Becca St.John

by Seonaid

  “Is the lad asleep?” His whisper reached her.

  Aye. Asleep. So easily led to comfort and safety with the adults around him. Another shift of dirt and stone and Padraig was there, crouching, stroking Deian’s head as he’d done earlier for her.

  “That’s the second time he’s been in grave danger since you left.” He met her eyes.

  “That was my fault.”

  “And if something happens to you?”

  “What are you saying?”

  Deian shifted in his sleep. She eased away from him, out of the pallet to cross to her own. Padraig followed.

  “He’d be safe at Glen Toric.”

  “And wounded a thousand times, with all those nasty barbs and whispers.” The words burbled out, tight and tremble-y. “He’s a good lad, a fine lad, but they will poison him. He’ll become as bad as his father if he goes back there. The cruelty will make him cruel.”

  “No,” Padraig argued, but she knew the truth of it. He’d never been on the outside. Lived with the spitefulness of children.

  He didn’t know.

  But she did. They would not turn back. The dangers of their travels were nothing compared to the dangers of the truth running rampant at home.

  CHAPTER 6 ~ DESTINATIONS

  Fortune—or luck—rode with them for three days. Not that Padraig felt terribly lucky. He’d been in a state of arousal all three of those days. Worse than before Seonaid discovered and forgot passion.

  Worse because he now knew the taste of her.

  She blamed them both for Deian’s wandering around alone at night. No chance of that happening again, yet here he sat, upon his steed, fighting a desperate and greedy need.

  Every little movement flamed his want. Her smile slipped straight to his gut. Her temper enflamed his need. Deian received her gentle touches, but the vision reached Padraig as a velvet touch to his nethers.

  All too much. She’d as good as told him to go. “You’ll be leaving us soon enough,” she’d griped.

  He refused to look at her, for fear she’d see the sappy hunger in him.

  Fine. He would leave. Tonight, once he knew they were tucked in and safe. Except who would watch over them as they slept?

  He would not leave tonight. Tomorrow morning, perhaps?

  They weren’t that far from where he would put them on a ship. He’d not try to get her to turn around anymore. She’d made up her mind. She didn’t trust him to take care of her, of the lad.

  She didn’t want him.

  But he knew that was a lie. She did want him, a powerful want. He’d tasted it, felt it. One of the grandest moments in his life and he’d not even ridden it to the end.

  Aye, she did want him.

  He’d have to do something about that, work it to his advantage. Get her to return home, build a life together with him.

  “We’ll have to stop for a day,” he told them. “Hunt and plan our travels.” He looked over to Deian. “You need to know how to keep yourself safe in these wilds, lad. That’s up to you.”

  Deian nodded, chuffed to be considered old enough to hunt for something larger than a rabbit.

  Seonaid’s back stiffened and he knew just what she was thinking. Hunting was a dangerous sport. Adults were not invincible. Something could always go wrong. A wee bit at five, Deian might be left alone, or worse, with a badly injured adult. People died in all manner of ways.

  She wasn’t stupid; she knew she risked her son’s life to save it. All good and well if plans were met, but if they weren’t?

  “There’s a village near two days ride from here.”

  vvvvvv

  Seonaid’s head snapped up, eyes fixed on his. “A village?”

  “Mostly Reahs, branch of the MacKay’s.”

  “Kin.”

  “Aye.”

  She turned away, turned back, torn by the thought. To be in a community again, even as an outsider. But they would know. Some boat would have pulled into port, full of the goings-on at Glen Toric.

  And then there was Padraig. A woman and child traveling with a great strong virile man would cause speculation enough.

  “They may know about the men on the beach. May have known them, might even recognize the horses,” he said.

  Just like that, he turned her thoughts to other dangers, worries.

  Just as quickly, a plan formed; rough in its newness, but possible. “You go with young Deian. Go, have a good night. Good strong food and a dram or two. I’ll stay behind, with the horses.”

  “You’re daft!” Padraig reined in his mount.

  “They don’t need to know who he is,” she argued.

  “And how do I explain traveling on my own with a wee mite?”

  “As easily as you’d explain traveling with a woman and a child.” Though she already knew it didn’t matter. If word spread, it would have included the tale of her leaving and his following.

  She carried nothing but difficulties.

  “We all go or none go.”

  She snorted at his orders. Too full of them these days.

  He lured her, with promises for her boy. “There will be other kiddies in that place.”

  Other kiddies for Deian to play with. Lads his own age. Oh, he downed her with that one.

  His ire softened. “I don’t want to go without you.”

  “We’ll see.” She spent her life standing tall, refused to allow shameful secrets to bow her. But they weren’t secrets anymore. By now the whole of the highlands would know the evil her brother had wrought.

  She could damn the shame, ignore the stares and whispers, but she’d not force that fate on her son.

  “Give the lad that much.” Padraig murmured. She slew him with a glance.

  She’d give Deian the world and the skies and all the oceans if she could. She’d give him her life, but life wasn’t like that. Life was hard and punishing and threw punches when you were down.

  Seonaid knew all about getting through life. She didn’t know about enjoying it.

  That’s the gift she wanted for her son. The joy of life. He laughed with Padraig, but not with her.

  Padraig and joy.

  Traitorous heart allowed thoughts to slip in, of taste and texture and longing for a man. Of Padraig. The feel of him. Hunger dousing shame.

  She bit at that apple, allowed moments to dream. Too much time spent, the three of them. A family. Mother, son, and loving father.

  She’d built a fortress around herself, protection from brutality, too strong and sturdy to let the light of love seep beyond the chinks.

  She’d not left chinks.

  Padraig wanted her to go back. She couldn’t go back any more than she could return to childhood and the precious time when her ma’s love was her world, or to a time before her brother destroyed her. She couldn’t go back and change the moment she stopped The Bold from killing her brother. She should never have done that. Let Lochlan be a renegade, she’d thought. They’d be done with him, he’d not hurt anyone anymore. But he had. He’d kidnapped lasses from all over the highlands, because she’d stayed her laird’s hand. She couldn’t go back and change that.

  She couldn’t go back, no matter how hard Padraig tried to change her mind.

  Impossible to save her son from the names people would call him. There was no taking him back, but she could offer him a new life. A life with a different ma and pa. A life where no one knew his name. She could do that. She could look forward for Deian.

  She could give him a chance.

  She would, even if it broke her heart. She would give him a new start, in a new place, without her.

  But how? How could she send them off? How could she get Padraig to help?

  She looked to the sky, felt the drizzle hit her face. The rain hadn’t stopped for days, but Deian hadn’t complained. Of course he wouldn’t; she was a fool for fretting about it. The boy was a Scot; he knew about hardship and rain and how to hold one’s tongue.

  She sighed. So many things she needed to learn, to know,
about how to raise a young lad. Too late for that. He’d fare better without her.

  She didn’t say anything. Kept her plans to herself, as she soaked in everything she could of Deian and, truth told, of Padraig. Every little movement, gesture, expression she tried to memorize, to play back when they were gone, to their new life, without her.

  “So, here’s where we are,” Padraig explained, using stones to make a map, “here’s the Reahs’ keep and here’s the water between us and them.”

  Seonaid studied the locations. “And where are we heading? That’s not the far western shore.”

  He shook his head. “No, we’ve a ways to go.”

  “So you’re saying we have to go south, then back north to reach the Reahs?”

  “Aye, but they will give us oats and dried meat.” They’d run out of both in the last day.

  Rising, shielding her eyes from the sun, she looked for Deian. He’d gotten better about staying close. He was busy practicing with the leather that wrapped around his boots to keep them from slipping down. Padraig had taught him three knots, and he was determined to master all three.

  “Are there no other towns?”

  “No, not as close as this one.”

  From their vantage point, high on a rise, there were no towns to be seen, no keeps or castles or cottages.

  “Sometimes, Seonaid, you have to go back on yourself. It can’t be helped,” he told her.

  Again, Deian drew her attention.

  “What will you call him? Who should he be?”

  Grit crunched beneath Padraig’s boots as he rose. “You shouldna’ be doing this, lass.”

  She refused to argue with him anymore. They’d argued all the night before and he didn’t even know what she truly meant to do. All he knew was that she would stay with the horses and Deian would pose as a lad Padraig had found. Weak, to be sure, but better than telling everyone who he was.

  “It has to be somethin’ close to his own name, like Ian.”

  “Too close to his real name.” Seonaid sighed, “If there’s anyone clever there, they’ll suss out that he’s really Deian. You can’t help but slip when they’re that close. How about Tavish?”

  “Sounds like my horse.”

  “Connor.”

  “No,” Padraig shook his head, “he doesna’ look like a Connor.”

  He was right. That was the problem. He looked like a Deian. Seonaid sank down on her haunches, defeated. Padraig joined her.

  “You know, we are like a couple of parents searching for a name while waiting for a bairn to be born.”

  “We’re nothing of the sort!”

  He laughed, wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Oh, aye, we are. Best face it. And worse, he’s been born and grown into his name.”

  “Well—” she turned away from him, “—we will have to find an even better one for him.”

  Padraig snorted. She swatted him. “You’re no help.”

  He shrugged. “My heart’s not in it.”

  “Aye,” she sighed again, watching Deian, getting her fill. “He loves you, you know.”

  He squeezed her arm. “And he loves you.”

  It was her turn to snort. “He doesn’t laugh with me like he does with you.”

  “You don’t laugh with you, either,” Padraig offered.

  “Of course I do,” she argued.

  “No,” he shook his head, “you don’t, not enough. You have to step fretting, lass, and start grabbing everything you can from life.”

  Foolish man.

  Seonaid rose, towered over him, her finger in his face. “Not grab life?” She pointed at herself. “I’ve survived more than you will ever know!” She pointed at Deian. “I gave my son life, I’ve supported him, all without a man.” She raised her arms to the skies. “All despite the clan whispering about me behind their hands.” She thumped her chest. “And I’m gettin’ my fill of life trying to give him a new one.”

  Once more, she jabbed her finger at him. “How dare you accuse me of not grabbing every minute, every moment!”

  “Now, lass,” Padraig rose, too. “Calm down. That’s not what I was meanin’.”

  “Of course it was what you were meanin’. I’m not livin’ my life accordin’ to Padraig. That’s what bothers you.”

  He tilted his head, then nodded. “Aye, part of that is true, ’cause if you were livin’ accordin’ to me, we’d be safe and sound at Glen Toric, not concoctin’ foolish plans.”

  She brushed him off. “They aren’t foolish and if we have to backtrack before movin’ forward, let’s get going. I want to reach the Women in the Woods before winter.”

  “Grumble, grumble.”

  “What are you sayin’ now?”

  “Nothin’,” Padraig lied, with such false innocence she startled them both by laughing.

  “Well, look at you.” From innocence to abashed, he fueled her mirth. “Aye, I knew you could do it, lass.”

  And it felt good. So good.

  “With your foolishness, of course I can.” And her laughter, missing for so long, grew just for the sheer pleasure of it.

  Padraig joined in until their humor took them over, tears slipping down their faces. They had to hold each other up, a hand to a shoulder, the other arm crossed at the belly for the pain of it. He pulled her into a hug so tight and full of strength, the laughter stopped. Emotions dipped and swirled and wove themselves into something else entirely.

  “Oh, no,” she whispered, for she hadn’t the strength to speak aloud.

  He eased the embrace, gentled it.

  “Aye, Seonaid.” His hand stroked her back, as though searching for tension to ease. “I want to kiss you, lass.”

  She knew he wanted more than that, felt the evidence pressed against her. And Lord help her, she wanted it, too. With Deian a few feet away and in a few days, never to be before her again, she had to stop this. Now. For now.

  “When Deian sleeps,” she promised, knowing it was wrong, knowing she should never give in to such weakness.

  Knowing that, soon, she would never see him again.

  Padraig watched Seonaid settle Deian for the night.

  “You know, even if you don’t see Padraig or me, we’re here for you. You know that?”

  The lad nodded.

  “All you have to do is shout out.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Padraig anticipated that one. The boy would probably stay up all night out of curiosity.

  “Nowhere.” Seonaid settled the blanket over the lad. “But we’re often watching the land, to keep you safe.”

  Padraig groaned. For a woman who dressed like a man, had the skills of a warrior, she certainly didn’t know how the male of the species thought. She’d just offered adventure.

  Sure enough, Deian pushed off his cover, jumped up. “I can help with that.”

  “No.” Padraig sounded firm, had to sound firm.

  Seonaid’s glance could have ripped through his leather tunic, but he didn’t care, repeated himself. “No. It’s boring as hell. There’s never anything out there so you have to fight falling asleep, make yourself walk and look and listen for nothing. So go to sleep.”

  “If it’s boring, I’ll help my ma stay awake. She can tell me the story of the faerie Seonaidh.”

  “No, you won’t, because the faeries will blame your ma if you don’t sleep, and you don’t want that.” He offered his best, frightened look.

  Deian wrapped his arms around Seonaid’s neck, where she still crouched by his bed. “I won’t let them hurt my ma!”

  “Of course not.” She hugged him fiercely. “And I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  That’s how he knew she was leaving them, him and Deian. All day she’d been playing with names for the lad and stories for him to use when people asked where the boy came from. She claimed she’d stay behind and keep the horses, in case the men who attacked had reached towns, would recognize their lost horses.

  “I want to ride Snip,” Deian argue
d, only she didn’t call him Deian any more, she called him Eban.

  “Snip?” she’d asked.

  “Aye. The horse I ride because he’s got a snip of white on his muzzle,” he’d told her.

  “It’s a good name.” She’d praised him, was always praising him and hugging him. And he’d caught her watching him, too, as if he might disappear, when he knew who it was who would be gone. She’d been working up to the moment they reached a village or town.

  Padraig didn’t like playing games. Didn’t like pretending something that wasn’t true. But if Seonaid’s plan was to be played, the name Eban made sense in an odd sort of way.

  Back at Glen Toric, Deian and Deidre’s little Eba had been inseparable. If a body called for Eba, they would be calling for Deian. Just as a mother would mix up her own kinders, when people would shout for Eba half the time they meant Deian, and the reverse. Or they’d start with one name and change it mid-shout and end up yelling Deba or Eban.

  He’d argued the idea anyway, because the plan worried him.

  “How will I explain traveling with a child?” he’d asked her.

  “You found travelers who were sick and dying and you took their son, to save him.”

  “They’ll think he carries the illness.”

  “He’s your long-lost son.”

  Padraig refused to respond to that one. Plenty of men risked leaving bastards across the highlands. He was not that kind of man.

  “He’s the son of a lass you loved and lost to a horrible accident.”

  He snorted. “The whole clan would know of that.”

  “Then what would you suggest?”

  “Nothing. I don’t have to answer to anyone.”

  “They’ll ask.”

  “No. Never.”

  Seonaid insisted, leaning close enough to the truth to make it easy. Young Deian—or Eban, as he was to be called—was found wandering alone in the wild. He’d been traveling with his mother, who was trying to get to her sister, and he’d gotten lost.

  He didn’t like it. He didn’t like what Seonaid was thinking. Every night he fretted she’d not be there in the morning. He was that afraid she would take off and leave.

  Now certain of it, in the way she clung to the lad, as if the last time she would ever see him, Padraig knew she planned this night to be their good-bye.