“He had a chance to live!” The guilt was heavy in Vin’s voice.
The pain of a years that had nothing to do with whips or knives. It was guilt that had ridden him in the year or more since then. It was where he still dwelt. His failure to keep up had killed Jason. He had killed Jason. In that moment life had suspended itself.
“He came back to get me and they shot him, too. They dragged us back to that tomb and put us in chains for the first time. Chained us to opposite walls so we could not conspire any more but Jason got sick, infection, I think, from the gunshot wound. I could see it. I couldn’t help him. It took so long for him to die. He was in so much pain and I couldn’t do anything to help him. I couldn’t even finish him off myself to spare him the pain because I couldn’t reach him. All I could do if we both stretched our arms out was hold his hand. I held his hand for a month cursing myself for doing that to him, cursing him for not running when he had the chance. Cursing those bastards who held us for not even having enough mercy to kill him quickly.” He inhaled shakily. “They let him suffer. I let him suffer.”
Vin wrapped his hand around his wrist feeling the scars that ringed it. He had broken his hand and would bear the scars for the rest of his life to forever remind him of his failure to pull free from the manacle that chained him to the wall. To pull free and spare his friend unbearable anguish and suffering.
Mercea and MacKenzie shared a look noting the scars around Vin’s wrist and imagining accurately what had caused them.
Vin’s voice went on now almost devoid of feeling as if every drop of emotion he possessed was completely drained from him. “I don’t even know how long I held his hand after he was dead. I don’t know how long they left him in there. Why didn’t they just kill me after that? What was one more dead body to them? The worst torture was losing Jason and being left alone.”
Silence hung heavily in the room for a long while.
“Ye’ve paid more than enough, son,” MacKenzie finally said haltingly. The picture Vin had drawn of his son’s death would probably haunt him for the rest of his life, but Vin’s suffering needed to end. He needed absolution, honest absolution. “Ye did what ye could for Jason. I’m sure yer presence gave him peace in his final hours. His death was never your fault. Ever.”
“I left Jason behind because I failed him,” Vin whispered. “Richard said that sometimes the guilt in surviving it all is worse than any torture.”
Sharing a look, the two older men nodded. It was the worst part. Leaving those men in Russian to die, never knowing what became of them, of their families. It was that shared guilt that kept them together for years. “Smart lad,” Mercea grumbled. “It still is the worst part. But the guilt will eat ye alive if ye let it, son. It already is. Let it go. No one blames ye for Jason’s death. We know ye would hae done anything tae save him, if ye could.”
“Aye,” was all MacKenzie could offer.
Vin went on, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry he died. I’m so sorry. It was my fault.”
“It’s no’ yer fault, son,” Mercea told him.
Still Vin continued as if he hadn’t heard. “I wish Jason were the one who came back. I wish I could give you your son.”
“Then marry my daughter and be my son,” MacKenzie choked out.
Vin looked up at that, studying the man’s serious face. Over the disbelief, he felt a wave of affection wash over him. He’d been seventeen when his own father died, an impressionable time for a boy just becoming a man. MacKenzie had given him guidance and affection. The same as he had given his own son. Vin had come to love both old men for that, for providing him another man to look up to in his young life. They had come as close to giving him back a father than anyone could have hoped for. He wanted to be a son again, wanted to have a father to guide him through the mess his life had become.
If he did as MacKenzie said, he could have Moira forever and gain that benefit as well. Suddenly Vin wanted to. To hell with the risks, but still his conscience denied him. “I cannot. Moira worshipped Jason. She would never forgive me if she knew. It’s my fault.”
“Nay it isnae, Vin.” MacKenzie stood and offered a hand to Vin who, after hesitating a moment, allowed himself to be pulled up and into the old man’s embrace. “The only ones tae blame are the animals who kept ye all these years. No one could ever blame ye, especially Moira. She loves ye, son. Give her a chance. Give life a chance. Ye hae our forgiveness, no’ that ye need it. What ye need is to forgi’ yerself.”
Chapter 40
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future,
concentrate the mind on the present moment.
~ Buddha
Moira entered the drawing room hesitantly after talking with her father and grandfather. She imagined they had scolded Vin sternly for the events of the previous night. When they had come to her, both had been sad and tired looking. Pops had gone to lie down for a while whilst her father went for a walk in the park despite the cold weather. Vin must have put up a good fight to leave them both so despondent. Yet, they had insisted she give him one last chance to explain himself.
She hadn’t wanted to. The finality of her conversation with Vin the previous night had rung the death toll on her last vestiges of optimism. There simply wasn’t enough fight left in her to try again much less listen to Vin’s explanation for it all.
Instead, her mind had spent the better part of the night scrambling for alternatives. There was social ruin or a quick marriage. Her first impulse had been to ask Harry to marry her. He would have said ‘yes’, of course. He was nothing if not gallant, but Moira knew she could never subject him to a life without love, something he wanted in his life. Comfort and affection simply would not do. Her only remaining choice was to return to Old Klebreck Tower with her father and hide herself in the remote Highlands until the scandal died down. Then she might find some safe young man to marry her if only to provide the heir Papa so desperately wanted.
Naturally, she wouldn’t tell Vin that. If she did, he might feel enough culpability to do the deed himself and she wouldn’t live with that hanging over her. She’d already seen the damage guilt it could do to a person. She would see him one last time as her father asked, but that would be it. Moira resolved to be as nonchalant about the whole thing as possible so Vin would never know how brutally he was breaking her heart.
“Just wanted to let you know I’m leaving, Vin,” Moira said briskly into the dark room, finding Vin slouched back in a chair near the fireplace, the flames dancing over his face. He looked pensive. Sad. Yet so handsome it made her heartache. He hadn’t shaven again or even combed his shaggy locks, it seemed. She loved that he didn’t feel the need to turn himself out impeccably for every moment he spent in his home. She loved him.
Refusing to let her heart soften, she went on. “Eve is taking me to London by the end of the week, before the scandal can reach that far. Harry has agreed to marry me quickly and quietly but does not want to do it here. I’m sure I don’t blame him. But I guess I’ll be getting my Season, right? As the Marchioness of Aylesbury even. Surely such a fine title will forgive much.”
Vin almost groaned hearing her voice. That shot of excitement followed by dismay. The morning had taken a lot out of him already. After his confession, the three men had lingered in the parlor sipping their drinks in silence. Each lost to their own thoughts. Vin’s thoughts had been on Moira. He’d made his confession, but not to the person who it needed to be made to. Forgiveness of her father, as unbelievable as it was, did not translate to forgiveness from Moira. He would do as he must, just as he realized last night, if he were to gain it. “Nay, I’ll marry you,” Vin spoke into the gloom.
“I just wanted to say good-bye,” Moira went on barely hearing the words.
“I said I’ll marry you,” he repeated loudly, pulling himself upright and resting his elbows on his knees.
“Well, I don’t need you to do me any favors, Vin. You’ve made your feelings—or lack of them—very clear on this matter.
”
“It isn’t a lack of feelings. Damn it, lovey, I want to marry you.” Vin said the words awkwardly as he had spoken since he returned home as if language were foreign, or in this case, the sentiment. He felt the urge to confess his newly identified love but first he needed to explain to her the reason his denial through the years, his feelings of brotherhood for Jason, and his determination not to betray that friendship.
He needed to explain to her how living in the past had locked his mind there at the worst possible moment. How he lingered in a deathly tomb with Jason’s ghost keeping him from the reality before him. Vin wanted to tell her how he wanted to change all that, how he wanted to live in the present with her. To love her and embrace every moment he had with her because she was what mattered most in the world now. Not the past, but the present.
And the future…but only a future with her.
But none of those unfamiliar feelings could be put into eloquent words from a tangled mind. “I want you, lovey.”
Moira shook her head wondering why now. Why did Vin feel like he had to be so chivalrous when his true feelings on the subject were already out in the open? “Well, I don’t want to want you. I haven’t since you returned, really. Everyone insisted that I give you a chance to realize you love me, but it was just a fantasy. Harry cares for me, we get along famously, and I know we’ll be happy together.”
“You don’t love him.”
“It seems that love has very little to do with it, Vin.”
“But you want me for your husband.”
“I just wanted you to love me, Vin, as I loved you.”
“I-I…” Still the words stuck in his throat and Vin growled in frustration, running his fingers through his hair. It was not an easy matter to say the words when you never thought to speak them to a woman in your entire life. Women might have more patience with men if they understood the difficulty of the moment. “I want to marry you, lovey.”
“Your sacrifice is duly noted and declined. Thank you very much,” she thrust her chin out pertly.
Vin fingers fisted in his hair. “Damn it, lovey. I am a stubborn ass. I know this. But you love me and by God you will marry me, do you understand? I want to marry you, but first there is something you must know. Something I’ve been holding back from you.”
That caught Moira’s attention, rousing her curiosity. “What is it?”
“It’s something I didn’t want to bring up with you,” Vin went on. “Something I never wanted you to know. I’ve tried to avoid it not only because it will upset you, but because I don’t want you to think poorly of me. When I tell you, you might not want to marry me. You may even hate me.”
Now Moira was puzzled. Vin told her nearly everything that happened to him for as long as she could remember. There had been a plethora of confessions in his letters while he was away and many more the night they had lain together talking. She couldn’t imagine what he might have held back from her that would engender hatred in her. “I could never hate you, Vin. I’ve loved you my entire life.”
Those warm words gave Vin an excuse to delay his confession. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
Moira shrugged as she had so many times before, but now Vin finally saw the hurt and pain in the gesture. All these years, he had hurt her with his blindness. His determination to keep her at an arm’s length had unknowingly caused her pain. God, he didn’t want to cause her any longer and his confession would do just that. Was he selfish to do so just so he might have her in the end or was it better to spare her while breaking her heart in the process? If he told her and she couldn’t forgive him, he would do both. Still, her father had insisted.
While he wavered between which choice would be best for Moira, she continued. “What was I to do, Vin? Throw myself at your head? If I had done more than flirt with you, how would you have reacted?”
Vin thought about that. He would have been appalled, he knew. Back then, he had been more concerned with preserving his friendship with Jason than anything else. Now looking back, it was easy to accept that he wanted her even then. Perhaps he even loved her. He remembered that last night before he’d left for Burma, he stood on the terrace with Moira in his arms, loving the feel of her there. He hadn’t been a lad wet behind the ears then. At twenty-seven, he should have been able to identify what he felt. When she spoke of the man she loved, how could he not have noticed the twist of pain in his heart? He’d been such a fool. Determined to keep one friend by denying his feelings for another. He should have just done as Richard had, taken his beating and then taken Moira…if Jason had left him alive.
“It is easy to look back and see what might have been, lovey. I’ve always been good at looking back. I don’t want to do that any longer. I want to look forward now but, before I can, I need you to know the truth of Jason’s death.”
“What truth?”
“I killed your brother, lovey.”
Moira’s mind froze certain she hadn’t heard those words correctly. Vin had killed Jason? No, never! Vin loved Jason like another brother, they’d been as thick as thieves their entire lives. “That’s not possible. You would never.”
“It was my fault. He died because of me. He died for me.”
The dark dread building in her mind eased with those words. After the past week, Moira was well aware of how Vin’s mind worked after his imprisonment. It hadn’t taken long to figure out. He was filled with guilt from the memories of his torture. He nurtured it to punish himself for coming back without her brother. The way she saw it, it was the result of too many years alone with nothing else to think about.
“Jason’s death is not your fault, Vin. It never was. He made the decision to join the army of his own free will. He might even have gone without you, you know.”
Vin snorted at that but turned solemn once more. “I want to tell you how he really died so you’ll understand. Perhaps then you’ll see why I tried to keep this distance between us and, if nothing else, forgive me for that.”
Motioning for her to sit near the fire, he repeated the story he’d told her father and grandfather that morning. It was easier the second time, not nearly as painful. For him anyway. Though he edited out the worst of it, her face was awash with tears by the time he finished. She said nothing but simply stared at him with tears cascading from her eyes as she envisioned his tale of her brother’s suffering, of his death.
All because of Vin…or so he believed.
Moira stared at Vin for a long while or, more accurately, stared through him. This was nothing like she had imagined. Even when he’d exploded after she berated him the previous week, even after the images that swarmed her mind, Moira had never imagined Jason and Vin had suffered so deeply. Her mind wanted to deny his words, deny the knowledge of what Jason suffered. She could see why Vin hadn’t told her any of it before because picturing a beloved brother dying in torment and agony was more than any sister needed.
Vin sat through the dark silence waiting for Moira to castigate him, to cast down all the blame and anger he knew he deserved. He dreaded the lash of her tongue with more abhorrence than he’d ever held for the whip. Yet her words, when they came, were more pained than angry.
“How long?” Moira asked softly, her throat tight around the words.
Vin’s brow creased. “How long what?”
“How long did it take him to die? How long did you lie there holding his hand?” Moira’s voice was raspy, as is she were struggling to breathe.
“Lovey, you don’t want to know that.” Vin caught the level look she sent him and sighed before relenting. “Weeks.” Weeks of listening to Jason’s raspy breathing, each painful inhale. The delirious ranting through the fever. The final confessions and regrets of a man whose life had ended too soon.
“And,” Moira swallowed deeply, feeling her chest quiver with apprehension. “How long after he died did it take them to realize it?”
“I don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“I am asking, how
long did you lie in there holding Jason’s hand after he was dead?”
Her voice was shaking with the depth of her emotion and Vin felt it resonate within him. He remembered that time in vivid detail. The tomb prison was deep underground and was generally cool all the time. In the desert, it was easy to blend one season into the next, but he always thought it had been winter for some reason. His captors brought bread or dried meat enough to last for days at a time, water by the bucket so they needn’t come every day. When they last brought food, he begged them to care for Jason, to tend to his wounds but they ignored him and left. Jason died shortly after, Vin thought. It was hard to be certain.
The simple answer to Moira’s question was a long while, until they next brought food. He had been near death himself at that point, simply staring at Jason. He hadn’t moved since he’d heard Jason’s last breath. Hadn’t eaten. Hadn’t drank. Flies had begun to flock to his friend by the time his jailors returned, the tomb had truly become one. To this day, the stink of death seemed to be everywhere.
When they’d taken him away, Vin had thought he would go mad. Jason was his one last link to reality, to hope. Without him there to talk to, to reassure and to get reassurances from, life lost meaning. His mind had remained locked in that moment for the rest of his imprisonment.
Jason had died because of Vin, for Vin and that death had left Vin on the brink of madness. That was the past Vin dwelt in for so long. It was the past he wanted to leave behind finally so that he might embrace the future for a change.
Able to read the unspoken answer to her question, Moira shuddered with the first real pity she had felt for him. How utterly traumatic! She didn’t even need to wonder how such an ordeal could affect a man, because she saw the result of it right before her. Vin’s guilt had become his reality. In his mind, his actions truly killed her brother.
Kneeling before him, Moira took his hand and pushed back the sleeve to see the scars ringing his wrist. She had seen it before but hadn’t understood. It was a symbol to him, she realized. A representation of his failure. If he couldn’t have saved Jason, he wanted to, at the very least, put her brother out his misery and he hadn’t been able to do even that. Instead, he’d held onto her brother even in death. It was a wonder the guilt hadn’t eaten him alive.
All You Could Ask For Page 117