by Lucy Monroe
But now Shona feared losing her son to his father as much as her flight from England had been spurred by her terror of losing Eadan to Percival’s evil machinations.
“You will not take my son from me,” she promised Caelis as she pushed the door to her chamber open.
“That is not my intention.”
She turned to face him, still on the threshold, not letting him into the room. “You mocked me once with words that did not match your actions; this time I will not be so easily fooled.”
“Let me explain,” Caelis said again, more plea than demand.
It was so unusual to hear the strong warrior speak thus, she found herself nodding and stepping back to allow him into the bedchamber.
There was a low boxlike chest against one wall and Shona used it to sit on, ignoring the very existence of the bed and hoping Caelis would do so as well.
She would have gone to the great hall, but she wanted someone to overhear her shame even less than she desired to be caught in a compromising position with Caelis.
“I find it odd you were sleeping outside my door,” she said as Caelis paced the room but did not start this grand explanation he had alluded to.
“I was not sleeping.”
“What were you doing then?”
“Guarding you.” Caelis stopped in front of her. “Fighting my need to come inside.”
She almost laughed. “You would have me believe that after you tossed me aside six years ago, your passions for me burn so bright they keep you up at night on vigil outside my room?”
’Twas ludicrous. If he’d been as afflicted by desire for her as she was him, he never would have repudiated her.
“Aye.”
“I am not that naïve.” Did he think he had to lie to her to gain access to his son?
Why did he even want Eadan now, when Caelis had been so quick before to reject even the possibility she was pregnant?
Her thoughts whirled in her head like the most complicated court dance.
“Just stubborn.” He sighed, running his hand over his face. “I do not remember you being so stubborn with me.”
Because she’d wanted to give into him and that was her own shame to bear. At least he’d known her truly enough to realize it was in her nature to be obdurate with others.
When she didn’t dignify his words with a reply, he sighed again, looking quite put out. “I have been without physical comfort for six years. You married another.”
“First, I have absolutely no reason to believe you. And I don’t,” she inserted for good measure. “Second, you cannot call what transpired between the baron and myself comfort.”
Not when the old man’s very touch made Shona’s skin crawl and he’d used her as the whore her mother had called her upon discovering Shona was with child with no suitor, much less husband, in sight.
“I do not want to hear about it,” Caelis said with deep feeling.
She had no intention of telling him anything about her life that he did not absolutely need to know. “Rest assured, you will not.”
“Marjory is his.”
Shona gave a single jerk of her head in acknowledgment.
“Eadan is mine.”
This time Shona merely stared, refusing to agree with or deny the statement.
“You would deny it?” Caelis accused, though she’d done no such thing.
“You were the one who told me that if I were pregnant then it would have to be by some other man.” Her fingers curled around the edges of the chest, the grip so hard she could feel her heartbeat in them. “Do you not remember?”
“I was angry at having to let you go. I took that fury out on you.” Guilt washed over his chiseled features. “I did not mean it. I was under orders to cease my attentions to you. I knew those words would push you away as nothing else would. Your loyalty and determination were too strong to give in otherwise.”
She did not know what he meant by orders to cease his attentions, though she could guess, but Caelis had been right about his methods. “You succeeded spectacularly in your efforts. I would have been content to live the rest of my days without seeing you again.”
Because she had wished so strongly for that claim to be reality, it came out with all the conviction her heart lacked.
The candle’s glow was not bright, but it illuminated enough of his handsome face to reveal the pain that crossed it and settled in his gentian gaze. “To my great regret.”
“I do not believe you.” Was it a lie if she wanted it to be true?
Again, he seemed surprised…even hurt…by her lack of faith in him.
“Our laird denied my request to mate you.” There was a ring of sincerity to his tone she could not ignore.
More important, the words rang true with the actions of the laird of her former clan. Uven was not a kind, or even just, man. He had his favorites among the clanspeople and they could expect his support and beneficence. Everyone else had had to sacrifice for the treasured few.
Uven’s own daughter often suffered at his hand, not that Caelis had ever believed it. While they’d had a near-idyllic courtship before Caelis rejected her, the one area they never agreed on was the true nature of their laird.
Her lack of loyalty, as he called it, used to infuriate her then beloved warrior to no end.
Because, unlike her family, Caelis had never been shown the ugly side of the MacLeod laird.
“You are one of his favored,” she reminded Caelis.
“I was.”
She didn’t ask what had happened to change that. The very fact he was among the Sinclairs rather than their former clan spoke of a great breach between laird and vassal. And she did remember her former laird’s true ways. Nothing he did would have surprised her.
But some things were less likely than others. “You want me to believe that our laird refused one of his favored?”
“He did not think us a good match. He was adamant that you were not my mate.”
There was that word again, as if they were animals, but it didn’t matter what Caelis called it. Mate, wife or even beloved, none of the titles fit her place in his life. They never had, no matter how much she had once wished to believe otherwise.
“He did not think I was good enough for you.” She’d not understood why the laird had such antipathy toward some of his clan, but the fact could not be denied.
He’d believed Shona’s family beneath his notice and replacing her father as seneschal had only been one of many slights against them.
Caelis did not deny her interpretation of events.
She sighed. “And this is your grand explanation?”
Caelis jerked, his eyes widening and then going narrow as if her reaction surprised him. “I had no choice but to deny you.”
“You had a choice. You could have left the clan when we did.”
“The laird would never have given permission for me to leave.”
“And yet here you are.” Living among another clan but still wearing the colors of the MacLeod.
Perhaps the breach was not as great as she’d first thought. In truth, there might not be any breach at all, no matter what Caelis claimed.
The sense of despondency that gave her made no sense and she chose to ignore it.
“It is complicated.” And he was clearly reluctant to share the nature of that complication.
“You are welcome to spare me the details.”
Again it appeared as if she’d surprised him. “You used to be so curious.”
“The one thing I want to know about you, Caelis—the only thing that matters to me any longer—is if you are going to try to rob me of my son.”
“I will not.”
She wanted to believe him, for her own sake. Wanted to feel relief at the hard promise. Not only could she not trust his promises, however, she didn’t believe it could be that simple.
Caelis had already verbally claimed Eadan. To walk away now would be to impugn his warrior’s honor. He would not do that for her sake, or even
their son’s. Of that, she had no doubts.
“Then you have no objection to us traveling on to Balmoral Island as soon as the Sinclair laird gives us his leave to do so?” She didn’t believe it, but she needed to push Caelis into revealing his plans.
“Why Balmoral Island?”
“I have family there.”
“I did not know that.”
She shrugged. Confidences that they had, or had not shared six years ago had no importance today.
“Who is it?”
“My great-grandmother came from the island. Her sister also married and had children. The last I had heard, some still lived from that generation as well as those of my own.”
“You do not know?”
“There has been no direct contact between the two branches of the family in many years, but I am certain my Balmoral kin will welcome my children and me into their clan.” At least, she hoped with great fervency.
Everything she had learned of her grandmother’s clan of origin pointed to a people who put great store by family and loyalty. A clan she could depend on to keep her and her children safe from a greedy Englishman’s desires.
“The Balmoral clan is a good one. I have spent the last year training with a special group of their soldiers.”
That at least explained what he was doing away from MacLeod lands. Though the fact her former laird had sent one of his soldiers to train under another did not meet with overweening arrogance she remembered.
“What are you doing here then?” She knew the Balmoral and Sinclairs were allies, and Caelis staying in the keep on his way southward made sense, but he was more of a long-term guest here.
That seemed clear enough.
“More training with the Sinclairs.”
Things must have changed a great deal since she left her clan behind. “I see.”
He waited for her next question with a patience she did not remember from their past.
“So your plans are to return to the MacLeod clan?” she asked with undisguised hope.
Caelis’s expression turned very serious. “Aye.”
“You will not take my son from me.”
“I told you, I have no intention of separating mother from child.”
“But?” She knew there was a caveat. Why did he have to pretend there was not?
“I cannot live among the Balmoral. I have obligations to my people. I have to return to the MacLeod.”
“What has that to do with me, or my children, for that matter?”
“Our children,” he emphasized, finally revealing his true colors. “If I am not living among the Balmoral, naturally you and the children will not be, either.”
“I will not go back to that clan.” Her former laird had not been a good man, no matter what Caelis might think.
“Not immediately, no, but once I have discharged my duty, you and our children will join me.”
She laughed then, the sound bordering on hysterical. The man was completely daft. “You speak as if we have promises between us, plans to be together as a family. We have none.”
Her voice rose and the hysteria edged closer. She forced air in and out of her lungs as she pushed away the overwhelming sense of panic.
“We will have the future we dreamed of six years ago.” He dropped to his knees in front of her, his big hands engulfing her own. “I am no longer willing to live without my true mate for the sake of a corrupt alpha.”
“You are not making any sense, Caelis.”
“You belong to me. ’Tis simple as that.”
He could not truly believe that?
“Oh, no. It is not simple at all. I do not belong to you.” Though her heart called her a liar. “Mayhap I did all those years ago, but not now. Never again.”
“Never is a long time, lass.”
“And sometimes not long enough.” When it came to seeing Percival, new Baron of Heronshire, again, never would be too short.
She’d thought the same about Caelis, but the heart that had gone dormant when she left Scotland began to flutter again. True that flutter brought naught but pain now.
And yet a very tiny part of her was glad not to be so dead inside. She’d felt emotion for her children, but it was a different place in her heart that had been sleeping these past years.
A place that at one time had given her both her greatest joy and most devastating sorrow.
“I will change your mind.” He promised. “We are meant to be together.”
“I used to believe that.” She’d been certain to the very depths of her soul that she and this man had a glorious future together.
A love story to write with their hearts and their bodies so profound, their children’s grandchildren would tell it to their babes. Losing her faith in the future had hurt almost as much as losing him.
“Believe it again.”
“No.” She’d been hurt enough by this man and by her own dreams.
Neither would ever be given free rein in her heart again.
His impossibly blue gaze bored into hers. “Some things in life, we have no choice about.”
“You mean like six years ago?” she asked sweetly.
An expression of relief (no doubt that she’d finally understood) came over his features. “Exactly like six years ago.”
“Then you are a very ineffectual man, Caelis of the MacLeod. Six years ago, you had a choice indeed.”
“I told you—”
“That our laird denied us the right to marry in the clan,” she interrupted. “But what does that signify? Only that your love for his regard far exceeded any small feelings you might have had for me. You denied me. You denied our son. All on the say-so of a despot worse than the man I am currently running from. Do not you claim you had no choice. You had a very real choice, Caelis, and you made it!”
“You do not understand.”
“You think not? I know this. Had the choice been mine six years ago, I would have run from the clan, abandoned my family and followed you across the waters if need be for us to be together. You wouldn’t even leave with me to another clan.”
“I could not!” His bellow was louder than hers, but she was not impressed.
“Then I say again, Caelis, you were a very ineffectual man. And I believed you a warrior at heart.”
“I am. How dare you doubt my fighting spirit!”
“How dare you claim one when you never fought for the right to be with me!” He surged to his feet, towering above her, his rage a palpable force around them.
She was not impressed.
“I thought he wanted only what was best for me. As you said, I was one of his favored ones. He claimed that as my alpha he could tell you were not my true mate. How was I supposed to know he lied?”
“You wanted to believe him. You wanted to believe that some in the clan were more important, superior to others. You wanted to be one of those superior beings.” She put all the derision she felt into that word, letting Caelis know just how unsuperior she considered a man who could abandon her as he had done.
His face contorted as if holding something of great import back. Finally, he said, “I was.”
“I would say that I am sorry you lost your place, but I am not. The longer you held favor with that man, the more of your humanity you would have given up to him.”
“You do not know how true your words are,” Caelis said, his tone subdued, his face cast in shadows so she could not read his expression.
She had no answer for him. He had chosen, no matter that he claimed there had been none, and he had done so poorly.
He sat on the edge of her bed, leaving his scent behind, though she would not tell him so. She’d always been sensitive to it, reveling in his nearness even when she could not see him.
He looked down at the floor, as if it might have the answers he sought. “There are things I did not tell you then. Things you will have to know now.”
“You sound very mysterious.”
He nodded, his expression sober. “It is a great
mystery, a secret the humans who are privileged to know must keep at the pain of death.”
“You say humans like you think yourself something greater than.” Was this truly the man she had loved so dearly?
His sense of superiority and excessive vanity might even rival Percival’s.
“Not better than—I understand that now—but not the same either.” Caelis’s expression pleaded with her for understanding.
But once again, his words were more confusion than explanation.
“Will you ever start making sense?” she demanded with asperity. “No matter what your exalted laird would have you believe, you are not some superior being.”
“I am Chrechte,” Caelis blurted out with exasperation, jumping to his feet and turning away as if frustrated with her obdurate behavior.
Really? If he persisted in trying to unite them as a family, he would soon learn that she was capable of far more obstinacy than this.
And the whole Chrechte mystique? Not so mysterious after all. Everyone in the clan knew about the band of warriors that considered themselves elite among the soldiers.
She rolled her eyes. “So I heard on more than one occasion six years ago from you and others. You considered your skills as a warrior something to set you apart.”
He spun back to face her, his expression growing increasingly astonished as she continued speaking.
“My skills as a warrior are above those of other men, Chrechte as well,” he declared with affront.
“And I am an English lady with claim to title and little else. Do you know how it has set me apart?” she asked scathingly. “Not one wee bit. I am still a mother, a friend, a woman with less say in my life than the steward who ran my dead husband’s estates.”
“You ignore everything you do not wish to hear,” he accused, his frustration obviously mounting.
She glared at him, her own ire rising to match his. “If you want me to hear you, may I suggest you try talking sense rather than the ravings of arrogant idiocy.”
“I am no idiot!”
“Well, you’re certainly not a lord of logic, either.”
“I am a shape-changer,” he practically yelled. “Chrechte means I share my nature with an animal. Mine is a wolf.”