The Shadow 0f Her Smile (Highlander Heroes Book 3) Page 8
She has no one, he guessed. Whatever her complete circumstance, whatever her familial situation, she had no one to look after her. How many times had she been let down in this regard? How many persons—aside from him—had forsaken her?
He would say it seemed a pitiful situation, but there was something about her—her poise, the tilt of her head, her oft-angry eyes—that near screamed to any and all that there was nothing pathetic about this fierce lass. She was a survivor. She would carry on, trudge through. Giving up, giving in—these were not choices she would ever make, he somehow knew.
Jamie sighed and looked around the hall. The wounded were well situated. All evidence of the medicinal maneuvers over the past hour had been tidied up: the blood soaked rags were nowhere to be seen, the bodies of the dead had been taken away, the treated injured men had been moved to the barracks. Even now, two soldiers moved the trestle tables back into their usual places toward the middle of the room. Alastair and those serving girls were nowhere to be seen, and Anice and Ada themselves disappeared down a corridor now, possibly heading to the kitchens.
Jamie left the hall and found the stables once again. He needed a long and hard ride, to rid himself of the unrest that coursed within him still. He should have calmed down himself by now, should feel drained at this point, many hours after the fight. He refused to acknowledge, or believe, that thoughts of Ada Moncriefe were what kept him yet so riled up.
Chapter Seven
Ada lie awake late into the night, her mind tortured by all that had happened today. Closing her eyes brought not darkness and rest, but visions of that army charging upon the figure of Kinnon, or a picture of that soldier crying in despair, his eyes glassy with fear, because he knew he was bound to die. She kicked at the suffocating blankets and shifted upon the mattress and pillow more than once.
A long and mellow howling, climbing in through the window of her tower room, brought her upright in the bed. Dear Lord, she’d forgotten all about Will. Earlier, she’d considered it unwise to allow Will to bound along side her when she’d planned to walk to Stoney, but with everything that had happened, had given him no thought the rest of the day.
Jumping from the bed, Ada wrapped herself in the cloak that had once belonged to the Kincaid’s mother and shoved her feet quickly into her leather shoes. She was afforded just enough light to find the door to the tower, though the narrow stairs down were shrouded in complete darkness and she checked her want of haste to navigate these carefully. Luckily, Torren had since pounded his thick shoulder against the door on the first floor, so Ada pushed it open now with ease and scampered across the bailey, into the stables just as Will let out another plaintive howl. She found his kennel by the light of the bare moon and lifted the latch without hesitation, whispering sincere apologies for having ignored him all day.
“Oh, you poor thing,” she said to him, scratching at his ears and kissing his nose. “Come along, darling.” She left the stables with Will still pushing at her hand for more love. “Let’s get you down to the beach for a good run.”
But the gate, of course, was locked, at this time of night. Ada had to call, in a whispered hiss, up to the guard on the wall. Luckily it was Arik who smiled and waved down to her.
“I forgot about Will,” Ada said to him. “Can I take him down to the beach?”
Arik nodded and held up one finger, asking her to wait.
Ada did so, while Will reacquainted himself with every nook and cranny of the bailey.
In another minute Arik appeared at the door to the right of the tunnel and two more sentries peered down from the battlements now. Arik pulled a torch down from the wall and handed it to Ada. “I canna go with you, lass. I’ve got duty for several more hours.” He directed her through the tunnel and surprised her by unlocking and opening a man-sized door that she’d never noticed actually within the tall wooden and metal gates.
Arik smirked at her surprise. “Only go to the beach, lass. We’ll keep an eye on you from up here. Lady Anice does this all the time—well not any more, since she’s with child. But she did, at one time.”
“Thank you so much, Arik.”
He nodded. “Keep the torch lit. If it goes out, you come up. When the light’s gone, we’ll know to open the door.”
“Perfect, thank you.” Ada smiled, and called to Will, who bounded through the doorway ahead of her. She passed through and descended the slope while Arik locked the small door behind her. Will dashed this way and that, marking territory and scaring up some nesting critter from the brush. But mostly, he followed Ada around the side of the castle and along the path that opened up to the beach.
Ada stopped, just as the entire beach came into view and stared with no small amount of wonder. She didn’t need the torch, the moon shining so bright, its reflection upon the smooth sea doubling the light upon the beach, bathing everything in navy and gold. The tide was higher but not dangerously so and Ada jabbed the torch into the sand about halfway between the water and castle’s cliff. Will raced past her, ran straight at the water, splashing through the surf and chomping at the waves again.
Pulling the cloak more snugly about her, wishing she’d taken the time to don more layers, Ada plopped down in the cool sand and waited for Will to expend much of his energy. She breathed deeply of the salty air and concluded that the beach at night must rival the lure and beauty of the daytime beach, for all its peaceful, if eerie, solitude.
No more than a few minutes had passed when Will went dashing by her, heading to the left side and the cairn rock formation. He began to bark, which had Ada clambering to her feet and peering into the blackness of the rocky cairn. Will only ever barked at people. No sooner had she thought this, than a shape appeared over the top of the cairn.
Franticly, Ada sent a nervous glance up to the wall and relaxed only minimally, seeing that two guards seemed to be watching her, as Arik had promised. The shape moved over the rocks, coming enough into the moonlight that Ada could distinguish it as a man.
She wasn’t sure how, when the man remained in shadowed blackness for several more steps, that she knew it was Jamie MacKenna. But she did, and it was.
Will had quit his harsh bark, having replaced it with a rumbling growl that caused Jamie MacKenna no hesitation at all. He leapt down from the last knee high rock and landed on the sand very near to Will.
Ada heard a brief, not unkind, “Hush, Will.”
Nervously, Ada turned and went to pick up the torch. She would leave. Her nighttime foray into blissful seclusion was no more.
“Wait.” He called, neither too loudly nor too sharply.
Will no longer growled, but he did prance over to stand in front of the man.
Ada faced him but said nothing. Jamie MacKenna stopped so that only Will and a few feet separated them. His hair, his eyes, everything about him that was light and fierce in sunlight, was dark and unfathomable in moonlight.
“What are you about, lass?”
Ada blinked. “I—I’d forgotten about Will today, with...everything. Arik said it was all right for me to be here.” Why did she feel the need to defend rather than simply explain?
He nodded. “He seems right at home in the water.”
Ada blinked at him. They were going to make conversation? As if no great calamity hung between them? She squinted through the darkness. Over his shoulder, she would swear there flickered the light of another torch, on the other side of the cairn. Did the MacKenna, too, find solitude near the water?
Ada had spent some of the last few hours, lying sleepless in her bed, with some irksome bit of guilt that she had not spoken even one word of appreciation to Jamie MacKenna for what he had done for her today. Admittedly, she balked at the idea even as it plagued her, thinking he deserved no such thing. If it had not been him, likely another soldier, a Kincaid, would have lent his hand or his aid in that circumstance.
But she hadn’t cause to be so callous. She could quite easily give him her thanks and not regret later that she had not.
It was a long time before he responded. Or it only seemed so while she mulled over the insincerity of her words.
“I dinna ken that puts us on similar footing, though.”
Ada gave him a quizzical look.
“Lass, I can yank you out of a hundred battles looming, and I’d still no have repaid you for what you did for me and mine. And for Will.’ He shuffled his feet a bit, which Ada had to believe was something Jamie MacKenna rarely did. That man who’d charged headlong into battle today was not the man who stood before her now. “I watched you with those lads today and I hope to God you were with him. In the end.”
She hadn’t expected this, either a reference to Will or what seemed an honest desire of his. Her lips trembled, those last moments with Will brought to mind. She surprised herself, being able to meet and hold his gaze, being able to tell him, “I was. We—we talked all night, to keep each other awake...so that our feet wouldn’t slip off the crates.” The words came haltingly, in a low voice, filled with unpleasant memories. “But he—he couldn’t stay awake, or...or the blood loss was enough that he passed out. He slipped off.... He didn’t even wake, didn’t try to regain his footing.” The words, once began, seemed then to come easily. Ada began to cry in earnest. “I called his name. I kept calling, but he wouldn’t wake up. And I—I—”
He lifted his hand, as if he would touch her, but he did not. “You did all you could, lass.”
“I didn’t!” This, as a painful keening. “I was so angry at him, so angry that—that he died. That he left me. I was so afraid to be alone.”
“’Tis only natural—”
“It is not natural! It was wrong of me to wish him alive for so selfish a reason!” She sobbed and whispered, “Why didn’t you come back! Why?” She raised her head, glared at him through watery eyes. “Why, damn you?” and she slapped him across the face as hard as she could.
It wasn’t fair, that she had to live with it, but he did not.
Ada slapped him again. His head turned sideways with the force of the blow. Breathing heavily, Ada locked her gaze with his as he faced her again. She hit him once more. He grimaced, but she had the fleeting and pathetic notion that the face was made as some sort of apology that her small hand could not inflict more harm. She struck out again and again, smacked his face and his shoulders, and beat her fists against his chest and he just stood there. She knew she cried but heard no sound, only the thud of her fists on his leather breastplate. She pounded and pounded until she could only breathe raggedly, and her legs wanted to buckle. However, she kept at it, and somehow in the fringes of her mind understood that his hands hovered, touched lightly near or around her waist, to keep her steady and standing so she could continue to rail at him with her fists.
Some sound splintered her ears, her own voice calling him bastard and unworthy and wishing him to hell, telling him he didn’t deserve a friend like Will. The noise was scratchy and airy and the words doubtless incoherent.
She didn’t care. She hadn’t cried like this...in forever. It wasn’t long before she was drained and stopped moving and she slumped, might have fallen but his hands held her, lowered her softly to the ground.
He stayed on his haunches before her, held her steady. Her shoulders shook with her now quiet weeping, but no other part of her moved.
Ada looked at her fingers, gripping Jamie MacKenna’s biceps while his strong hands held at her elbows. She lifted her eyes and found his, lightened only barely by the lone torch, to dark pools of simmering blue. Some belated awareness made her glance around, wondering why Will had not intervened. The wolf sat nearby, on his belly in the sand, his face so close to the ground while he regarded Ada with a blazing uneasiness. He whimpered when their eyes met.
“I’m sorry,” she said with another sob, the ghastliness of her outburst just now fully realized. She pulled her hands away from Jamie MacKenna’s hard arms and covered her face, her shoulders dropping while she continued to cry.
“You’ll no apologize,” Jamie MacKenna said, his tone rather fierce. “No to me.”
Lowering her hands, she lifted her gaze again and stared at him, befuddled.
And then she laughed. It surprised her but she could not stop it, only supposed her heightened and precarious emotions just now were to blame. She clamped a hand over her mouth, her eyes meeting Jamie MacKenna’s with a great guilty expression, even as she failed to rein in her mirth. It just wouldn’t stop; indeed, it seemed the harder she tried, the more she giggled. It was so ridiculous.
He stared at her now as if only concerned for her state of mind, his brow creased.
When she still could not regain her composure, Ada flopped down onto her back in the sand, and managed to explain, after several attempts interrupted by her laughter, “I was apologizing to Will, for having frightened him.”
She wasn’t looking at him now but had some sense of the tension draining from him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him sit next to her and shake his head, but not, she thought, in crossness. Ada laid her forearm over her forehead and considered the inky moonlit sky. She wasn’t exactly sure why Torren’s words came to mind. Lass, your life now can and will be whatever you decide to make of it.
Sighing, she decided she liked the feel of laughter, no matter how untimely. It was so much better than anger and sorrow, so lovely.
“The thing is,” she said after several long and quiet minutes, sure she was surprising the MacKenna with her casual tone, “when I’m not upbraiding myself for being angry at Will for abandoning me, I’m still angry. Holding on to the rage seems to nullify the guilt a wee bit. So...I court it daily, the anger. I purposefully think on you and John Craig. I plot out revenge. I dream of exacting vengeance. I’ve wished truly horrible things on you and yours. So often, I hate you more than him; he only did as I’d expected him to, but you gave me hope when there was none. A greater crime, to my mind.”
He turned his head, rested his chin on his shoulder, to look at her. He did not speak immediately, and then not until he faced the sea again. “If I could...do it again, take it all back, make different choices....”
She nodded against the sand. She would say no more about his role. She’d said and done enough. It served no further purpose.
“Will mentioned someone named Beth,” she said after a while.
This time, he turned rather sharply to gaze upon her. “My sister?”
Ada shrugged, then realized he might not have seen it. “He only said Beth, said he was in love with her, but had never told her.” She recalled how his voice had softened when he’d spoken of her. “He said he hoped her eyes were the last thing he saw.”
Some sound came from his throat, loud enough that Ada discerned it over the hum and smooth crashing of the surf. He turned away again.
“How long did he...?”
“He was gone before the sun rose. They’d been...crueler to him in those first hours. Shall you tell Beth that he loved her?”
He nodded, so Ada was surprised when he said, his voice lower, “Beth is dead.”
All that lightness she’d known since laughing, since opening up, evaporated. “Oh,” she breathed on a fresh wave of tears. More heartache. Why was life so mean, so awful? “I’m sorry.”
Jamie MacKenna nodded again and did as Ada had done, slumped backward onto the sand. He lifted both arms and folded them under his head.
Silence for several minutes while they stared at the moon and sky.
Jamie broke the not uncomfortable silence first. “Where did you go after Dornoch?”
“In due course, back home, to Newburgh.” She imagined he would ask the natural follow-up question and saved him the trouble. “It didn’t work out—mayhap it would be better now, since the...scar
s are older, faded maybe. They could barely look at me. Seemed I had brought so much grief—tension, actually—to that house.” She didn’t want to speak about her family. “What would you say if I asked you to take me to Dornoch?” If anyone could help her make John Craig pay for what he’d done, she was sure it would be this ferocious and fearless man. “He should not be allowed to have committed such atrocities and live.”
Without turning, he said, “John Craig is dead.”
Ada turned her head upon the sand, to face him. She saw only his profile, and a muscle ticking in his cheek. “How can you know that?”
“I killed him.”
Ada froze. Anice had told her she might want to hear what Jamie MacKenna had to say. But that would mean that....
“I strung him up where Will had hung,” he said, seeming to speak through gritted teeth.
She digested this, sniffled and swallowed, and choked out, “When?”
“Five days later.”
It was many long minutes before Ada said only, “Oh.”
And then a more prolonged silence, while Ada understood that the quiet waited for her to apologize now for her judgment of him and her ill treatment of him. Her lips trembled with so many new and conflicting emotions, but she could manage no words.
THE DAY AFTER THE ATTACK on Stonehaven, there was still so much to be done. The entire morning was set aside for the funerals of those killed, casting a mournful quietude over the entire day. Ada felt as if ever person of Stonehaven, and maybe even some surrounding villages, attended. At one point, the entire funeral cortege was near brought to its knees with awe over the magnitude of the grief of one lost soldier’s mother. She’d flung herself onto her son’s cold, shrouded body and had sobbed so outrageously, Ada wondered that no one felt as ill at ease as she, witnessing so fierce a sorrow, a most painful thing to behold.
Later, Ada had accompanied Alastair as he made his way through the army’s barracks, checking on the those wounded, who must remain abed for several days or longer. Those wounded who could found some relief, and a brighter clime, lounging around the smith’s shed in the bailey. There had been only need for Ada to change two bandages, with Alastair giving her instruction, telling her it was a useful, practical skill for her to learn.