More, was she not the very embodiment of this place? The cool mist, the water, the freckled granite stone. The light, the eternal light that illuminated it all.
He must put such fancies away from him. Go and look to his defenses.
Breathe, until he could be with her again tonight.
Chapter Forty-Six
“Ineed tospeak wi’ ye, sister. A matter o’ great and terrible importance.”
Saerla looked at Rhian, who had just burst in through the door of the chamber, and a pinprick of doubt stabbed her. Doubt and dread. For days she’d been able to feel this coming.
For nights she’d pushed it away from her.
How many nights had it been now that Rory MacLeod spent in her arms? Quite truly, she had lost count of them.
He always came humbly, his hands bare of weapons. She always thought about refusing him admittance. She never did.
She never could.
She had left the sgian dubh in the chest where she’d found it, because the thought of harming him—one black, silken lock of hair, one beat of his heart—had become as foreign to her as setting herself afire. She did not understand what he’d come to mean to her. She worked hard at keeping the time they spent together here in this chamber separate from the rest of her life. From reality.
One thing only she knew—when he was with her, when he was inside her, nothing else mattered.
To either of them.
Yet the instant Rhian came bursting through the door, the dread she’d harbored for days rose up to swamp her.
“Wha’ is it, Rhian?”
Rhian shut the door carefully behind her, staring as if she’d never seen Saerla before.
“I canna warrant what has just come to my ears. I will no’ warrant it.”
“Wha’ has come to your ears?” Saerla asked, though to be sure, she already knew. She had feared all the while it would get out, even though Rory always left her, early before many in the stronghold were astir.
Just like at home, someone was always watching.
“I should say,” Rhian babbled on, sounding like a madwoman, “it came first to Leith’s ears. On the training field, of all places. And then again in the warriors’ hall. In whispers, o’ course. Wha’ could he do but come to me?”
“Wha’ is said in these whispers?”
“That Rory has been spending his nights here. With ye.”
Saerla might seek to lie about it. She could deny the truth to her sister, but she’d never been good at lying. Rhian always knew.
Besides, there was a part of her, a fierce, secret part, that did not want to deny the beauty of those moments she and Rory spent together.
She looked her sister in the eye. Should Rhian, of all women, not understand? She, who had given her heart to a MacLeod and forsaken MacBeith to come here and live with him?
Rhian continued to regard her, eyes wide. Shocked. Beseeching. Saerla had never seen her look so.
“Saerla, tell me it is not true.”
Saerla said nothing.
“Tell me these are but vicious rumors Leith has brought to me.”
“What, just, has been said?”
