Page 84 of Highland Sword
Her steps faltered. She leaned a hand against the doorjamb for support. She couldn’t look back.
“Don’t I deserve to know why? Can’t you at least tell me what I’ve done wrong? Is it someone else? Why would you acknowledge our affection, return the passion I feel for you, but deny us any future?”
She knew she should walk away, but he would come after her. Aidan was a man who was accustomed to getting answers. And what did it matter, anyway? Her past was no longer a secret when people as vile as Sir Rupert were weaving their own twisted tales about it. Wasn’t it better if he heard the truth from her instead of the lies that would no doubt spread?
She took out a handkerchief and stabbed at her tears before slowly turning around.
Aidan stood watching her with the expression of a tormented man. She took a few steps into the room but held her hand up, motioning him to stop as he started to approach. She had to speak quickly, before she lost her courage.
“Wemys is dead.”
His brow creased as he tried to understand what she was saying. “I know. I heard the news when I arrived. You are not upset about it, are you?”
“The first day we met in Inverness, you were correct. I intended to kill him.”
“I suspected as much. But you never felt you could explain. And whatever your reason was for going after him, I have absolute faith that it was a good one. I trust you, Morrigan.”
Her reason, she thought. She had reason. Shame. Guilt. Mortification. Morrigan had accepted that her father’s approach was the only path. Walk away and forget. She’d never been able to do that. And when it came to Aidan,there was the fear that this man standing before her would think less of her. Her throat felt raw, constricted, but she pushed the words out while she still could.
“Wemys was my uncle. When I was twelve years of age, he… he raped me.”
“Morrigan.” The whisper of her name emerged as a painful sigh. He tried to come to her, but she held her hand up again, pleading with him to stay where he was. The line between the courage to speak and the cowardly urge to run away was thin. She had to say the words. The truth had to be laid bare between them.
She told Aidan everything—from her father’s reaction to moving away to Wurzburg to that October day in Inverness when she saw Wemys again.
Aidan listened. When she was finished, he ran a hand through his hair.
“I’m sorry, my love. It breaks my heart to hear what happened to you. You… you had every right to go after him. To punish him for what he’s done. Your courage… who you are, who you’ve become…”
He was pale, looking like a man who’d been run through with a sword. His voice shook and the words struggled to break free.
“And I am the greatest villain of all. I brought your worst nightmare back into your life. I delivered him here, where you were tormented day and night. I forced you to speak to him when he didn’t deserve to be spat on.”
“You didn’t know.”
Morrigan saw the anger building in the tension of his shoulders, the hard expression in his eyes.
“I wish he were still alive so I could strangle that blackguard with my own hands. I would have hung his worthless carcass—”
“Stop, Aidan. That would not have helped anything. Noone could take away my pain except me. No one could cool the rage I carried inside. No one couldfixthis for me. My father thought he could, but he was wrong. What Wemys did, he did tome. Only I could fix it. The battle was mine to fight.” Morrigan spoke more calmly than before. “Isabella once told me that healing is a journey. Time is needed. And patience. And luck. The way it ended, watching Wemys die, was part of my journey. I could not have healed any other way.”
She started to leave, but he called after her again.
“I love you, Morrigan. The past means nothing to me.”
One last time, she faced him.
“But it means everything to me.” Her past controlled the present, and it controlled the future for both of them. No argument Aidan could devise would ever change that. “Sir Rupert knows.”
Morrigan told him about the letters, about the lies that would be twisted to destroy her and Aidan both. He stood in stunned silence as she went out, shutting the door behind her. It was over. She could never marry him.
CHAPTER29
AIDAN
Not everything a person did in life fell within their control.
Fighting in the war against the French wasn’t Aidan’s choice. It was his duty, particularly since his father and brothers were going. He’d pursued a career in law because of the encouragement and support of his family. The clients he chose to represent, however—those who were oppressed, who would never be able to pay for his services, who were targeted by the government—that was something he could control. It was a choice. His choice.
