all of them stay away. Let no man who makes maps from grief come near her with comfort.
But the thought did not hold shape. It broke apart against the memory of his arms catching her in the yard, of his face when Hamish said dead.
“I should go to the war room,” she said after a long silence.
Mairead stared at her. “No.”
“They will need to know what paths were used. Who among the tenants might have turned. Which stewards held keys to the lower gate. Whether the birch track can still be defended if survivors flee west.”
The words came steadily, too steadily. Eilidh heard it even as she spoke. The same cold edge she had feared in Kenan now brushing at her own voice.
Mairead tightened her hand sharply. “No.”
Eilidh turned to her, and the maid’s eyes filled at once. “Do not do this tonight,” Mairead whispered. “Do not become stone in the same hour you bury them.”
The plea struck home.
Stone. No. Not yet. But she could feel the temptation of it, and that frightened her more than collapse had. If she let herself begin counting routes and losses now, she might not stop.
Had Kenan felt this? That first split between unbearable grief and the cold relief of action?
The thought came unbidden and with it a sudden, furious resentment.
Yes, he would understand, would he not. He who had spent men for victory. He who would no doubt already be turning Jardine’s ruin into calculations of roads, loyalties, and next blows. He who had loved her while her home was burning.
The anger lit so quickly it almost comforted.
Then shame followed so fast it made her sick.
Mairead saw some part of it in her face. “Do not think tonight,” she said. “Only endure it.”
A knock came at the outer door.
Mairead’s whole body went rigid. “No.”
The knock came again, softer this time.
Eilidh knew before the maid rose who stood beyond it.
“Do not send him in,” she said.
Mairead hesitated.
“Please,” Eilidh whispered, and that finally decided it.
The maid crossed the room. A murmur of voices passed through the wood, too low to distinguish fully. Then Mairead returned.
“He will wait outside until dawn if I let him.”
Eilidh shut her eyes.
Of course he would.
That was the cruelty of loving a man like Kenan. He would not batter at a door. He would not demand entry to grief not offered him. He would simply remain outside the threshold, impossible to ignore.
“Then let him wait,” she said.
The chamber fell quiet again.
Yet from somewhere beyond the door, beyond the thick old wood and the narrow passage lit by one wall torch, she could feel him there.
Awake while the keep slept. Guarding perhaps, or punishing himself, or merely refusing to leave because he could not mend what had happened and would not abandon the place where it landed.
She turned her face into the pillow at last and let the second wave of grief come in silence.
Toward dawn the weeping stopped, not because sorrow eased, but because the body had limits.
Eilidh lay on her side with the blanket pulled tight around her shoulders, eyes open to the dim line of light beginning beneath the shutters. Mairead slept in the chair by the hearth, head tilted awkwardly against the wall, having refused to leave and finally lost the battle against exhaustion.
The room smelled of spent lamp oil and cold ashes.
Outside the door, there had been no footsteps for some time. Either Kenan had gone at last or learned to stand so still he made no sound at all.
When the latch lifted softly, she sat up at once.
Mairead woke with a jerk and half rose from the chair before realizing the door had opened only a narrow span. Morna slipped in first, holding a tray with broth and fresh water. Behind her, just visible in the passage light, stood Kenan.
His face in that gray hour nearly broke her.
He looked older by years than he had the day before. Not because of battle weariness. Because grief not his own had found a place in him and stayed. He met her eyes once and then lowered his gaze, as if even looking directly at her hurt too much.
Morna set the tray down and said quietly, “You need broth.”
Eilidh did not answer.
Morna glanced between them, then back to Mairead. “Come with me. There are fresh linens in the lower cupboard I require.”
Mairead started to protest. One look from Morna ended that. Reluctantly, the maid crossed to the door.
Kenan moved back to let them pass.
When they were gone, the chamber held only the two of them and the grief between.
He did not come closer.
That, more than anything, told her he understood the edge she now stood on.
“Hamish spoke again,” he said at last. His voice was low and roughened by a night without sleep. “Ross likely got some clear through the birch hollow. Gavin sent riders there and west toward the sheep hills. If any of your people can be found, they will be brought under escort.”
Eilidh stared at the blanket pooled in her lap. “You have already made it an operation.”
The words came sharper than she intended.
Kenan took the blow without flinching. “Aye.”
“No sorrow. No shock. Straight to riders and routes.”
“There was sorrow.”
She looked up then.
He stood just inside the threshold, hands empty, face stripped bare of every protection except the one she now hated most, his ability to keep standing beneath what would have crushed other men to the floor.
“And there was action,” he said. “Because they may still be alive.”