Page 58 of Hard-Hearted Highlander
She wanted that, too, and it scared her. She clambered to her feet, brushed the grass and leaves from her gown, yanked at her stomacher, then twisted her hair into a knot at her nape. He came to his feet, too, and watched her trying to remove any sign of what had just happened.
She realized what she was doing and slowly dropped her hands. They stared at each other for one very long, highly charged, but silent moment. “What are we doing?” Bernadette asked weakly.
“I donna rightly know,” he admitted.
“You’re to be wed next week.”
He clenched his jaw but said nothing.
“We can’t continue on like this,” she said, her heart squeezing painfully. “God forgive me for what I’ve done, but I can’t—I can’t do this, Mackenzie.” The regret was already stewing in her.
“Rabbie,” he said quietly. “I am Rabbie.”
Rabbie.She nodded, his name tumbling around in her head. Of course he was Rabbie to her now—they’d just shared a very intimate moment. Had he even heard what she’d said? “You don’t understand—” she began, but he quickly interrupted her.
“Will you deny that there is something between us, then?” he asked. “Will you pretend that it doesna exist?”
“How can I?”
He grabbed her hand and held it between both of his. “You said it yourself, Bernadette, we are more alike than we know, aye? We deserve—”
“No,”she said, pulling her hand free. “Don’t say it. If I can’t pretend this feeling between us doesn’t exist, thenyoucan’t pretend this is you and me against the world, Rabbie.Youcan’t pretend that there aren’t others whose lives are affected by what we’ve done. You must agree—youmustagree—that I can’t see you again.”
She was begging him, but Rabbie folded his arms implacably as he contemplated her. It felt to her as if a bit of sorcery had surrounded them, because she could feel an unnatural power between them, a current that seemed to lock them together beneath this tree.
This situation was impossible.
How could she experience all these feelings forthisman, of all men? How could she betray Avaline so completely, over and over again?
“I have to leave,” she said, and turned back to the path, striding along, her heart still hammering against her chest.
Rabbie followed her in silence, which had become their habit when confronted by their mutual desire. They rode in silence, too, Bernadette leaning forward, desperate not to touch him, afraid of what would become of her, of how she would crumble if she allowed herself to feel his body against hers. When they reached the cliff above the sea, Rabbie helped her to her feet. But he didn’t let her go straightaway. He held her there, one hand on her arm, the other running roughly over the top of her head, the way you might caress a child. “I’ll no’ apologize for it,” he said. “I’ve found a light in you, Bernadette, and I’ll no’ apologize.”
“Then I will,” she said, and moved around him and began to walk down the path.
Her heart was still hammering, but the cause of it now was not desire. It was regret. Ugly, distended regret for so many things, in so many ways, and it was consuming her with each step.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THEWINDSAREagainst them, and it seems to take a day instead of a few hours before Aulay can change tack, sail the ship into the cove and anchor there. Rabbie lowers the rowboat and jumps into it like a man fleeing a walk on the plank. He has been gone from home for almost two years, living in the bleak cold of Bergen, rising every day with the hope that word would come from his father that it was safe to return home.
Rabbie brings two seamen with him, commands them to row. As he nears shore, he sees his father standing in the company of his oldest brother, Cailean. He is too eager, and before the boat can reach the shore, he leaps out of it and wades in, uncaring of the cold water in his boots.Madainn mhath!He calls, waving his arm. He is grinning. His happiness has buoyed him—he feels no heavier than a feather. At long last, he is home. At long last, everything will be put to rights.
But when he sees the look his father and brother exchange, sees how they come forward, walking like a pair of undertakers, his gut sinks. His first thought is his mother.Diah, not his mother! He is so convinced something has befallen her that at first he can hardly absorb what they say...but then the words begin to sink into his heart. It can’t possibly be Seona, and yet, they cruelly insist all the MacBees are gone. He doesn’t believe them—if this is so, why did they not send word to him months ago when they disappeared? “So you’d no’ come home, lad,” his brother says. “So you’d no’ risk your life for a lost cause.”
Rabbie shoves Cailean’s hand from him and strides away, his homecoming ruined by their false news. He believes they haven’t looked hard enough. He believes she has left him some clue, that she would know he would move heaven and earth to find her. When he reaches the top of the cliff, he begins to run. It is roughly two miles to her home, and he runs, his sea legs causing him to stumble at first, then finding their strength and pumping, carrying him faster. When he reaches the house, he draws up with air burning in his lungs and stares at the half-gone roof, the broken windows, the door standing open.
He runs again, bursting into that house, calling for Seona, even though somewhere inside him he knows the truth. If he had any more doubt of it, the evidence of carnage erases it. He collapses in grief onto the floor and rails against God, against theSassenach, but mostly, against himself for ever having left her.
No one comes for him, no one tries to draw him away. It is dusk by the time he picks himself up and begins the long walk to Balhaire. He sees nothing as he walks, his head full of the images of what must have happened there. He wants desperately to believe Seona escaped.
But he knows. He knows that if she escaped, she would have gone to Balhaire, she would be waiting for him. His head can’t fully accept it, not yet, but his heart crumbles into dust. He can’t bear the truth. He will never bear the truth and the guilt that seems to swallow him whole. Nothing will ever be the same again, and Rabbie feels as if the curtain is being drawn across his life.
* * *
HERODEINTOthe bailey as if he was being chased by English soldiers, when in reality, he was being chased by his owndiabhal.He was possessed with a need he’d not felt so intently, and without restraint, as he did now. His body was still pulsing for a release he could not reach.
He threw himself off his horse and handed the reins to the young lad who’d lost his father to Culloden and started for the entrance. But the sound of children playing distracted him, and he paused, turning toward the green.
