“I hardly know—” she began, stopped, and tried again. “I ha’ feelings for him, Moira.”
“Him?” Moira’s baffled expression showed she did not understand. “Sister, ye will ha’ to explain better than that. ’Tis too early in the day for me to guess.”
Then she seemed to tumble to it. Her face filled with dismay. “Och! No—”
“I came to ye,” Rhian said in a rush, “because ye ken what it is, so I imagine, to feel this way. To run up against emotions ye canna deny. To feel you’re falling down a slope, helpless, wi’ no way to stop the tumble.”
“Aye.” Moira barely breathed it. “I ken. But sister, how? When? Ye barely know the man.”
“Only to treat that wound o’ his. Only to watch him regain his sight. Only to help him hold on to his life.”
Moira swore bitterly. Thoughts raced in her eyes. She must have been through this struggle, must have weighed the reasons for denying such feelings.
“I came to ye,” Rhian whispered, “because ye canna tell me I do not feel what I am feeling. That I am mistaken.”
Moira waggled her head unhappily. “Much as ye might wish ye are.”
“Aye.” Rhian looked away from her sister’s misery, held out her hands to the fire that gathered strength in the hearth. She felt chilled right through.
“This is no’ like ye, Rhian. Save for Angus when ye were but a girl, I ha’ never known ye to fancy anyone.”
“True.” Angus had been one of Arran’s friends, whom Rhian had admired from afar. He’d been killed in a skirmish even before Arran perished.
“Why, no end o’ men have sought your hand,” Moira went on. “Ye never gave any o’ them a glance. I do believe Da despaired o’ ye ever marrying.”
“I made up my mind to be a spinster.” Rhian spread her hands. “My place is here. I ha’ no time for such nonsense.”
“And now?”
“Everything has changed.”
“But why? Why him?”
“D’ye think I can tell ye? D’ye think I know?” Rhian challenged her sister. “Why Farlan?”
“Och!” Moira said in despair. “He just reached right inside me and grabbed hold o’ my heart.”
“Aye, so.”
“But Rhian—”
“Moira, I did no’ come here to discuss the ways and means o’ falling in love. I need ye to talk me out o’ it.”
“Me?”
“Give me all the reasons why it canna be. The price to be paid for such a love.”
“I think ye ken that already.”
“Talk me out o’ it now, before it is too late.”
Instead, Moira reached out and pulled Rhian into her arms. They clutched one another desperately.
“’Tis a hard road,” Moira murmured. “I kept telling Farlan, even as it happened, that ’twas impossible. But the feelings—the feelings would no’ heed me. ’Tis when the impossible becomes so, becomes manifest and undeniable, ye ken ye be lost.”
She, Rhian decided, was not lost yet. She might claw her way back from the brink if she used all her will and all her strength.
But if she kissed the man again—
