Chapter 18
Cameron could scarcely believe the words he’d just heard. They continued to ring in his ears sharply—horrible, deafening, maddening.
“But you have barely been here two days! How can you already be so certain you wish to leave? Have I been such a dreadful host? Have you lost all affection for me? For you did harbor affection, Cora, you cannot possibly deny that! If you had not, you would never have agreed to come here in the first place!”
They stood in the garden, having passed a rather stiff and awkward meal with the others. The entire time, Cameron had sensed that something was very wrong and had been anxious to discover what it might be.
Now that he had learned the cause of it, however, he was horrified.
“You have been a wonderful host, Cameron,” Cora replied sadly.
“And no, I have lost none of my affection for you. In truth, I doubt such a thing would be possible, given how I yearn for you. You are the finest man I have ever met, and it would be an honor to be your bride. I only wish that I could.”
“But you can!” he insisted. “Of course you can! The only person denying this to you is yourself, for pity’s sake!”
“I cannot change who I am, and I cannot change the situation we find ourselves in,” she countered.
“If you had been born in London, perhaps, or I had been born here… But no, it’s useless to speculate on such things when we will never know how they might have turned out.
You have made it perfectly clear that living in London would not suit you at all, and I would never wish to subject you to a life you would find uncomfortable.
I would not dream of forcing you to live somewhere you would never properly fit in or feel like you belong.
A place where people look down upon you.
Surely, then, you must likewise understand why I could not tolerate living in such a place either? ”
“As I told you before, Cora, the attitudes of the people would not remain hard-hearted toward you forever! Aye, they have a natural suspicion when it comes to the English…”
“It’s a bit more than ‘suspicion,’ Cameron, you must admit,” she observed. Her eyes were welling up with tears. “They despise us, and you know it.”
“But they are good people at heart,” he assured her. “You must give them more of a chance! Please, won’t you just remain a few days more? Won’t you give me a chance to show you how marvelous life could be here with me and my family?”
“Your family.” She laughed humorlessly, and now the tears did begin to spill down her cheeks. “They are not, I think, overly fond of me either.”
“I will concede that my father had something rather different in mind when he sent me to London,” Cameron admitted.
“My brother is overly protective of me, and my sisters, well, they can be a right pain in the arse, no two ways about it. What matters most to all of them, though, is my happiness. Once they have come to understand that happiness is what you bring me—you, and no one else—they will come to not only accept you but love you. Again, I urge you to give it just a little more time rather than deciding too hastily!”
“If I thought that such a thing would do any good, Cameron, I would agree to it,” she told him.
“But I fear that all it will serve to do is give you false hope when I know in my heart that my decision would remain the same. I cannot drag the pain of our parting out any longer. The sooner it ends, the sooner we may both begin to heal and seek out others who may be more suited for us.”
“I will never be able to heal from such a thing,” he declared, “nor will I ever find one who is better suited for me as a wife since none could possibly exist in all the world. We are meant for each other, Cora! I feel it in my soul, and if you tell me that it is well and truly over between us, then it will destroy me.”
“Then I should never have come here to begin with,” she sobbed. “I should have known it would only build your hopes up to dash them in the end, and I should have remained in London.”
“You cannot possibly let the mere problem of location sway you to give up on true love!” His voice hitched, and he felt as though he might begin to weep as well.
He could not remember the last time he had done so.
Certainly not since childhood, and not in front of others, for the shame and indignity of making such a spectacle of himself would have been too much for him.
But now he found he could not help it. His entire world seemed to be crumbling around him.
“You say it is a small problem,” she observed, “but you of all people should know better than that, after your ordeal in England. You were miserable there. Surely you must see the same would be true for me here.”
“I would nevertheless join you in London if that is what it would take to be with you,” he professed, “but for the fact that my responsibility to my father and my clan prevents me from doing so. My place is here, to lead when the day comes that my father can no longer do so.” He paused, then added, “I was instructed not to tell anyone this, Cora, but…he is quite ill. The healers do not believe he has much time left. I must help him rule during his final days and be prepared to succeed him in a smooth transition. To leave would open us up to the possibility of potential usurpers or invaders who would take advantage of us during an uncertain time, and I cannot have that.”
“Of course you cannot,” she agreed, “for you are a noble and honorable man, and no such man would abandon his duties in the name of love. Even so, that leaves us at an impasse, Cameron. I am deeply sorry, but I must leave at first light tomorrow.”
And with that, she turned and ran back into the castle, for she could face him no longer.
Cameron remained in the garden for a long time, as stunned and pained as if he’d taken a cudgel to the forehead at full force.
Nothing about the world seemed to make sense to him anymore.
A few brief moments of heartbreak had turned everything hideously upside down until the very ground beneath his boots no longer seemed solid or reliable to him.
After a while, he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Laird Cawley standing behind him.
“I take it, then, that Lady Cora has chosen to return to London?” he asked softly.
“Yes, Father,” Cameron replied.
He suddenly realized his face was streaked with tears, and he wiped them away self-consciously. If Cawley noticed or disapproved of his son’s weeping, he gave no sign.
“I suppose I should have accepted that this would be a strong possibility, that if you found a worthy Englishwoman to marry, she might have a difficult time adjusting to such a foreign place. I had thought that my own small attempts at capturing English charm—the garden, for example—might encourage them to believe they could be comfortable here in the long term. And if not…” He sighed.
“Frankly, that was why I wanted you to marry before returning here, though now I imagine that might not have been terribly realistic of me.”
“Any lass who would have agreed to such a thing would have been marrying me for all the wrong reasons,” Cameron opined.
“She’d have done it because no proper English fellow would marry her, and she was afraid of becoming a spinster.
Or she’d have done it for no reason than to get away from parents she despised or because she was greedy to become the wife to a laird.
I’d have passed a lifetime devoid of real love or happiness. ”
Cawley sighed, tired. “You may be right. Still, that leaves us in a rather difficult position, does it not? As I said before, there are no fit Scottish noblewomen for you to marry at the moment. Or none that I’m aware of, at any rate.
And without a wife and heir, your position as a newly-ascended laird may be in jeopardy. ”
“Father, can you not see that this is the very last thing weighing on my mind right now?” Cameron pleaded. “Can you not understand that I am to lose the only woman I have ever truly adored and desired to be with? How can you speak of political obligations at a time like this?”
“Because I must,” his father replied simply.
“Because in my position, I cannot do otherwise. No matter how dire the situation, no matter what I am forced to endure personally, my first thought must always be of my duty to this clan. And now, Cameron, I must ask you a very difficult question…one that, perhaps, I should have asked a long time ago, though I confess that it never occurred to me.” He leaned in closer.
“If you were in my position, could you honestly say the same? Or would you allow your heart to sway you where it would, regardless of the implications for the clan as a whole? For if you cannot find it in yourself to do such things, my boy, then I fear lairdship might suit you ill.”
Cameron opened his mouth to reply, but Cawley shook his head quickly.
“No, do not answer me now. Give the matter some genuine thought, for it is not an easy question to grapple with. Search your heart and ask what is most important to you in life. If it is to follow in my footsteps, along with all the sacrifices that must be made in order to do that, then you may yet commit to that course.”
“And…if it is not, Father?” Cameron asked timidly. He’d never dreamed of speaking to his father this way. In truth, he’d never even considered the questions that were being asked of him now, and he felt rather foolish for not having done so. “If my path lies elsewhere?”
Cawley gave him a small smile. “Then you must be honest with yourself and follow that path where it leads you. I would like nothing more than to see you become the clan’s next laird, Cameron.
I believe you are a good and worthy man and that you would do our family proud.
But if it is not in your heart to do so, that responsibility can be deferred to your brother.
He has never said it for fear that you might take it the wrong way, I expect, but I believe he has always considered himself equal to that task in the event that it ever became necessary for him to carry it out. ”
Cameron nodded. “He would do it well, aye. I like to think I would as well.”
“Turn your eye inward, my son,” Cawley urged, “and pay attention to what you find there. I have no wish to die knowing that my precious child will live an unfulfilled life.”
“Thank you, Father.” Cameron embraced him tightly, and for a long time. “Thank you.”