Page 15 of Return to Clan Sinclair
“I knew about the tension between the states, but I never expected the situation to escalate to war. She’d taken the children to visit their grandparents in Mississippi. The day Fort Sumter was fired on, I was given my own division. Suddenly, the South was my enemy and my in-laws were traitors.”
He didn’t say anything else for a few moments. He simply sat studying the tartan pattern of the settee.
“She was stuck behind enemy lines.” He turned his head to look at her. “That’s how I was told to think of it. It took me a year to get to Mississippi.”
She really didn’t want to hear anymore. She wanted to wave her hand and send him from the room, allow her to think about her own children safe at Iverclaire.
Most of all she wanted to banish the spike of fear deep inside warning her of the horror of his tale. But once curiosity had been set free, it was difficult to quash it entirely. The question of his wife and children’s fate hung in her mind, desperate to be answered.
“Daniel was five. Sarah was six.”
“You never saw them again?”
“No.”
The one word was too simple, filled with such hopelessness she wanted to weep.
“After the war I tried once more. This time I found my sister-in-law.”
When he finally spoke again, she let out a relieved sigh, then caught her breath in the next second.
“She led me to all three graves,” he said, lowering his head to study his interlinked hands. “I don’t know what was worse, knowing or not knowing.”
“How did they die?” she softly asked.
“Corinth was a hospital town,” he said. “Soldiers returning from Shiloh were sent there, but the town wasn’t prepared for hundreds of thousands of men. People died of the heat, of dysentery, of other diseases. So did my family.”
He looked away. “It was a very long time ago.”
“Do you ever truly forget such things? Is there enough time in the world to cope with such loss?”
He stood, glancing down at her, his fascinating eyes gleaming. “Perhaps not. But sooner or later you have to make a choice. To live in the world as it is. Or to sit wishing and hoping things were different. Wishing and hoping never made anything change.”
Before she could say anything else, he left her sitting there, staring after him, feeling as if she’d failed in some elemental and important way.
He hadn’t intended to tell her anything. He never talked about his wife or children. Instead, they were locked away in a vault in his mind.
Then why had he?
There was something about Ceana Mead that called to him. Maybe it was her nurturing nature? After all, she was trying to save Carlton when he first saw her. Fiona had taken to her immediately and Alistair couldn’t say enough good things about her. Or maybe it was the way she had of looking at him that seemed to burrow down into the core of him where the real Bruce lay, the person he never showed anyone.
He hadn’t wanted her pity, but perhaps he craved her understanding.
She had a directness about her that he hadn’t found in many women. But then he wasn’t in the company of women much. Had that been a conscious decision? If so, here at Drumvagen he had no option but to notice Ceana.
He wondered about her marriage. She said she’d loved Peter with all her heart. Did she miss the man the way he’d once missed Kate, as if part of his life had been turned to ashes at her death?
In the beginning he’d had to make a choice each day, the same one he suspected Ceana was making now. To live or to will himself to die. To choose to put one foot in front of the other, to enjoy life without guilt, to accumulate a treasure trove of memories having nothing to do with Kate or his children. To begin to build a life alone.
Was she doing that? And why did he care so much?
CHAPTERSIX
“Irecommend you tell her, Macrath. It’s the only way we can make sure she’s safe.”
“I don’t want her to know. I just thank God Ceana is here now. Virginia won’t notice the extra precautions I’m taking.”
“The more she’s aware, the better.”
