Page 84 of Sinful Scottish Laird
She laughed ruefully. “It is too late to spare me, Cailean. My heart is broken into pieces. What did yousay?”
He grabbed her hands and held them tightly. “That I love you, aye? That’s what I said, Daisy. I love you. I miss you. I am sorry for all of it.” He roughly smoothed her hair. “I love you with all that I have,” he said, his voice ragged with emotion.
A sob of despair caught in her throat. “I love you, too, Cailean. Dear God, how much I do.” She was utterly defeated now. She felt like so many disjointed pieces, a broken toy trying to function properly. She pulled her hands free of his and turned away, blinded by tears and overwhelming disappointment. She heard him say her name, but she was already walking. And then she was running. Running out of the house, for her horse, away from Scotland.
He went after her, of course, calling her name, but Daisy scrambled onto the back of her horse before he could reach her, and she spurred him on, because she couldn’t bear to hear another word.Not a single word.
It was unbearable and devastating to know that she’d found love—real, soul-searing love—and couldn’t have it because of her wretched place in this world, and because of Ellis, because of what her son needed to thrive and what his title needed from him.
It was so horribly, wretchedly, heartbreakingly unfair.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
OFCOURSECAILEANknew she’d left—he saw the boats going by with passengers and crates and trunks. He’d been tormented by it, too, wanting for the truth of their lives to be different and feeling wholly impotent in his power to change it.
He had to believe it was best it had ended as it had.
A few days later, Cailean and Aulay sailed for Norway.
Cailean knew he was miserable company. His brother thought it a fever, but there was nothing physically wrong with Cailean. His complaint, acknowledged only in his private thoughts, was his heart—it wanted free of his chest. It felt tight, as if something were tugging on it, making him so uncomfortable that he remained in a foul humor.
They were gone longer than he’d anticipated—almost sixteen days in all owing to unfavorable winds on the return voyage—and by the time they arrived back in Scotland, he still hadn’t rid his thoughts of her. It was like she had perched there, her eyes and devilish little smile taunting him at all hours of the day.
When he walked into Balhaire, he was immediately set upon by his mother. “Cailean, you must come!” she said, grabbing his hand. “Where is Aulay? Vivienne has been delivered of a boy!”
At long last, Vivienne’s fourth child had arrived in this world, and from the look of it, the bairn was a strong, healthy lad. Cailean leaned over the bed where Vivienne suckled her son, marveling at his little fingers, his button nose.
“He arrived a week past,” Vivienne said, stroking the lad’s dark patch of fuzz. “He gave me quite a fight, he did, but look at him, Cailean. Go on, then—hold him,” she said and unlatched the baby from her breast.
“I ought no’—”
“Donna be afraid of him.” Vivienne laughed. “He’s like all my bairns before him—he willna break.” She slipped the baby into his hands. The bairn began to wiggle his legs, his rosebud mouth searching for his mother’s breast. Cailean managed to get him into the crook of his arm—he didn’t believe Vivienne that he’d not break—and stroked his cheek.
“We’ll call him Bruce,” she said.
Aye, a strong name for a strong lad.Cailean looked down at Bruce and thought of Ellis. He was suddenly overcome with a well of longing so deep and vast that he was startled by tears of old and new regrets that began to burn in his eyes.
“Cailean,” Vivienne said softly, surprised. “A grha,what is wrong?”
Cailean swallowed back those blasted tears and handed the bairn back to his mother. “He’s bonny, Viv,” he said. “Bonny Bruce.” He smiled through the sheen of tears, touched Vivienne’s face and then went out as his sister and her husband exchanged a baffled look behind him.
Outside her chambers, Cailean paused, pressed his back against the wall and looked heavenward. For the first time in his adult life, he had no idea what to do with his emotions.
He shook his head and carried on to his father’s study. He knocked lightly and went inside.
“Cailean, come in, then,” his father said.
He did not rise from his seat behind the desk, a certain sign his leg ailed him today.
“How did you find Norway? Aulay believes it holds promise.”
“Aye, that it does,” Cailean agreed, although he’d be hard-pressed to recall any of the details in his current state. He walked to the hearth and looked into the fire.
“We’ve a lot to discuss, aye? There’s been a Jacobite uprising to the south of us,” his father said, then began to relate the news as he’d heard it. Cailean was generally quite interested in such news, but today he scarcely heard his father; his thoughts were miles away.
“Diah,have you heard a word?” his father said.
Cailean snapped to attention and jerked around. Somewhere in the course of the news, his father had stood up from his desk and come around to a chair, and Cailean hadn’t noticed. He was sitting with his leg stretched out before him. He studied Cailean as he rubbed his thigh. “What’s wrong with you, lad?”
