“Wha’ is it?”
“Ye will no’ wed wi’ Farlan MacLeod while ye hold the place o’ chief. If ye do so, ye maun step down.”
“Unacceptable! Would ye force me to live in sin?” As she already did.
“We merely ask ye,” Rab said, almost gently, “to step awa’ from him.”
Moira cast one angry look at Alasdair as if she thought it all his fault and stormed out of the chamber. Alasdair gazed after her. Rhian thought she saw despair in his eyes.
Saerla scrambled up and swiftly followed her sister out.
“Did she refuse?” Ewan asked the other members of the council. And then he muttered, “Women are incapable o’ making a measured decision.”
Rhian went out in her sisters’ wake, but not before laying a reassuring hand on Alasdair’s arm. “She will come round. She does no’ blame ye.”
Out in the pouring rain, she could not see either of her sisters. Where would Moira go, and Saerla after her?
Of one thing alone was she certain—it was fatal to pin one’s affections on a MacLeod, in whatever guise. She must keep away from Leith at all costs.
Chapter Sixteen
Rhian MacBeith hadbeen right. The pain in Leith’s arm soon grew teeth and gnawed at him, becoming unbearable. Many times after her departure did he reconsider having refused her offer of a draught.
But he’d had his fill of being rendered senseless, and thus defenseless. He’d been attacked once already. Who knew what threat might next enter that door?
Should Rhian return—what would he do then? Lying with his teeth clenched and his gaze on the door, he considered it. He would, nay, still not take the draught.
He would ask her to touch him again.
Her touch contained magic. Well, if not that—if, as a grown man, he’d put belief in such things behind him—it at least contained comfort. Healing.
He had difficulty not believing her palm on his brow had been fundamental in restoring his sight.
That thought allowed him to draw a breath. At least he had that, had escaped the darkness that had indeed rendered him twice as helpless as now.
He lay feeling grateful for it, and taking stock of himself. The pain in his head had gone, though the wound there still felt tender to his probing fingers. The tear to his arm, though, worried him. It had affected the whole limb so that though he could clench his left fist, he could not close the fingers of the right.
He would not be able to hold a weapon, even if he had one.
A dire position, indeed, in which a warrior should find himself. He lay struggling beneath the weight of it, trying to decide what his ma must be thinking. She most likely assumed he’d been left for dead after that last battle—which, in truth, he had. The retreating MacLeod forces had not had time to retrieve all their dead.
Would Ma weep for him? And his bonny sister, Aisleen? He hated to imagine it, to think they might shed tears on his account. He’d sought always to bring them laughter rather than heartache.
And Rory—och, Rory would be in a fury over this. Having lost Farlan already, as he saw it, he’d be livid thinking Leith either captured or dead.
Indeed, after what happened with Farlan, Rory would likely rather Leith dead than captured.
Farlan renouncing his birthright and his clan, for a woman, no less, had wounded Rory deep. Close as the three of them had been, they had harbored an unthinking kind of friendship that Leith believed nothing could destroy. He had considered them all brothers, or as good as.
Now Rory was like a bear with a wounded paw—difficult and irascible toward everyone. More determined than ever to seize Glen Bronach and become sole ruler over it.
Yet they’d lost the last two battles. He would be livid over that.
Aye, they likely all thought Leith dead. It was an odd feeling, that, knowing everyone who held him in affection believed him gone from the world. Almost as if he’d fallen off the face of the earth and ceased to exist.
Folk held those they loved in their hearts and minds. ’Twas what kept them close.
He wondered suddenly if Rhian MacBeith held him in her mind. If she thought about him even now, when she was away from him.
