Page 2 of Unforgotten
“My father,” Gavin began, his voice husky. “The healer saw him this morning … he’s dying.”
The news that clan-chiefIain MacNichol’s health had deteriorated didn’t come entirely as a shock to Ella. Last time she had seen the clan-chief, he’d been gaunt, his face a sickly-yellow color. Nonetheless, she knew that having the illness confirmed by a healer would have shocked both MacNichol and his kin. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
Gavin shook his head, his throat bobbing. “My ill news does not stop there,” he continued, a rasp to his voice. “There’s the matter of my betrothal.”
Ella stopped breathing. Over the past three months, the best summer of her life, awareness of his betrothal had cast a constant shadow over her happiness. “What of it?” she finally whispered.
“My parents have insisted that I must honor it,” Gavin replied. “They have bidden me to wed Innis before Samhain.”
Ella stared at him, her lips parting. “But ye promised ye would talk to yer parents … tell them ye would not wed my sister?” Her voice started to rise. She hated its shrillness, but she could not help herself. She began to breathe fast, panic rising within her, buzzing like an enraged swarm of hornets. Her ears started to ring.
Gavin shook his head, his gaze clouding. “It’s not as easy as that,” he replied. “A betrothal isn’t a simple thing to break. And with my father’s ill-health, there has never been a right time.” He broke off there, his expression turning pained. “Neither of my parents had mentioned the betrothal of late … and I thought it ceased to matter to them.” He swallowed hard. “But I was wrong … it does.”
“But ye don’t love Innis. Do ye?”
Gavin shook his head. “Ye know I don’t,” he replied softly. “It’s ye I want.”
“So go to them, tell them how ye feel.”
Gavin took a step back from her, shaking his head. “It’s too late, Ella. The agreement was writ and signed upon my thirteenth winter: Gavin MacNichol of Scorrybreac shall wed Innis Fraser of Talasgair. I thought it could be broken, but it cannot. I tried to tell my father that my heart lay elsewhere, yet he would not listen.” Gavin drew in a sharp breath. “He has made it his dying wish.”
For the longest moment, Ella merely stared at him.
She’d strayed into a nightmare. It was as if someone else was having this conversation.
Her elder sister Innis was sweet natured and fair of face—much more so than Ella—but she didn’t love Gavin and he didn’t love her.
Ella and Gavin hadn’t meant for all of this to happen. Five years earlier her family had moved from Talasgair—on the western coast of the isle, where the Fraser stronghold lay—to Scorrybreac Castle on the east, so that the eldest daughter could be betrothed to the MacNichol heir.
Ella and Gavin had become friends within the first few days, and then the pair of them had started spending more and more time together as the years passed. Gavin’s shrewish mother had always disapproved, but Innis hadn’t minded. Ella’s elder sister, pious and reserved, preferred to sit at her tapestries or read psalms rather than take walks in the woods or go hunting. These were pastimes that both Gavin and Ella enjoyed—and so they had started going out together.
It hadn’t taken long before a bond had forged between them, although they had only become lovers this summer. Ella had felt guilty at first—Gavin was promised to her sister after all—but the guilt soon passed as passion took hold.
“Ye are breaking my heart,” Ella whispered, her voice trembling. “Please don’t do this.”
Gavin stared back at her, his gaze guttering. “I’m so sorry, mo ghràdh,” he whispered, his voice broken. “But I have no choice.”
1
Facing the Past
Kilbride Abbey
MacKinnon Territory
Isle of Skye, Scotland
Eighteen years later …
1348 AD
CHANGE ALWAYS APPEARED in Ella’s life when she least expected it.
Fortune’s wheel didn’t turn on the days when she was ready, like after Yuletide when she prepared herself to face the year ahead. Or after a birth or death—significant events that made her pause and take stock of where she was in life.
No, change arrived at happy moments when she was at peace with the world, or on forgettable days when there was nothing but routine to punctuate the moment of its arrival. Fate liked to sneak in and attack from behind. And for that reason, it always caught her unawares.
Sister Ella was hard at work in the gardens of Kilbride Abbey when the second major turning point of her life came.
