Page 30 of Highlander's Secret Heiress
Her speech, while still only confined to one or two words at a time, was progressing amazingly well, and Alyth felt proud to have been the one to coax her out of her shell of silence.
“Davina!” she replied. “Are you not supposed to be busy with your counting lessons?”
Davina shook her head and took Alyth’s hand.
“I am working!” she protested, but the little girl took no notice.
She led Alyth to their favourite spot, a bench underneath a sweet chestnut tree, now bare and skeletal in the middle of winter. It was bitterly cold and Alyth shivered, but Davina did not seem to have noticed it at all.
Davina looked at Alyth for a long moment before reaching into the pocket of her dress, keeping her eyes on Alyth’s face as she did so. She took Alyth’s hand and put something small and shining into it, and when she looked at it, Alyth gasped in astonishment.
There, lying in her palm, was the pendant she had been searching for all this time! A wave of gratitude and relief swept over her; gratitude for the return of this, her most precious treasure, and relief that she no longer needed to spend all her time in this dangerous place searching for it.
Alyth opened the pendant and saw her beautiful mother, who was holding a chubby, happy-looking baby of perhaps six months old, whom she knew to be herself. They were looking ateach other adoringly, and the love between them was palpable, even though the image was no more than a tiny reproduction.
Alyth’s eyes filled with tears; this was the person she had lost in the most brutal way, and now, even though she only had an image of her, she felt some tiny measure of healing.
Davina tugged at her sleeve to attract Alyth’s attention, pointed to the baby’s face, then at Alyth. Her teal blue eyes, so like her father’s, were wide with curiosity as she asked in a trembling voice, “You?”
Alyth nodded; her throat was too choked with emotion for her to speak, and the tears which had been pooling in her eyes began to pour down her cheeks. Davina must have heard her whispering above her bed, desperately asking for the girl’s help to find the only thing she had left of her dead mother.
“You, MacAdams,” Davina stated, and Alyth suddenly saw a measure of sadness creep into her gaze.
Alyth felt wretched. “Yes, I am,” she confessed. “But my only reason for coming here was to find this, Davina.” She held up the pendant. “Because I lost my mother, just as you lost yours, and now I have found this tiny piece of her which was also taken from me. It will never bring her back, of course, but at least I can look at her now whenever I want to.
I feel so fortunate to have met you and helped you speak again. Thank you for letting me do that, and thank you for giving me back my pendant. You have no idea how much it means to me. I hope that we are friends now. Do you think so, too?”
Davina studied Alyth for a moment, then her face broke into a wide smile. “Yes,” she replied, and Alyth realised that this was the first time she had actually had a proper conversation with the little girl, albeit an extremely hesitant and stilted one. Some part of her felt extremely triumphant, since this was something no one else had been able to do.
Would Davina go back to being her old, silent self when Alyth was gone, she wondered? Would she ever forgive this nasty woman who had deserted her just when she was finally finding her way back to normality?
Her mother had left her, albeit through no fault of her own, and now Alyth would be leaving her too, but this time quite deliberately with no thought for her welfare. Would Davina ever be able to trust anyone again?
Yet Alyth had a responsibility to her own family. Her father would no doubt have come to the conclusion that she was dead by now because he knew his daughter well; she would not have deserted him so callously. Therein lay the only bright spot in her current predicament; the thought of seeing her father’s face when he saw her alive and well.
And Lachlan? She need not wonder about his reaction; he would be incandescent with rage, mostly for Davina’s sake. Yet would he miss the woman he called Jeannie? Would he miss the body he had once enjoyed and perhaps hoped to enjoy again? For her part, Alyth knew that she would miss his, even though they had only had one encounter.
She dragged her mind away from that subject to focus on Davina again. “Please don’t tell your father who I am,” she begged. “Or he will be very angry with me. Davina, I am going to have to leave you soon, but I am so, so glad to have met you, lovely girl.”
At this, Davina’s face dropped, and her eyes became full of sadness. “Stay, Jeannie,” she pleaded woefully.
She put up a hand to caress Alyth’s cheek, and Alyth turned her face and kissed Davina’s palm.
“Oh, my dear girl,” she murmured. “You have no idea how much I wish I could, but you see, I have a father too, and he has no idea where I am. He is very sad, and misses me, so I have to go back to him. Also, your father will be furious that I lied tohim, and I would rather not upset him. Please, please keep this a secret between the two of us. I will be back to see you as soon as I can.”
This was not a promise Alyth was sure she would be able to keep, but she had to make it in order to fulfil her aim of leaving the castle.
“Will you keep my secret?” she asked again. “You could keep the necklace I gave you to remember me by.”
Davina nodded, then put her arms around Alyth, but when she moved away eventually Alyth could see that she was weeping, and felt wretched. They clung together for a few moments longer, then Alyth rose to her feet and kissed the top of Davina’s head before hurrying back to the kitchen.
Somehow, Alyth managed to get through the rest of the day. She forced herself to laugh with the others during their midday meal and even told a few jokes, mostly aimed at herself. She felt infinitely sad that this would be her last day with these people whom she had come to know and like.
Their concern for her after the incident with the Robertsons had been like a healing balm, but what had always surprised her the most was their lack of jealousy over Davina’s preference for her. Her nurse had been pushed firmly into second place, but she seemed quite content with that.
The evening meal with her friends seemed particularly poignant that evening when Alyth realised that there would never be any more of these happy evenings filled with teasing, laughter and scandalous gossip. She tried to find comfort in the thought that she would have many happy memories to look backon, but she was saddened to think that the feeling would not be mutual.
Presently, Flora, who was sitting next to her, waved a hand in front of her eyes to regain her attention, and Alyth laughed as she realised she had been daydreaming.
