Page 28 of A Constant Blaze

A sudden gust of wind whipped her veil back from her face. Perhaps it was the same wind that had snatched her breath. There was nowhere to hide, not here. A lifetime of dignity could not cover this hurt. He hadn’t just kicked her. He’d crushed her.

She felt herself sway, forced herself to steadiness even before Gormflaith’s hand took hers once more, and Adam and Donald moved to catch her. But she couldn’t bear that. Before they even touched her, some sense of preservation was already turning her away from them all. Still alone.

“Time?” she repeated with indifference. “After twenty-two years, how much more time does he want? Bring the men inside, Findlaech. All are welcome.”

Chapter Eight

Although the feastat Brecka was huge and merry, for Christian, it fell just a little flat. Muiredach the harpist surpassed himself with music, accompanying the exaggerated tales and gales of laughter that followed. Donald, delighted to be reunited with his son, Adam, named after his brother, barely seemed to notice the huge absence while he dandled the smiling child on his knee. But Gormflaith did. Seated at her mother’s side, she asked her brothers almost constant questions about their father.

Halla asked nothing. The perfect hostess as always, serene and hospitable, she appeared to treat the homecoming like any other Christian had witnessed. She didn’t even appear to be listening to her sons’ replies to Gormflaith. As if she didn’t care.

Beside Christian, Adam ate with the mindless thoroughness that told her he was lost in thought. Or dreams. She covered his hand with hers. “What are you thinking?”

His eyes focused on her. “That he should have come home to his own feast.”

“Be reasonable, Adam,” Donald said at once on his other side. He passed the baby back to his mother, one of the housemaids, with a grin. Though they did not appear to be together any longer, they retained an amity based on love of little Adam. “He’s been in captivity, in almost total isolation for over twenty years. He can’t be expected to jump straight back into the bosom of his family and his duties as if he only left them yesterday. This is hard for him.”

“Do you not think it is hard for her, too?”

Donald followed his gaze along the table to their mother, who was smiling at some jest of Findlaech’s. “She’s fine.”

“She’s not,” Adam said simply.

Donald opened his mouth to ask more, but, like Christian, he clearly saw that Adam’s eyes had lost focus as they so often did. Visions passed before him so often and without warning that he could have been excused for being as insane as many thought him. That he had learned somehow to navigate between them, to use the visions to enhance his already impressive clarity of thought, was a personal triumph few could appreciate. Donald was one of the few.

He waited until Adam’s gaze dropped to his food, and he began to eat again.

“What?” Donald said urgently. “What did you see?”

“I don’t need to see to understand that he’s spoiling every reason he had for coming home.”

*

It was aswell for Muiredach that he retained all the skills of a strolling player. In the last ten years serving the Lady of Ross, he had grown used to following his own heart where his music was concerned. But mournful melodies and angry chords would not do for her triumphal feast. His heart ached for his strong, beautiful lady who had borne so much alone, only to have her excitement slapped down again, not by her enemies, but by her own husband whom she had caused to be free.

Muiredach was not a violent man, but if Malcolm MacHeth had stood in front of him at that moment, he would have struck him, and to hell with the consequences—which would have been severe. He was well aware of the man’s fighting prowess, at least according to legend, and Muiredach would only be allowed one punch, so he’d have to make it count.

He reined in the fantasy, carefully controlling his hands and bringing them back to the happy music required of him. It was hard.

For years now, he’d been aware that he loved the lady, hopelessly and unconditionally, with the kind of love that was all the sweeter for being doomed to remain forever unrequited or even noticed. It was a pain he lived with proudly because it improved his art, but it had always been eased to bearable levels by the belief that the lady’s own absent love was a man truly worthy of her. The legendary Malcolm MacHeth, a great warrior, entitled to be a great king, wronged by his most powerful enemies.

It hurt Muiredach physically, in his gut, to think of her bound to a shallow man, not by mere ties of matrimonial duty, but by those of love. His heart broke for her pain.

Before too much ale had flowed and the hall grew too rambunctious, the lady wisely retired with her daughter and daughter-in-law, who were all soundly toasted by the men.

Muiredach used the opportunity to stop playing. Rising, he pushed the harp away and went to find himself some more ale. As he strolled among them, many of the men were drinking other, private, toasts to Mairead, the lady who had occupied Halla’s mind and conversation earlier. Muiredach knew she was the MacHeths’ woman who’d carried messages to and from Malcolm MacHeth in Roxburgh. Now, he heard the tale of how she’d dressed as a whore to gain access to the prisoners’ cell, swapped clothes with Donald MacHeth so that he could walk out heavily veiled while she hid in Malcolm’s trunk and was carried out of the castle with him.

Muiredach loved a good story, and he was more than happy to drink a toast with the men to the health of such a brave and loyal lady. Again, he wondered at the devotion inspired in such noble women by a clearly inferior man like Malcolm MacHeth.

Why? How?

Answering a call of nature, he made his way down the length of the hall to the door. Outside, campfires had been built in the yard, well back from the main hall and the outbuildings, round which more of the Ross host were gathered. They’d been served the same feast as those inside and were already in a much later stage of inebriation. With consideration of their position, Muiredach walked farther around the hall than he normally would to relieve himself.

Others had much the same idea. As he walked back toward the light of the campfires, a man came toward him. Adam MacHeth. Muiredach nodded, unsurprised to receive no response. Adam was strange, living largely, Muiredach suspected, in his own world of dreams. And yet the men not only followed him but treated him like some kind of god, much as they regarded his father, Malcolm.

“Muiredach?”

He glanced back in surprise to find Adam a foot away from him, half turned toward him. The light from the nearest fire flickered over his shadowed face.

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