Page 95 of Hard-Hearted Highlander
“I’ll help you no’ be sad, aye?” Fiona offered. “I can sing and dance.”
“Donna sing,” Ualan said grumpily. “It hurts my ears when you do.”
“I donna hurt your ears!” Fiona cried. “You’re wretched, Ualan!”
“No one wants to hear you sing, Fiona!”
“No one wants to hear youspeak!” she shouted, and shoved him. Ualan shoved her back. Fiona screamed at the top of her lungs.
“Stop!” Bernadette shouted, throwing up her hands. She pushed the two children apart before they fell into a brawl over her. And then she burst into tears again, overwhelmed by her desires, her hopes and the presence of two children she didn’t know.
The children fell silent. Bernadette didn’t know what she was doing, why she couldn’t seem to stop, but she put her head down on her knees and wept.
Ualan kneeled down beside her. He very carefully put his hand on her hand. “Donna weep, madam,” he said. “We’ll be your friends.”
Yes, that’s what she needed. A friend. Bernadette lifted her head and studied his earnest little face. “Do you think you can?” she asked. “I’ve been quite a wreck since you’ve come.”
Ualan frowned thoughtfully. “Aye, IthinkI can,” he said gravely.
Bernadette couldn’t help but smile. She wiped tears from her face. Fiona sat beside her, her legs straight in front of her, and leaned her head against Bernadette’s shoulder. Bernadette slowly put her arm around Fiona. Ualan eased in beside her, too, and slipped his hand into Bernadette’s.
She looked down at the two of them. Her heart was beginning to form out of its dust again. “You realize, do you not, that I’m English? And you’re Scottish. Some people will not care for that.”
“Uncle Rabbie says no’ all English are bad men,” Fiona said.
Bernadette smiled. “No, not all. What if you do not esteem me after a time? You might not care for me at all with a bit of time to know me.”
“Iesteem you,” Fiona said. “You’re bonny. But your eyes look verra strange.”
“They do?”
“Aye, they look as if squads of bees have stung them,” Ualan confirmed.
“Oh, that,” Bernadette said, and put her arm around him, too. She noticed that he didn’t resist, and in fact, settled in against her. “I’ve been weeping for quite a long while and my eyes have swollen.”
“Why?” Ualan asked.
“Because I was alone and I didn’t like it. Do you ever weep?”
“No,” Ualan said. “Fiona does, quite a lot, she does.”
Fiona agreed. “I’m sad, too, sometimes. I’m no’ sad when Barabel allows me to help her make a cake. But sometimes, when Ualan says awful things, and I’ve no one to tell, I’m sad.”
“I only say awful things when you say cake-headed things,” Ualan pointed out, and Fiona didn’t disagree.
“Do you know what I think would make me feel better? A walk.”
“Aye, a walk!” Fiona said brightly, sitting up. “May we walk to the sea, then? Mrs. Maloney didna like to walk to the sea, she said it was too far and her legs pained her.”
“Yes, the sea,” Bernadette said, and as they stood up, she pulled Charles’s old boots from the trunk. She’d already packed them away.
They waited for her to put on her boots, then the three of them walked out of Killeaven, hand in hand, in search of Mr. MacDonald to walk along behind them. Perhaps the three of them were in search of more than that. Bernadette didn’t want to think too carefully about it and risk losing the magic of that moment.
* * *
EVERYTHINGWASPACKEDby noon the next day. Charles had gone with the first wagon of belongings to the cove to oversee the loading. Niall MacDonald and one of the men who had remained behind, but there had been no sign of the Buchanans since their first appearance. “Aye, the Buchanans are cowards, the lot of them,” Mr. MacDonald had said the day before when he’d accompanied Bernadette and the children on their walk. “They’d no’ come round with Mackenzies here.”
She didn’t know if that was true, but his confidence removed any worry from her head while she explored the path above the sea with two children. As the sun had shone down on them, and the children had collected rocks to show her, Bernadette began to wonder if perhaps Rabbie wasn’t so mad after all.
