Hard-Hearted Highlander--A Historical Romance Novel Page 18

  “You’ve no idea what sort of life I’ve led.”

  “I’ve an idea of it—my mother is English, aye?”

  “And therefore, you know all there is to know of me. If you know all, then you must know that I’ve not lived a life of leisure. Far from it.” She began to walk down the hill to return to the path.

  Mackenzie followed her, and as they reached the path, he took hold of her hand. Bernadette did not try and remove it, because she liked how he held it, his fingers clasped firmly around hers. “What are you doing?”

  “This way,” he said, and turned away from the house, headed toward the loch.

  “Where are we going?” She felt uneasy, her thoughts warring with her heart over all the things she ought to do in this moment and all the things she wanted to do. “I should return to Killeaven. I’ve been gone too long. I’ve seen too much.”

  “There is one more thing I’d have you see,” he said, and hooked her hand into the crook of his arm to pull her closer. Again, Bernadette did not resist him. She liked the feel of him beside her.

  He led her along the edge of the loch, down a well-worn path that rose up from the water’s edge and climbed a small hill. At the top of the hill was a lone oak. It looked almost abandoned there, as if a forest had once stood around it and had deserted it. Mackenzie paused and looked up at the tree.

  So did Bernadette. She knew, without a word passing between them, what it was about this tree that drew him. Strangely enough, she could almost feel the sorrow here, could almost picture a man hanging by his neck from the limb that stretched away from the other tree limbs toward the sea. She could well imagine how shockingly disheartening it must have been for the Highlanders to see the man hanging here, to understand what had become of those who had joined the rebellion against the king.

  Mackenzie’s expression was blank.

  “Why do you come?” she asked.

  “To remember. To no’ forget.”

  “But it’s...heartbreaking.”

  “Aye. Sorrow has become a way of life.”

  She could see the sorrow in his eyes, the lines of it in his face. Bernadette had lived with debilitating sorrow for a very long time. “It doesn’t have to be so,” she said quietly.

  His eyes moved over her cheeks, her nose. Her lips. “What would you have me do, then? Forget? Convince myself it never happened? Or worse, that it didna matter?”

  Those were questions she’d asked herself. Could she forget? No. Could she pick herself up and go on? She thought she had. “I would have you stop living in the grip of your grief. To live for the future and not what is gone.”

  He sighed wearily, as if he’d been so advised before, as if this suggestion were so obvious as to be tedious now. But Bernadette could not let her words hang between them now like the poor man who’d swung on this tree. “You’re not the only man to have lost someone dear to you, or to have suffered a great tragedy, Mackenzie. These things have happened, but you survived them, and if you mean to honor those you lost, you must strive to live, mustn’t you?”

  “You think it is as easy as that, do you?”

  “I know, from personal experience, that it is exceedingly difficult.”

  “Aye, and what experience is that?”

  Bernadette didn’t really care to tell him why, or anyone for that matter—but in this moment, standing under this tree, she wanted to assure this wounded man that he was not alone with the pain of his loss. “There is a reason I am a lady’s maid instead of mistress of my own home. I am the daughter of a wealthy man, and I might have made a very good match. But I ruined my father’s life, and he ruined mine.”

  She had Mackenzie’s attention. He turned away from the tree to her. “How?”

  He was examining her so closely that she could feel color flood her cheeks. She’d not spoken of her tragedy in so long and it felt thick in her throat. “I fell in love with a man my father did not want for me,” she said stiffly. “We...eloped,” she said, avoiding his gaze, and tried to swallow down her shame. “My father sent men after us, and they caught us a few days after we’d taken our vows.” She looked sheepishly at him, and for once, he did not return an impassive gaze. He looked almost pained for her.

  “You needna say more, Bernadette.”

  “We were, ah...we were at an inn in Penrith, very near the border of Scotland, when we were caught. Those men had bribed the innkeeper to divulge our presence. They burst into the room.” She was shaking, and grabbed the skirt of her gown to keep from it.

  “Donna say more, please,” he begged her, and caressed her back.

  But Bernadette couldn’t stop. “They took Albert away.” She was startled that after all this time the memory could still cause her voice to catch and her tears to well. She’d never told anyone other than her sister what happened to her and Albert at that inn. “They took him,” she said again, her voice softer. “They impressed him onto a ship. I didn’t know what had become of him, not until a few months later, when my aunt told me that he’d been lost at sea.” Her voice quavered, and she tried, in vain, to swallow down her emotions.

  He muttered something in Gaelic and shook his head. “He was lost at sea and I—” She caught a sob in her throat. “I never saw him or spoke to him again after that awful morning in Penrith. My father had our marriage annulled, and I was to pretend as if it had never happened. So you see, you are not the only to have suffered a devastating loss. My loss was just as deeply felt.” She hastily wiped a single tear from beneath her eye. “We are more unlike than either of us knew. The difference between us is that I’ve refused to allow my grief to claim me for all eternity.”

  Mackenzie said nothing for a long moment.

  Bernadette wanted to flee now that she’d said it, to mourn Albert and the loss of their child again, in spite of all that she’d just said. Her tragedy had never left her. The pain had never really gone away. But she had somehow managed to get on with her life.

  “Aye, leannan, you’re right,” he said. “I live in the grip of my grief. From the moment I realized Seona was gone, I resigned myself to the idea I’d never feel alive again. I didna want to feel alive again. I’ve wanted death, I have,” he admitted.

  Bernadette shook her head, disturbed by his admission.

  “But in these last few days,” he said, turning his gaze to her, “I’ve felt a wee bit of me sputter to life.”

  There was something different about his eyes, she realized. There was a light in them that had not been there before. “Have you?”

  “Aye, I have,” he said, and put his arm around her waist, drawing her closer. “I donna know how,” he said, his gaze falling to her mouth. “I know only that I’ve been challenged in a way I’ve no’ been challenged before, and it has caused my blood to rise.”

  The way he was looking at her now filled her with a potent desire. “Mine, too,” she admitted.

  He pulled her into his arms to kiss her. Sensual delirium quickly overtook Bernadette, pushing aside all rational thought. He lifted his hand to her face, touched his finger to the corner of her mouth as he kissed her. What she did was wrong, and every moment she remained in his arms, she harmed Avaline further, but Bernadette could not make herself stop. She couldn’t fathom how much her body and her heart wanted his touch. She’d already fallen, had plummeted into that vat of desire, and had wrapped her hand around his wrist, holding tightly so that she wouldn’t float away.

  Somehow, they were on the ground beneath that tree of sorrow, and he pressed his body and the evidence of his desire against her. Something very deep and primal stirred inside of Bernadette, and as he cupped her breast, squeezing it, she ran her hands over his shoulders, up the hard, muscular planes of his chest. His tongue tangled with hers, his hands stroked her body, his fingers sought the hem of her gown.

  A heavy sensation of pleasure, n
ot unlike the feeling she imagined of being swept under by a tide, was rolling and spinning through her. Mackenzie’s touch had submerged her into a pool of desire; she was sinking deeper, sinking well below the surface of her awareness and her morals.

  He lifted his head, his breathing as uneven and hard as hers. His stormy gray eyes took her in, the intensity of his scrutiny searing, making her feel slightly feverish. Bernadette lost all sense—she was so desperate to touch him, to feel him, that she threw her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her, kissing him as ardently, as passionately, as he’d kissed her.

  He made a sound of surprise, but he rolled with her, so now she was lying on top of him, his head firmly in her grasp. He caressed her as he kissed her, then rolled again, putting her on her back once more. He groped for her gown, dragging it up and slipping his hand beneath it, to the bare skin of her leg. Bernadette began to pant as his hand made a slow, torturous trek up her leg, to the fleshy inside of her thigh, and then slid in between her legs. The tide of pleasure was quick to crash through her as he stroked her. Bernadette responded with the force of pent-up desire, harbored and subdued for years, now breaking free.

  Somehow, her hair came loose, tumbling down her shoulders in unruly waves. She pressed shamelessly against his hand, her core fluttering with the escalating tension. She nipped at his lips, kissed his neck, his mouth, his cheek, racing toward that moment of oblivion. When her release came, when she could no longer keep her desires tethered to her, she cried out.

  His breath was hot on her skin, his mouth wet on her breast as a rolling sea of sensation rocked through her, numbing Bernadette’s thoughts to everything but the feeling of his hands and his mouth and his breath on her skin.

  When she could at last open her eyes, he was staring down at her. The storm still raged in his eyes, but it was a different sort of storm than she’d seen in him before—it was desire she saw raging in him now. “Diah, lass, go from me now,” he said gruffly, and rolled away from her. “I want to touch you, all of you, feel myself inside you.”

  She wanted that, too, and it scared her. She clambered to her feet, brushed the grass and leaves from her gown, yanked at her stomacher, then twisted her hair into a knot at her nape. He came to his feet, too, and watched her trying to remove any sign of what had just happened.

  She realized what she was doing and slowly dropped her hands. They stared at each other for one very long, highly charged, but silent moment. “What are we doing?” Bernadette asked weakly.

  “I donna rightly know,” he admitted.

  “You’re to be wed next week.”

  He clenched his jaw but said nothing.

  “We can’t continue on like this,” she said, her heart squeezing painfully. “God forgive me for what I’ve done, but I can’t—I can’t do this, Mackenzie.” The regret was already stewing in her.

  “Rabbie,” he said quietly. “I am Rabbie.”

  Rabbie. She nodded, his name tumbling around in her head. Of course he was Rabbie to her now—they’d just shared a very intimate moment. Had he even heard what she’d said? “You don’t understand—” she began, but he quickly interrupted her.

  “Will you deny that there is something between us, then?” he asked. “Will you pretend that it doesna exist?”

  “How can I?”

  He grabbed her hand and held it between both of his. “You said it yourself, Bernadette, we are more alike than we know, aye? We deserve—”

  “No,” she said, pulling her hand free. “Don’t say it. If I can’t pretend this feeling between us doesn’t exist, then you can’t pretend this is you and me against the world, Rabbie. You can’t pretend that there aren’t others whose lives are affected by what we’ve done. You must agree—you must agree—that I can’t see you again.”

  She was begging him, but Rabbie folded his arms implacably as he contemplated her. It felt to her as if a bit of sorcery had surrounded them, because she could feel an unnatural power between them, a current that seemed to lock them together beneath this tree.

  This situation was impossible.

  How could she experience all these feelings for this man, of all men? How could she betray Avaline so completely, over and over again?

  “I have to leave,” she said, and turned back to the path, striding along, her heart still hammering against her chest.

  Rabbie followed her in silence, which had become their habit when confronted by their mutual desire. They rode in silence, too, Bernadette leaning forward, desperate not to touch him, afraid of what would become of her, of how she would crumble if she allowed herself to feel his body against hers. When they reached the cliff above the sea, Rabbie helped her to her feet. But he didn’t let her go straightaway. He held her there, one hand on her arm, the other running roughly over the top of her head, the way you might caress a child. “I’ll no’ apologize for it,” he said. “I’ve found a light in you, Bernadette, and I’ll no’ apologize.”

  “Then I will,” she said, and moved around him and began to walk down the path.

  Her heart was still hammering, but the cause of it now was not desire. It was regret. Ugly, distended regret for so many things, in so many ways, and it was consuming her with each step.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE WINDS ARE against them, and it seems to take a day instead of a few hours before Aulay can change tack, sail the ship into the cove and anchor there. Rabbie lowers the rowboat and jumps into it like a man fleeing a walk on the plank. He has been gone from home for almost two years, living in the bleak cold of Bergen, rising every day with the hope that word would come from his father that it was safe to return home.

  Rabbie brings two seamen with him, commands them to row. As he nears shore, he sees his father standing in the company of his oldest brother, Cailean. He is too eager, and before the boat can reach the shore, he leaps out of it and wades in, uncaring of the cold water in his boots. Madainn mhath! He calls, waving his arm. He is grinning. His happiness has buoyed him—he feels no heavier than a feather. At long last, he is home. At long last, everything will be put to rights.

  But when he sees the look his father and brother exchange, sees how they come forward, walking like a pair of undertakers, his gut sinks. His first thought is his mother. Diah, not his mother! He is so convinced something has befallen her that at first he can hardly absorb what they say...but then the words begin to sink into his heart. It can’t possibly be Seona, and yet, they cruelly insist all the MacBees are gone. He doesn’t believe them—if this is so, why did they not send word to him months ago when they disappeared? “So you’d no’ come home, lad,” his brother says. “So you’d no’ risk your life for a lost cause.”

  Rabbie shoves Cailean’s hand from him and strides away, his homecoming ruined by their false news. He believes they haven’t looked hard enough. He believes she has left him some clue, that she would know he would move heaven and earth to find her. When he reaches the top of the cliff, he begins to run. It is roughly two miles to her home, and he runs, his sea legs causing him to stumble at first, then finding their strength and pumping, carrying him faster. When he reaches the house, he draws up with air burning in his lungs and stares at the half-gone roof, the broken windows, the door standing open.

  He runs again, bursting into that house, calling for Seona, even though somewhere inside him he knows the truth. If he had any more doubt of it, the evidence of carnage erases it. He collapses in grief onto the floor and rails against God, against the Sassenach, but mostly, against himself for ever having left her.

  No one comes for him, no one tries to draw him away. It is dusk by the time he picks himself up and begins the long walk to Balhaire. He sees nothing as he walks, his head full of the images of what must have happened there. He wants desperately to believe Seona escaped.

  But he knows. He knows that if she escaped, she would have gone
to Balhaire, she would be waiting for him. His head can’t fully accept it, not yet, but his heart crumbles into dust. He can’t bear the truth. He will never bear the truth and the guilt that seems to swallow him whole. Nothing will ever be the same again, and Rabbie feels as if the curtain is being drawn across his life.

  * * *

  HE RODE INTO the bailey as if he was being chased by English soldiers, when in reality, he was being chased by his own diabhal. He was possessed with a need he’d not felt so intently, and without restraint, as he did now. His body was still pulsing for a release he could not reach.

  He threw himself off his horse and handed the reins to the young lad who’d lost his father to Culloden and started for the entrance. But the sound of children playing distracted him, and he paused, turning toward the green.

  His nieces and nephews were there, and another child, one so small that it took him a moment to realize it was Georgina, Cailean and Daisy’s bairn. He glanced at the lad who held his horse. “My brother has come?” He hadn’t expected them so soon as this.

  “Aye, this morning.”

  Rabbie changed course and walked to the green to have a look at the wee little lass. He’d not seen her in some time. She was what, perhaps three years, now, maybe four? She had golden hair and pale green eyes, like her mother. His niece Maira was minding the children, all of them racing about, and he noticed Fiona and Ualan MacBee standing nearby. “It’s Uncle Rabbie!” his nephew Bruce shouted, and like a heard of sheep, the other children raced toward him.

  “Halt there,” Rabbie said, but it was no use—they swarmed him, giggling and laughing as they did, knocking him to the ground...or perhaps Rabbie fell. He wanted to laugh with them as he used to do, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t. He rolled with them, tossing one and then the other, much to their delight, until he was able to stand again. He stared down at those smiling, upturned faces, their eyes and mouths and brows so sweet and carefree, showing no signs of despair or tragedy. Their day would come, but today, they were beautiful in their innocence.