Page 84 of Highland Crown
“And I love you, Cinaed Mackintosh. But know this, whatever you decide is your path, whatever your people’s plans turn out to be, I’ll not allow my past to hinder your—”
He silenced her with a kiss. Cinaed didn’t know what she’d been told or by whom, but several times this past week she’d hinted about the need for going separate ways, about not being a burden to him. He wouldn’t have it. He wouldn’t allow it.
Too soon, he had to let her go. Cinaed watched until Jean and Isabella were on their way before mounting his horse and riding toward the hunting lodge.
Though he’d been here only a few times as a lad, he had no difficulty finding it. As he approached, however, he realized how different his perception of the place wasnow from what he remembered. What had once been an impressive building had turned into a moss-covered stone edifice. The roof of a nearby stable had fallen in on itself. A single horse was grazing in the meadow.
Cinaed had asked for Lachlan to come alone, and he was satisfied to find his request had been honored.
His uncle was not the man that Cinaed remembered, either. The years had been tough on the laird who’d once been a tall and strapping man. He was now grey, bone thin, and his face was deeply marked with the lines of age.
Seeing the ravages of time in Lachlan, he felt a sadness emerge in him. In spite of anything he’d done, this man was his closest kin.
“Cinaed.”
“Lachlan.”
No formalities. No affection. Cinaed’s sadness evaporated. They were simply two men meeting in a sparsely furnished, dust-covered lodge with no servants or attendants to break the heavy silence. A saddlebag lay open on a table and beside it, a bottle of whiskey and two silver cups.
He motioned, and Cinaed sat across from him.
“You have no wish to be greeted properly by your clan.”
“I have no clan. Or rather, they’ve shown they don’t wish to have me.” He sat back, surprised by the stinging bitterness in his tone.
“Time will rust the sharpest sword, but not yours, I see.”
“I need no poetry,” Cinaed replied. “I asked you to come here because I want to hear the truth, without the fanfare of a ‘homecoming.’”
The wind whistled down the chimney, and the smell of ancient fires filled the room. The ghosts of their ancestors were making their presence known, and he felt their eyes on them. On him.
“When I received your message, I nearly laughed. So fitting that you should want to meet here at this lodge.” Lachlan looked around him with affection in his eyes. “It makes me believe that somewhere deep inside, the past is a part of you.”
Cinaed watched the older man stare into the corners of the lodge. He imagined him seeing it in a different time, perhaps in a time when he was young. Perhaps even before his time, when clan chiefs were the protectors of their people, when fathers and mothers grew old together and children never left the land.
Lachlan reached for the bottle, poured two drinks and pushed one across the table.
“After the battle at Culloden,” he began, turning his gaze to Cinaed, “many of the defeated Highlanders fled into these hills, bloodied and heartbroken. This building sheltered many in those dark days. But a fortnight later, this lodge became a place of great honor for the Mackintosh clan. Your grandfather decided to stay here.”
Lachlan drank his whiskey, waiting to be asked the next question. Cinaed knew nothing about any grandfather. He’d never given any thought to it. He’d barely been given any information about his father. But he knew plenty about those who’d suffered at Culloden.
Lachlan poured another drink. Cinaed’s sat untouched on the table.
To witness moments of grandeur and then to taste defeat. This lodge and Lachlan had both weathered storms.Cinaed couldn’t stop unexpected emotions from creeping in. Pity? Empathy? He couldn’t say. This man wanted to share information with him, but right now was not the time to be distracted by family history.
“Why did you send me that letter? Why did you want to see me?”
Lachlan shook his head and smiled. “Impatient as always. You haven’t changed a whit from when you first arrived at Dalmigavie as a bairn.”
When he first arrived?The man was a master of misdirection, but Cinaed let him have his way, for now.
“When did I first arrive at Dalmigavie?”
He feared his earliest memories of childhood were more imagined than real. He’d always felt he was an outsider, always looking on, rather than being one with other children. Later, he became a castaway. He was correct to feel he didn’t belong. But why?
Lachlan sat back in his chair. “Do you remember anything of your past? Of a time before you came to us?”
Cinaed didn’t know what he was supposed to remember. Sometimes, when he was drifting off to sleep, another time and place would slip into the edges of his dreams. A soft whisper in French. Songs hummed over a basket of flowers. The skirts of a woman who loved to whirl around and lift him into her arms to dance. It wasn’t his mother. He couldn’t place these memories.
