Chapter 27
Blood red splashed across the room, hitting the walls, hitting everything that Gordon had unveiled and raised up from beneath heavy dust sheets.
And when the red was gone, he soaked his largest brush in a pot of green and streaked it across the canvases that he had kept hidden from view, putting them away just as soon as they were finished.
Yellow and blue came next, the colors mingling together until they turned brown, ruining the paintings that he had spent so many hours on.
All those painstaking details vanished behind the sludge of paint, all the landscapes, the faces, the imagined worlds that had kept him sane over the past five years.
The paintings from before then did not escape destruction either, for they belonged to a different version of himself and his life.
A version that no longer existed. A version that had been hopeful and whole.
In the glow of a dozen lanterns and a sea of candles, he lost himself in the frenzy, throwing more and more paint… until the paint wasn’t enough.
He drew his blade from his belt and began to slash, cutting the canvases apart, snapping the thin boards of wood that he had occasionally used, obliterating it all.
Almost all.
Breathless, he stopped in front of a painting that had been tucked between two others, mostly sheltered from the chaos.
He shoved the other two paintings aside and felt his heart clench as he looked upon himself, his back turned to the observer.
His arms were raised, throwing a child—his child—into the air.
The little boy’s face was alight with happiness, his little arms outstretched as if he were flying, not a bit of fear in his expression.
And the clouds in the background formed two subtle wings, sprouting from the boy’s back.
Gordon couldn’t remember if he had painted that deliberately or if it was an unhappy coincidence.
Me son. Me boy.
It stuck in his throat like a fragment of bone that he would never get to know his son’s face, or his name, or his voice, or what amused him, or what sort of man he would grow up to be.
His watery eyes searched the painting more closely, spotting a figure in the distance, beside the edge of a forest: flaming red hair, mouth quirked into that playfully mocking smile of hers.
I’m sorry, Kathy.
He thought he saw her smile sadden. The low light must be playing tricks on his eyes.
“No beheaded enemies in here then, just… eviscerated paintings,” a warm, gentle voice said behind him.
He didn’t turn, uncertain if Agnes’s voice was part of the madness or if she was really there. Part of him didn’t want to find out.
“That is a beautiful painting,” she said, her presence like a balm, soothing his stormy mood. “Is that you?”
His art was such a private thing. It had always been his escape, from the first moment he picked up a stick of charcoal to sketch something to this very moment.
He didn’t paint for his work to be seen.
He painted for himself, to express what he couldn’t with words or actions.
To have Agnes in his tower like this, with all of his work on display instead of covered in sheets, was like her seeing into his very soul.
He did not yet know what to make of that feeling.
“Breakin’ me rules again?” he said quietly.
As he heard her footsteps on the flagstones, all of the frustration, all of the grief, drained out of him.
What was left behind wasn’t relief or hope or anything good that he could decipher, just a bone-deep ache of exhaustion.
The kind that he might have liked to recover from at her side, in her bed, with her head on his chest.
“I… I just wanted to make sure that you were well,” she replied. “You left so quickly, and you did not seem yourself.”
“I’m fine,” he insisted, his gaze fixed on the picture of the boy he had never met.
Agnes cleared her throat awkwardly. “It is just that… you seemed… I don’t know, affected by Lizzy and—”
“Daenae pretend to ken me, Agnes,” he interrupted, turning to face her.
He towered over her, his exhaustion giving way to a last burst of anger, though not at her. She was merely the one who had dredged it all up from the deepest recesses of his mind. Yet he could not keep the anger from bleeding into his voice, not when it burned through his veins like wildfire.
“I wasn’t. I just…” she trailed off, her brow furrowing, her expression wounded.
“Ye just what? Ye just thought ye’d see if there was a softer side to me?” he asked coldly, his lip curling. “Ye thought I’d be affected by the babblin’ of a wee lassie?”
Her gaze hardened. “Yes, actually. I saw your face, Gordon. I saw how it moved you, and… perhaps it is no business of mine, but I am curious to know why. I care about the reason why.”
An invisible fist gripped his heart in a vise as he stared back at her, suspicious of her words. Had someone informed her about his son? Had Iona chattered away about it, spilling all of his secrets?
“Why would ye care?”
She shrugged. “At this very moment, I am not sure, but I do.”
“Well, there’s nothin’ to be told, and there’s nothin’ amiss, so there’s nothin’ for ye to be curious about,” he replied, too quickly. “Ye have terrible instincts, Sunshine, and a terrible disregard for rules.”
“Says the man who told me he should stay away from me and not touch me,” she pointed out defiantly.
“You didn’t seem too concerned about your silly rules, either.
And, frankly, I do not think there is anything amiss with my instincts.
I think you don’t know how to speak about how you feel, and now you are cross with me because I have asked, because I have told you that I care and want to know what is wrong. ”
He wished with every fiber of his being that he could tell her that she was wrong on all counts, but her perception was sharp as a blade. And he really didn’t want to lie to her.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she pressed, her gaze flitting to the painting of him and his son, as if she already had some of the pieces and just needed to slot them together.
“Talk about what?”
“Whatever it is about the paintings in this room that have made you so angry that you would destroy them,” she replied evenly. “All except this one. Is there something in particular about this painting that you cannot bring yourself to ruin? The child, perhaps?”
He bristled, his defensive walls shooting up once more.
Was it not clear enough to her that he was in no mood to discuss anything? Maybe she wasn’t quite as perceptive as he had thought if she could not see that now was definitely not the time.
“Ye have no cause to ask me that,” he said roughly, his throat tight. “Ye daenae need to ken anythin’ about me. Ye’re askin’ too much from a fake betrothal, Sunshine.”
“It didn’t feel fake when you touched me,” she shot back, her hands balled into fists at her sides. “It didn’t feel fake when you tended to me after we returned from the village. And it doesn’t feel fake now, and I think that is why you are acting this way.”
He took a half step closer, putting himself in infinitely more dangerous territory.
“But it is fake, lass. No weddin’ will take place, and we’ll nae live here as husband and wife.
A fake bride doesnae need to ken about me son.
A fake bride shouldnae ask nor care about him or me. A fake bride shouldnae—”
“Your son?” Agnes breathed, her eyes wide.
“Fake?” a surprised, none-too-pleased voice gasped from behind them.