Chapter Twenty-Four
Connor asks his mother about Sela.
Their mother emerged from the kitchens with a bowl of porridge, her eyes lighting up when she saw them. They were the only ones in the great hall because it was so early. “May I join my children?”
“Of course, Mama,” Kyla said.
“Am I interrupting anything?” Maddie asked as she sat beside Kyla. “I don’t wish to get in the way of an important conversation.”
“Connor was just telling me about Sela.”
“Mama,” Connor said, “I’ve been wanting to ask you a question, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ll answer if I can,” she said, taking a bite of her porridge.
“Papa told me it took you awhile to accept his proposal. What changed your mind?”
His mother fussed with the stray hairs that had fallen from her plait as she thought. “I was afraid of your father. He had this way of yelling when he got upset that I didn’t like.”
“Papa?” Kyla said in surprise, leaning forward on her elbows. “He never yells.”
“Now he rarely does, but when he was young? Ask your uncles. They’ll tell you the same. Age has mellowed him, definitely, but my reluctance to marry him was more about me, not him.”
She lowered her spoon into the bowl and set her elbows on the table, folding her hands.
“Connor, that poor woman was misused for five years. But the worst part of the ill treatment she suffered is she was forced to watch her bairn be misused. I can’t imagine going through something like that. Her guilt, however misguided, must be verra powerful. At least, mine would be.”
“But why?” Kyla asked. “’Twas not her fault if the men controlled her.”
“No matter what, I would wonder if there was something I could have done for my bairn, some way I could have outsmarted them or run away.”
A fast scowl stole over Kyla’s face. “Oh, Mama. I have to agree with her, Connor. I was awfully mad I couldn’t outsmart my captors when I was kidnapped. I was mad at them, but I was also mad at myself for not being clever enough to get myself out of the situation.”
“But you did get away,” Connor reminded her.
“Aye, but that didn’t matter. I’ll never forget how hard it was to talk to Papa when I came back. I was so ashamed of what I’d done.”
“And Sela’s suffering was on a much larger scale,” his mother said.
“I don’t believe any of us can comprehend what she’s been through. Watching her parents killed, watching her daughter undergo torture. My heavens.”
She stared into her bowl of porridge as if transported back to another time long ago.
“You have to be patient. And I know this doesn’t make sense to you, but she has to learn to love herself again.”
“What?” Connor asked.
“She’s angry with herself for all that transpired. She may even believe that she could have prevented either of her parents’ death. She has to love herself before she can love another.”
Kyla nodded, taking another bite of her apple. “Our mother speaks wisely. Heed her words.”
Elizabeth
This was in Highland Clan, but I wanted it to be in the correct chronological order, which is at the end of Band of Cousins.