Page 22 of Hard-Hearted Highlander
Avaline wanted to be somewhere that changed every day. She wanted to talk about stars and clouds and sea swells. She wanted to love something so fiercely that she couldn’t leave it. She wanted to look into the captain’s clear blue eyes and see him smile, and never, ever, think of his awful, wretched brother again.
She rolled onto her back and wondered what Captain Mackenzie would do if he found an English woman hiding on his ship. Perhaps even in his cabin, as no one would think to look for her there. Would he return her to father? Or would he take her in his arms and kiss her and promise her a life of adventure? Wouldn’t that be very romantic?
Why couldn’t it have been him, the man who knew the names of stars and always had a smile for her? Why was it his awful brother? Why, God, why?
Avaline wished she could confess her true feelings to Bernadette about Captain Mackenzie, but that was impossible—Bernadette would force her to forget Captain Mackenzie. She would dog Avaline, and she would know when Avaline was thinking of him. Bernadette always seemed to recognize what Avaline would do before Avaline realized it herself.
She sighed wearily, feeling quite heavy of heart for her seventeen years. She could feel sleep creeping into her body, pushing her down into unconsciousness, and as she drifted away, she imagined sneaking onboard the Mackenzie ship, imagined what the captain’s private quarters must look like, and how comforting it would be to have all his things around her. She imagined the moment Captain Mackenzie entered the quarters and found her there...
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEYMEETEVERYafternoon and walk along the cliff above the cove, speaking of everything and nothing, laughing at secret jokes. Their fingers are entwined except in those moments when Rabbie leans down, picks up a rock and hurls it out to sea. Sometimes, he carries her on his back so that the hem of herarasaidwill not get wet. Sometimes, they go down to the beach, and she picks up a stick and draws the shape of a heart with their initials.
They mean to be married. They don’t know when, and they have kept this promise to each other a secret. These are uncertain times—whispers of rebellion and treason seem to slip through the hills on every breeze.
On a particularly cool afternoon, Rabbie returns Seona to her family home and sees the horses there, still saddled. Inside, he hears the voices of men. Seona’s mother, a large woman with a welcoming smile, appears, but today she seems unusually fretful. As they walk past the room where Seona’s father and brothers are gathered, Rabbie sees the men who have come. Buchanan, Dinwiddie, MacLeary. All of them Jacobites, all of them known to conspire against the king. This is treacherous ground, and Rabbie glances at Seona. She doesn’t appear to notice the men. She is smiling, telling her mother about the ship they spotted passing along the coast with a flag of black and red. He doesn’t know if Seona understands what her father and brothers are about.
* * *
THEFOLLOWINGTWOdays after that interminable dinner, with singing so atrocious that Rabbie wished he was deaf, passed in a haze of restlessness. His thoughts kept going back to that evening and the moments he’d stood at the back of the music room, endeavoring—and failing—to grasp how he might possibly make a life with the lass.
Perhaps his father was right. Perhaps he ought to put her in at Killeaven and leave her there.
That dinner was intended to establish harmony between two families that would, in a matter of days, be forever tied by matrimony, but Rabbie couldn’t bear the thought of even bedding her. He’d escaped unnoticed from the music room, and had gone in search of drink stronger than wine.
His path had taken him to the kitchen. He’d heard voices as he approached, and figured the servants were cleaning up after the supper. He could hear Barabel’s deep voice instruct someone in Gaelic, “Have a care with the plate, lass. We’ve precious few of them now.”
He walked into the kitchen and just over the threshold, he froze. Barabel was instructing the MacLeod children. The lass glanced up at him and smiled. The lad scarcely made eye contact before turning back to his task of drying pots.
“Aye, Mr. Mackenzie, may I help you?” Barabel asked in Gaelic.
“Whisky,” he said, his voice rough with an emotion he hadn’t even realized he was holding.
Barabel disappeared into the adjoining storeroom to fetch it.
No one said a word. The two children stared at him, and Rabbie stared back. He didn’t know what to say to them, and at last, he spoke to them in Gaelic. Did they speak English? “I, ah... I knew your mother.”
The lad looked up at that admission.
“I donna remember her,” the girl announced in English. “Mrs. Maloney said I look very much like her. She was bonny and so am I.”
“Aye, she was, as are you,” Rabbie agreed. The lass—Fiona—must be five or six years old now. Ualan was nearly two when last Rabbie had seen him, and he guessed him to be seven or eight years now. “She loved you both,” he said.
Fiona smiled. The lad didn’t utter a word.
“I knew them all,” Rabbie said, and was embarrassed to hear his voice crack. “I even knew the two of you.”
Fiona’s eyes widened. “Youdid? I donna remember you.”
“You were a bairn, lass,” he said to her in English. “You played here at Balhaire, aye?”
The children stared at him. Perhaps they didn’t believe him. He began to perspire; he could feel a bead of it running down his back. As he gazed into those vaguely familiar faces, he could see Gavina and Seona’s eyes in the children. He could see the lad’s father in him, in his rust-colored hair, just like that of Donald MacLeod.
Barabel returned to the kitchen with a flagon. “Why do you stand idle?” she chastised the children as she handed Rabbie a flagon of whisky. “Finish your chores, the both of you,” she commanded.
Rabbie had glanced once more at the children before leaving. He was disquieted by their presence. What was to happen to them? Perhaps he didn’t want to know—to know would require some action on his part, at the very least, some thought or feeling. He couldn’t summon the strength for it that evening.
He’d taken the flagon to the top of the fortress tower, and there he had crouched on the parapet, drinking to numb the hopelessness in him. He’d absently viewed the bailey below—quite a fall that would be—but he didn’t think of jumping.
