Page 69 of Highland Crown
She arched an eyebrow. “I’m simply turning your own words back on you.”
Cinaed had come to understand her so well. Isabella was smart, outspoken, independent. She also didn’t do well with authority. He knew he could talk until he hadn’t a breath left in his body, but unless he tied her to this bed—not an unattractive thought—she was going to do as she pleased. Since arriving here, day after day, Isabella had grown back the wings that tragedy had clipped in Edinburgh. Day after day, she had become more confident. He’d seen it in the way she dealt with Searc, the way she moved about the house, the way she questioned and challenged him after the nightly dinners downstairs with some guest, whether it was a clan chief or a ship owner or a local politician. She was involving herself in his business.
Cinaed loved her. He wanted her at his side forever. The mention of marriage terrified her, even though to him they were already committed to each other in every way that a husband and wife could be. Still, he was impatient for the day when she would accept his offer.
He realized he was still standing by the door, and she was barricaded behind a table and chair near the window. He strolled to the bed and sat on the edge.
“In two days, we’ll be going up through the glens to Dalmigavie Castle. I suspect in less than a fortnight, the schooner I saw today will be ready for us to sail to Halifax. Why are you doing this? Why are you putting yourself in danger?”
He finally had asked a question to which she had no ready reply. Cinaed watched her as she turned her back and stared out the window. He guessed at the answer, but he wasn’t going to say it.
She was battling the same conflicted feelings he’d been wrestling with. The emotional groundswell of change in the air, the possibility of making life better for all of Scotland, was powerful. Every night she’d come downstairs with him to dinner, even though she didn’t have to. Every conversation she’d listened to intently, even though she held back from offering too much of an opinion, for fear of revealing anything of her past life in Edinburgh.
“My motivation in going to the gathering tomorrow is not as unsullied as it might look.” Isabella wrapped her arms around herself as she turned away from the window. “I volunteered to go to be useful to Mr. Carmichael in case of… if the need arises, but I also am going for Archibald.”
The sadness reached her eyes. On their first night together in this bed, Cinaed had held her as she’d cried. She told him about the years of her husband’s political life. They’d each lived two lives. They had two sets of friends. Two political ideologies—one real and the other a façade. Then she spoke of the attack on their house. She wept as she talked about the injured she’d had to leave behind, about the betrayal she’d felt for deserting those who needed her.
He had understood she was finally grieving, not just for her lost husband, but for everyone and everything she’d lost.
“This past week, so many times, I’ve found myself pausing and imagining what Archibald would have said in a certain situation. Or how proud he would have been to learn that the struggle wasn’t dead. And the strikes and speeches tomorrow…” She paused and looked out the window again. “It took them months to plan them in Glasgow and Edinburgh, working in secret. Or so they thought. But here in Inverness, the weavers and the other trades, the ministers and the clan chiefs, have courageously and openly gone about organizing, preparing to protest, even though they know other gatherings in other cities have turned deadly.”
A beam of light shone on her profile, making her skin glow. She looked to be an angel watching over the town beyond.
“Are you only doing this for your husband?” he asked. “Will you continue to fighthisbattles?”
Her lips parted to answer, but she stopped before any words escaped.
“Did he ever try to persuade you to march on the streets with him?”
“He was a planner. He was not one to move in a more public sphere.”
“Then, did he ask you to sit with him at his meetings?”
She shook her head.
“That terrible day, did he ask you to tend to the injured people who were brought to your house?”
“Of course not. I did it myself.”
“So how strongly did Drummond demand that you be involved in his fight?”
Once again, she started to respond, perhaps to defend her husband, or to defend herself, but she stopped.
Cinaed had spent enough years on ships to recognize when a sailor came aboard having already mastered his sea legs. This was the same with Isabella. She already had the fight in her.
“He never demanded such a thing,” she finally answered. “He was happier when I stayed away from all of it.”
Cinaed watched her, waiting to give voice to what was on his mind.
“Who are you doing this for, Isabella?”
He knew she was not taking part in these protests because of him, and not because of her late husband.
“Whose battle are you fighting?” he asked again. “Because I know… as surely as we’re standing here, two hundred miles from where your journey started.”
Her eyes were clear and untroubled as she met his gaze.
“This battle is my own.”
