“And this is Deirdre MacIntyre,” Kerr said. “She’s my cousin. She’s had Ewan all this time. Made sure he was safe, happy, and loved. She ne’er knew he was stolen.” Kerr raised his eyes to Deirdre. They brimmed with sympathy. “Did you, love?”
Her body shuddered in his arms as she shook her head. Gavin didn’t want to see her face. Didn’t want to see the heartbreak there.
He slipped off of Thor and then lifted Deirdre down. Ewan made a soft sighing sound, but he kept sleeping.
“I’ll take him,” Gavin said. “You’ve been holding him for a while. He must be heavy.”
“Nay, I doona want to disturb him,” she said, her arms tightening around him.
She was delaying the inevitable. Gavin slipped his hands under Ewan’s arms and pulled him from her embrace. Deirdre let out a heart-rending sob, but Gavin turned away. He settled Ewan on his shoulder and walked up the stairs to the great hall, Isobel on his heels. He looked down toward the bailey once they were at the top. Down below, Kerr had wrapped one huge arm around Deirdre, who had collapsed against him.
Kerr spoke into her ear as he guided her toward the stairs. Gavin wondered what his foster brother was saying.
“Gavin, what’s going on?” Isobel asked as she stepped up beside him.
“I have Ewan back. That’s what’s going on.” He pushed open the heavy door that led into the great hall and waited for Isobel to walk through.
“But that woman—”
“Is not Ewan’s mother. She did not birth him, and she kept him from me after meeting me at the spring gathering. I’m grateful for her care of him the last two and a half years, but she’ll be returning home soon. Compensated for her trouble.” Isobel stood at the door, unmoving, and Gavin’s agitation increased as Deirdre neared.
“I doona think giving her gold will ease her pain,” Isobel said. “She’s heartbroken.”
“Aye, so was I for more than two years. At least she’ll know where he is and that he’s happy and safe. That’s more than I had.”
Isobel looked at him, her eyes pained. “I love you, Gavin, but you’ve changed since Ewan was taken, since Cristel turned her back on your marriage—on you. You’ve become hard. ’Tis not a trait you want to pass on to your son. I hope now that he’s back with you—with us—you can learn to feel again.”
He rounded on her, his heart beating in anger, his words clipped. “I feel, Isobel. I’ve felt naught but pain since Ewan was taken. Deirdre canna stay. She has a home and a husband, whom I will most likely kill, and I will ne’er let my son leave without me again. I’m taking Ewan to the nursery before everyone starts yelling. If you want to help, do your best to keep Kerr calm. His bellows will reach right up to the nursery and wake my son.”
Gavin grunted—almost a growl—and stepped through the heavy, wooden door.
He’d thought walking into his home with his child in his arms would give him comfort, but he just felt worse. After having Deirdre in front of him for so many hours, learning her scent, hearing her voice, feeling the weight and warmth of her body against his, he just felt empty.
Almost…bereft.
So he hugged Ewan harder and strode across the great hall toward the dark stairwell entrance in the corner. A second stairwell was in the same spot at the other end of the room, the construction similar to Deirdre’s keep but on a larger scale. Which was good, because it would feel even more familiar to Ewan.
Fresh rushes crunched under his feet. Light blazed from every candle along the walls and in two large, circular chandeliers that hung from the ceiling on chains that could be easily raised and lowered on pulleys.
Opposite him, a fire burned in a huge hearth used for heating the great room and the castle. Racks sat in it to hold the iron pots of food that came in from the kitchens to feed the castle folk and the warriors who were not away or on watch. The benches and tables used during meals had been stacked neatly against one wall, ready to break the morning fast.
A second, smaller hearth, with a flowered wall hanging above the mantel, also had a fire burning in it. Three chairs with embroidered cushions on the seats sat in front of the hearth, footstools tucked underneath. On a side table sat a tray laden with cups and a pitcher—of mead, most likely—set out for the laird’s friends and family.
The ceiling rose several stories, and two-thirds of the way up, a narrow balcony encircled the hall, an access used by archers in defense of the castle. Small murder holes had been carved in the stone walls, allowing the men to shoot the encroaching enemy if they stormed the keep, but also to let in light and air during peaceful times.
Gavin had just reached the stairwell entrance when Deirdre and Kerr entered the keep.
“Gavin,” Kerr said, his voice raised, demanding.
Gavin didn’t stop. If he answered his foster brother, all he would do was wake Ewan, who would then want to be with Deirdre. Instead, he started up the circular stairwell.
He heard Isobel say, “Calm down, Kerr. You’ll wake Ewan. Gavin’s just taking him up to bed. Annag is up there, airing the room.”
The stairwell was lit every few feet, but it was narrow and low, barely clearing his head. Harder for the enemy to get by you that way. He worried about scraping Ewan’s knees on the stone as he continued upward, passing the next level with several bedchambers and the laird’s solar, and up to the fourth level where the nursery and additional bedchambers were located.
When he stepped into the passageway, several burning candles in wall sconces chased away the darkness, and the nursery door stood open. Light blazed from within.
Gavin stopped in his tracks, suddenly overwhelmed with emotion. His throat and chest tightened, and he could barely breathe.
He hadn’t seen the nursery door open in over two years.
He walked forward slowly, his eyes hot, his skin tight—and this time not from anger but from relief and happiness. And love. When he blinked, tears rolled down his cheeks and soaked into his short, scraggly beard.
He turned into the chamber. The room was large—larger than the nursery at Deirdre’s keep—with a canopied bed in the corner. The bed was covered in a light-green quilt embroidered with sword-wielding knights on horses, dogs by their sides, as they fought a great, scaly dragon. A soft, wool rug covered the floor that Ewan used to play on, and a chair sat by the window. He used to stand on that chair to look outside and see what was going on in the bailey and in the fields beyond the castle. The shutters were open to let in the cool night air.
Several chests carved with forest scenes—including fairies and imps—were pushed against the wall across from the bed. In another corner, a small table was the battleground for warriors whittled in soft stone. Ewan had been playing with them the morning he left with Cristel for the festival he’d disappeared from. The maids who had come in periodically to clean and dust the room had left the small figures exactly as they were.
An older woman, her gray-streaked hair pinned back in a messy bun and her shape as familiar to Gavin as his own mother’s, crouched down on her hands and knees, searching for something beneath the bed.
“Annag,” he said softly, his voice breaking at the end. He breathed deeply to contain the emotion, but when his nursemaid—and Isobel’s after him, then Ewan’s for too few years—turned her head, it was a losing battle.
She used the bed to help push herself up from the floor, her face crumpling into tears and smiles all at once. In her hand, she clutched a carved wooden soldier that she’d pulled out from under the bed. She raised it to her mouth, forgetting it was there. When she felt it against her lips, she laughed and lowered it, then moved toward them, tears streaming down her cheeks and into her smiling mouth.
“I noticed it was missing the other day,” she whispered, indicating the toy Highlander. “I searched everywhere but under the bed because my knee was too sore to bend down. When Isobel told me you’d found h
im…” Her voice broke, and she couldn’t continue.
She’d reached them by now and stared at Ewan sleeping on Gavin’s shoulder. She raised a hand and gently sifted Ewan’s hair with her fingers. “Och, my sweet lad. You canna know how happy I am to see you.” She raised wet, joyful eyes to Gavin. “I would know him anywhere. He’s the spitting image of you at that age.”
“Aye, and full of mischief and daring.”
“We’ll see about that,” she said lovingly as she reached up. Gavin passed him over.
Annag laid Ewan on her shoulder too, swaying back and forth and humming a low, calming lullaby. When his eyes fluttered open, she rubbed his back in soothing circles, and he closed them again with a sigh. “He’s well?” she whispered.
“Aye. We found him in a keep on MacIntyre land—happy and well cared for.”
“They stole him?”
His mouth tightened, but he found himself not wanting to speak ill of Deirdre. “I doona know what transpired when he was taken, but I believe the woman he lived with is innocent in this regard. She’s treated him like a son, and he calls her mother.”
“Thanks be for that.” She pressed her lips to Ewan’s hair and squeezed him a little closer. “The angels kept him safe.”
An angel named Deirdre.
He scowled at the thought. He couldn’t help it.
“You canna be bitter, Gavin,” she said. “It’s over. Ewan is back and unhurt. And Cristel is gone.”
“He’s the only pure and true thing she ever gave me.”
“And he makes all she put you through—the lies, the manipulations, the deceptions—worthwhile. For him, you would do it all over again.”
Aye, he would bear any pain for his son. Even the pain of losing him if he had to.
It wasn’t lost on him that the heartache he’d finally released would soon find a home in Deirdre.
* * *
Deirdre sat on the finely carved and embroidered chair, shivering in front of the roaring fire. Kerr had wrapped his extra plaid around her, muttering something under his breath—prefaced by “bloody,” no doubt—then asked Isobel, who’d been staring at her, wide-eyed and pale-faced, to bring Deirdre another. Isobel had jumped, looking guilt-stricken, and scurried from the room.
It didn’t matter. The only thing that could warm Deirdre now was her son in her arms. Gavin MacKinnon had taken him into the keep and up the stairs, and he had no intention of returning him. No matter what Kerr MacAlister said.
He’s a good man. He willna hurt Ewan or you. He just needs time, Deirdre. No matter what happens, I willna allow him to separate the two of you. Well, she couldn’t allow herself to believe that.
Isobel ran back over the rushes, carrying an armful of blankets. Her cheeks were wet, and when she saw Deirdre’s gaze on her, she quickly wiped them dry.
Deirdre lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry to bring such trouble into your home.” Her voice scraped past her raw throat, barely above a whisper.
Isobel dropped the blankets on a chair. “You haven’t brought trouble; you brought Ewan. Kerr told me what you did for him, how you nurtured him. Loved him. And Gavin said he is grateful for the care you gave him.” She picked up a blanket and doubled it over before placing it on Deirdre’s lap. “I doona know what the future holds, Deirdre, but I know that my brother is not a cruel man. I canna believe that he would willingly cause you such pain.”
“Aye,” Kerr said from behind her, hands squeezing her shoulders. “Losing Ewan was a blow to him—to us all. As you more than anyone can imagine. One day Ewan was just gone, and we had no idea what had happened to him. Gavin was convinced Ewan was alive, and he ne’er gave up, but our search kept pointing us in false directions. Two and a half years of worry that he was hurt, sick, hungry, scared, lonely. It ate at all of us, but it ate at Gavin most of all.”
Deirdre’s stomach heaved at the thought. She would never have survived the agony of not knowing what had become of her son.
“And what of Ewan’s mother?” she asked.
“She died of the pestilence,” Isobel said. “Gavin had had reports of plague near the gathering place and had told her it wasn’t safe, but she ne’er listened. When it became clear she planned to take Ewan with her, he forbade it. She waited until he was gone and then did it anyway.”
Deirdre sucked in a sharp breath. The sick feeling of agony in her stomach turned to a burning outrage in her chest. My sweet boy could have died!
“I see how you feel,” Kerr said. “’Tis how Gavin felt too, but one hundred times worse. The rage—the hate—he felt toward Cristel festered and grew in those two years. I doona wish ill on any living being, but if anyone deserved to be struck down by the pestilence, it was her.”
“If she was so awful, why did he marry her?” Deirdre asked. She’d had no choice in her nuptials, but surely a laird as powerful as Gavin MacKinnon could make his own choices.
“Because I didn’t know,” Gavin said, stepping out from the bottom of the stairwell and crossing toward them. “As far as I knew, we had a joyful, exciting courtship. I thought we would be happy together—but she ne’er once showed me who she truly was or how she really felt about things until after our marriage. She pretended to be someone else to catch my interest, and I fell for every soft look and helpless murmur.”
“And that’s what you wanted in a wife?” she asked. “Someone soft and helpless?”
He stared at her blankly. “Nay—”
“But you just said—”
“I know what I said!”
Deirdre dropped her eyes. What was she doing, aggravating him? Questioning him? She needed to appeal to that good nature that his sister and Kerr swore he had. But the idea of this Cristel woman taking advantage of him, of him being drawn in by such tactics—or of him failing to understand his own self—scraped down her spine like a dull knife.
She kept her eyes on the blankets next to her, knowing she should say nothing more on the matter, but her mouth opened of its own accord and words spilled out. “’Tis difficult sometimes to see people as they truly are, if they doona wish you to see them. And sometimes ’tis difficult to…be who you truly are for fear of dislike or censure or even…humiliation. And sometimes just because of our circumstances. But sometimes what we are drawn to is an idea of a person, of how they will complete the picture we’ve created of ourselves and not the real person.
“It may be that she did show you who she truly was, and you didn’t want to see it.”
Gavin stared at her, a muscle jumping in his jaw, and her heart sank. What was it about this man that made her open her mouth when for years she’d kept it shut? Maybe he felt familiar to her because of Ewan? Or because they both loved him?
Whatever it was, she had to block it from her heart, her mind, and say nothing else that might upset him.
“Ewan will sleep in the nursery from now on,” Gavin said stiffly. “He has his nursemaid, Annag, with him, and she will soothe him at night until he no longer wakens.”
Deirdre jumped from her chair, her heart squeezing till she couldn’t breathe. The blankets that covered her tumbled to the floor. “Nay! You canna! Is your heart truly so cold?”
So much for that vow of silence.
“My heart is warm, Deirdre, and it’s bleeding for my son, but—”
“You have no idea what that will do to him.”
“He’ll cry, possibly even scream because things are different here, and he’s not with you. But eventually he’ll stop. I doona want him associating his home here with you.”
“You think he’s just going to forget me? I’m sure you wish it were so, but he will remember.”
“Aye, but if he gets used to sleeping with you here, it’ll make it that much harder when you…”
“When I what, Gavin? At least have the stones to say it!”
He stepped forward, his f
ace grim, but she didn’t retreat or drop her eyes even one inch. “When you leave, Deirdre. And my stones are big enough and hard enough to say anything to anyone when it comes to my son. To do what I think is right.”
“For you, maybe. Not for Ewan.”
“I’ll tell you what was right for Ewan—that his own mother had loved him. But that ne’er happened. And that his father had been able to keep him safe, but that ne’er happened either. And that some monster ne’er targeted a child in order to control MacKinnon wealth and land, but the devil take them, that did happen.
“Now I have to choose what’s right, what will happen, and I’m telling you, Deirdre, you canna stay. Even if I wanted you to. Which I don’t. Our clans may soon be at war. And until I know better, you are my prisoner. Your husband, your father, even your brother, may soon be bloody heaps on the battlefield—cleaved in two by my sword!”
She stepped closer to him, one hand pressed against her stomach, the other pressed against his linen shirt—and over his heart. “Please. You think you have all the answers, Gavin MacKinnon, but you doona. Your son is terrified of the dark. He’s afraid to be left alone.”
“And now he has Annag to help him with those fears.”
“Do you think we didn’t try for years to help him? The nursemaids chastised me for letting him sleep with me, but I was the only one who could soothe him. The only one who could make him feel safe.”
“I will make him feel safe, Deirdre. I am his father.”
“So you keep telling me, over and over, and I doona care. We’re not a couple of dogs pissing o’er our territory. He’s a wee lad that needs both of us. He is happy and well-adjusted in the day, Gavin, but he canna abide being alone in the dark. Think about what might have happened to him when he was taken. Were his needs met? Was he tended to at night?”
Gavin’s face clouded over, turned dark and forbidding. He removed her hand from his body, then stepped away.
“Nay, I willna speculate. I’ll bring your husband before me, and I’ll demand answers.”
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