His Heart's Home

by Sterling, Stephanie

  His Heart’s Home

  First Edition

  By Stephanie Sterling

  His Heart’s Home

  Copyright © 2014 by Stephanie Sterling.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  For my readers, who have encouraged me, despite the typos and learned to love the MacRaes like I do.

  -S.

  “…Pater noster, qui es in caelis, Sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum, Fiat voluntas tua…”

  Duncan MacRae faced forward, looking into the open grave, heedless of the rain dripping onto his face. He barely registered the words of the prayer as it was chanted around him.

  “…Sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, Et dimitte nobis debita nostra…”

  A few of the ladies watched him warily, scolding expressions on their downcast faces. Duncan wondered why. Should he be crying? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t trust himself to alter his expression in the slightest, or even to register the sight of the plain pine coffin as it settled in the earth. He stared, unmoving. He concentrated all of his energy on hardening his heart and forcing himself not to feel.

  “…Sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris, et ne nos inducas in tentationem…”

  Duncan was numb. The sensation was familiar. Bringing himself to this blank, empty space was a skill he had mastered through the years. Loss was a part of life, they said - but it was a larger part of Duncan’s life than most. He had lost his brother, his mother, his father, his home, his title and his lands…and now his wife.

  “…Sed libera nos a malo…Amen.”

  Duncan looked up as the Lord’s Prayer ended and the priest sprinkled Holy Water into the grave. The blessed drops mingling with the falling rain. Duncan stood silent as the others gathered around the grave whispered a quiet blessing, and he bowed his head as the Priest spoke the final prayer:

  “Grant this mercy, O Lord, we beseech Thee to Thy servant departed, that she may not receive in punishment the requital of her deeds who in desire did keep Thy will, and as the true faith here united her to the company of the faithful, so may Thy mercy unite her above to the choirs of angels. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

  In spite of steeling himself, Duncan jolted when the old Irishman threw in a handful of dirt.

  The priest looked at him expectantly, but it took a moment to register that he should follow suit. Duncan stooped low to the ground and tightened his fingers around a handful of wet earth before flinging it into the hole where it landed with another hollow thud.

  It was over.

  “She’s yours now, Tom…” Duncan whispered under his breath to his departed brother, “She’s yours again,” he corrected and added softly, “Take care of her for me…I took care of her for you.”

  Duncan stood in place as his fellow mourners drifted toward the grave, sprinkling in their own handfuls of mud, crossing themselves, and then turning to go. A few paused to pat Duncan’s arm, or to whisper a word of comfort, but he only nodded back.

  He didn’t cry. He didn’t groan. He didn’t rail against the unfairness of Aileen’s untimely and unexpected death. He accepted it. It felt inevitable in a way.

  Aileen had belonged to his brother first. She was Tom’s fiancé when both the MacRaes headed off to war - but only Duncan returned. His body had survived, though scarred, but Duncan’s soul was withered. Aileen MacKenzie’s careful tending had finally brought him back to life. The love that they shared for his brother had grown into a love for each other too. They married in the awful days just after Duncan’s mother’s death, both hoping what they felt for the other would be enough to fill in the missing pieces of their broken hearts.

  She had been enough, Duncan thought fiercely. The past ten years hadn’t been all sorrow. He had never regretted his marriage for a single moment. He and Aileen had suffered horrible losses, but they had suffered them together. Her soft, tender smile and intelligence had coaxed him through the blackest times. She always promised their luck was going to change, and he believed her to the very end. When his mother died, he trusted Aileen could be the mother his younger sister needed. When his father died, and Duncan assumed the Lairdship, she stepped up to be the Lady of the entire clan. She followed him to America when the Jacobite rebellion collapsed and their lands were seized. She hadn’t complained during the entire miserable voyage across the ocean, or later when they arrived in the raw, uninviting port. Aileen helped him find a place in the new world, and helped him build a new home for himself and the clan. A child was the only comfort that she didn’t give him, though she had tried. Duncan accepted their childlessness. He accepted that it was part of a curse - his punishment for stealing his brother’s wife and his brother’s place at the head of Clan MacRae.

  But that was all over now. There was nothing left to lose.

  Aileen was the last part of his old life that he’d carried with him, but now she was gone as well. The castle, the Lairdship, his family, even Scotland itself was only a distant memory now. The sights and sounds of his childhood were fading. Like ink on old parchment, the images were beginning to dim and blur. Duncan recounted them obsessively in his mind, hoping to make them linger, but his efforts had the opposite effect. The longer and harder he thought of the past, the more impossible it seemed that something so wonderful, safe, and carefree had ever been real.

  He was tired of saying goodbye. A part of Duncan wanted to crawl down into the grave with Aileen, to become part of the mists and memories himself, but his spirit wouldn’t let him. It had always been stronger than his heart. The same iron will that had carried him through battle and across the sea was still driving him forward now, and he knew he’d find a way to go on.

  “Laird MacRae?”

  Duncan looked up, half-expecting someone looking for his father. After more than a decade, he still hadn’t gotten used to hearing the words applied to himself, especially when there was nothing left to be the Laird of!

  It was William Guest, one of the members of the clan. He stared at Duncan with concern. Eventually, Duncan realized that William had asked a question.

  “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  “I asked if you’d had any supper. My Maddie’s got up a stew. We wanted to ask you home if you don’t want to be alone.”

  Duncan hesitated. Part of him wanted to beg off and be left on his own to grieve, but the rebellious streak of self-preservation inside him, the part that he’d acknowledged a moment before, reminded him that it was days since he’d had a proper meal. Aileen had come down with influenza on a Sunday, and her fever had raged almost a week. Duncan had subsisted on the broth and bread that he tried to feed to his wife, along with occasional offerings from kindly neighbors. She had died three days ago, and he couldn’t remember anything non-alcoholic that had passed his lips since then. He was hungry and, what’s more, the company would do him good, and so he made up his mind to accept.

  “Aye,” he said at last, to Guest’s surprise. “I’d like that, I think.”

  “Well, come along then!” William told him, and started off in the lead.

  The Guest’s house was a few doors down from Duncan’s, on the edge of the village square. On the outside it was squat and grey, but the inside was roaring with life. The warmth of the people laughing and moving about inside was almost as vivid as the heat from the fire that burned in the back of the cabin’s single room.

  “Laird MacRae!” a chorus of voices went up as he was recognized, and it was accompanied by a shuffling of benches and c
hairs as the men stood to clap him bracingly on the shoulder, and the ladies scurried to fix his meal.

  The tiny house was probably full enough with the Guests and their four wee bairns, but tonight the neighbors were along as well: the Rosses, the Greers, two sets of MacNabs and assorted children were packed inside the space. Most of them had been at the funeral, and were still dressed in their best clothes, although their mood had obviously lifted. They were respectful, but upbeat as Duncan was installed in a seat and provided with a steaming bowl of food.

  “We were just talking about heading West,” Christian Greer told Duncan, bringing him up to speed. “Young Ross has an idea to join the wagons heading to the frontier…reckons we all ought to start over again in Ken-tuch-kee.”

  “Oh, aye?” Duncan murmured, attempting to show an interest in the conversation, but he couldn’t honestly say that he was keeping track of the arguments being put forth for and against the move.

  Starting over again did hold some appeal for Duncan though. He didn’t know if he could stomach staying in the spot where he and Aileen had tried to build a new life together, and it wasn’t as though there was anything else binding him to this particular place. If what was left of his clan moved west then Duncan imagined that he would drift along with them. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do.

  The journey would be treacherous. Maybe he would be one of the ones that wouldn’t make it to the end. Somehow, Duncan doubted that he would be that lucky. It seemed to be his lot in life to survive against the odds while those around him fell.

  “Would you like some more to eat, Laird MacRae?”

  Duncan blinked, pulled himself out of his own thoughts, and stared in surprise at the empty bowl that was sitting in front of him.

  “No, thank you,” he said, to the Guest’s eldest daughter. He passed her the empty dish. “It was delicious though,” he said and assumed it had been. In truth, he couldn’t even remember eating the food, let alone what it tasted like.

  “I’m glad you liked it, sir,” the girl said with a blush, before scurrying away to help her mother in the kitchen.

  “Well, what do you think then, Duncan?” asked Christian Greer, as there was a natural lull in the conversation. “Do we go or do we stay?”

  “I thought you said it was Ross’s idea,” Duncan said, nodding towards a young man sitting further down the table on his left.

  “Aye, but you’re the Laird, Duncan!”

  It didn’t matter how many times he tried to point out that he couldn’t be the Laird anymore - there was nothing to be Laird of - no territory, no real property, hardly even a clan. They wouldn’t have it. Aileen told him to let it be and allow the men go on as before. She said that Clan MacRae needed one thing that stayed the same, one link to their old way of life back in Scotland and Duncan was reluctantly convinced.

  “Well, Laird MacRae?” young Ross prompted hesitantly. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s something that we should all seriously consider,” Duncan said carefully. “But I don’t think it’s something I can decide for everyone.”

  He didn’t really know if he was in the right frame of mind to make such a huge decision for himself let alone the rest of the clan. Now did not seem to be the right time, but when Christian asked his next question Duncan answered honestly.

  “If the lads went, would you go with them, Laird MacRae?”

  “Aye,” Duncan nodded, without the barest hesitation. “Aye, I would.”

  ..ooOOoo..

  “Aidan! Aidan! AIDAN! Where are you?”

  Ciaran Connelly’s Irish lilt echoed in the night. She listened in vain for a response before starting forward again. She wove through the pitched tents and wagons of the shanty town as fast as she could manage with a baby on her hip and a five year old clutching her skirts. She pushed a stray lock of dark red hair off her face and squinted into the shadows. She looked into the sea of faces, trying to pick out one that was familiar and dear, and struggled not to give into the panic that was steadily rising in her chest.

  Aidan, her three year old son, was gone.

  She wasn’t too surprised. The little boy was notorious for wandering off. It was his signature trait, and it had been nerve wrecking enough to endure his escapes back in Edenton, the little village they had, until recently, called home. Here, among strangers, it was even more terrifying. Anything might happen to her dear boy. Ciaran’s heart clenched painfully in her chest as her overactive imagination supplied possibilities. There were so many evil people in the world, and so many natural accidents that could befall little boys who traipsed off on their own that she didn’t know what she feared the most.

  Oh, why did they even have to be here? Ciaran thought bitterly. She didn’t want to move. Even if she had never been precisely happy at her home in North Carolina, at least she knew that she had some measure of security there. She didn’t care about the riches that her husband promised - that he had always promised - were just around the corner. She didn’t want to head west, and she didn’t want to spend her last night of “civilization” in this shabby camp on the outside of town.

  Ciaran had begged to spend the night in an inn, to give the children one last night in a proper bed before they set off into the wilderness, but her husband would not agree. He claimed that they didn’t have the money to spare, that they ought to save what little gold they had to replenish their supplies along the way. Ciaran had grudgingly accepted this reason, until she realized that money wasn’t a problem when Sean decided to spend his last night in New Bern checking out the local pubs. They had scrimped and saved so hard for the journey. Ciaran’s blood burned when she thought of the sums that her husband was laying out on rum for himself and his mates. She assumed that he would waste even more on gambling. Knowing Sean, he’d probably pay for a whore as well. She wished she could have stopped him from going, or at least told him to his face what a pitiful father and lazy drunkard he was, but of course she didn’t dare. Her instinct for self-preservation was too strong. The few times she had found the courage to stand up to her husband had resulted in beatings that she’d never forget. She simply couldn’t face another fight on top of everything else, and that was why she and the boys had ended up here, spending the night in the cold and damp.

  It was miserable.

  The wind was howling through the trees, and cutting through the oilcloth that she’d stretched across the top of the wagon as easily as if it were made of net. She didn’t have any wood to start a fire, and didn’t know (or trust) any of their neighbors well enough to beg a few logs, or a seat in front of their flames. Ciaran and the boys shared a paltry cold dinner of sour apples and crackers and then huddled together like a litter of puppies beneath their meager shelter and tried to stay warm.

  Hunger and curiosity had made them all restless. The oldest boys wouldn’t stay in bed, too excited about the journey in the morning to settle down and go to sleep. Tired of their whining and pleas, she allowed them out for a while to play, and let Liam and Aidan watch them. Distracted by tending to Mary, the baby, and drinking in the foreign sights of the camp, she didn’t notice immediately that Aiden was gone. As soon as she did, she began her frantic search.

  “AIDAN!” Ciaran’s voice was growing hoarse and raw by the time she reached the edge of the camp. She’d been searching for twenty minutes, and was finally giving in to fear. The field that the tents were pitched in went on for fifty yards to the place where the clearing met the edge of the woods. Aidan wouldn’t have ventured inside alone, surely…would he?

  Tears pricked the back of Ciaran’s eyes as she looked between the thick, murky forest and the bustling camp. Which way should she go? What should she do? She took a few steps toward the trees and stopped to look back at the camp. She hated feeling so helpless and alone.

  “Mama?” Liam tugged at her skirts, his voice small and frightened. “I’m scared of the dark.”

  “I know, Mo Mhuirnín,” she answered, trying to sound calmer and mo
re confident than she felt and allowed Liam’s little hand to tug her back in the direction of the tents. Surely Aidan wouldn’t have gone into the forest? She tried to convince herself. It was much too far for his little legs to travel. Like his brother, he was afraid of the dark.

  Ciaran’s stepsons, ages eleven and nine, had been sent to search the other side of the settlement. Perhaps they had found him there? She settled on that hope, calming slightly, but quickly became flustered again when she couldn’t remember the way back to her wagon.

  “Over here, mama!” Liam pulled in one direction while his mother’s eyes continued to comb her surroundings, trying to pick out anything that she had missed. Her moss green eyes moved quickly, searching desperately for Aidan’s black curls, or at least some sign of the wagon or the other boys.

  Distracted by her task, she didn’t watch where Liam was leading. She simply followed blindly until she collided into someone’s chest.

  “Careful, lass.”

  Ciaran looked up with a fearful start - straight into the bluest eyes she had ever seen. They mesmerized her for a moment, until she realized the man they belonged to had taken hold of one of her arms to stop her from stumbling, but hadn’t yet let her go.

  “Are you all right?” the man asked and frowned. Ciaran thought his accent might be Scottish, but she wasn’t entirely sure.

  “I’m sorry, forgive me, I have to find my son,” she said breathlessly, backing away from the stranger, whose frown deepened when he heard this.

  “He’s lost?” the man asked, concerned. “What does he look like? I’ll help you find him. He can’t have gone too far.”

  Ciaran shook her head. “Oh no, I couldn’t ask you to do that-“

  “I didn’t hear you ask. I believe I offered,” the man said gently. “Where did you last see the laddie? How old is he?”

  “I can manage on my own, thank you,” Ciaran insisted firmly. She couldn’t risk being indebted to a man she didn’t know, not even if it was to find Aidan-if he really even meant to help her at all. It might just be a ploy of his to drag her off alone so that he could take advantage of a defenseless woman.