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“The heir to the McKendrick belongs with us.” Wallace’s hard opinion found echo with her brothers.
“Separate a woman from her child is pure cruelty.” Exclaimed she.
“So, she must not have disappeared.” Fingal agreed with the men in her clan.
The civil law followed this principle, with which Aileen did not agree. The men in her family would pay no heed to a different conception, naturally.
She did not want to start a discussion—and possibly a squabble—over facts she knew nothing about, anyway. She had never seen Freya after she abandoned the manor. Never a hint of what exactly happened. Until it came to light, she would reserve judgement.
~.~.~
Taran sat at his dinner table with a hollow sense surrounding him. He would not admit to missing her for the life of him.
And it had been only three days.
Plate untouched, the wine bottle half gone. How come his manor echoed so… empty? It had been little more than a month since she stepped here for the first time. He swallowed the whole content of his goblet. She was not supposed to be so… absent! Not in such a short time.
It dragged like a lifetime.
He tried to write it down to Sam being away. But his son engrossed so constantly in his books and plants, his presence seldom remarkable.
As to his wife— The woman who ate meals by his side, the woman who worked by his side. The woman who slept by his side. Sometimes on him, damn it. The hollowness loomed as an uninvited guest in the manor. A guest who would not go away with the most thrashing shoving.
He did not even enter his chambers these days. It would be like a death sentence. The memories, the tang of her. He had been sleeping in his study. Sleep was a way of putting it. Tossing and turning. Desiring.
New content sloshed in his goblet, filling it. He drank deeply.
Was there any way of getting used to this… distance?
Of course, he might send for her. Better, he should even travel to the McKendrick’s.
And do wha
t? Throw her over his shoulder and drag her home? She would certainly not accept it meekly, the wee hurricane.
Aye, home. This heap of stones registered like home only when she stayed here. Since day one.
Before, it had been a half-hearted residence.
He tossed the wine, swallowing it, the taste lost to his musings.
He needed whisky.
His pride forbade him to beg. The Laird? It meant humiliation. For any man to beg a woman was unthinkable. For the Laird, it was inadmissible.
Out of question.
The sole choice to pull through the days and wait until they dulled into indifference to her, to her distance.
The possibility of her coming back, null. Escaping must have been her goal. She had done it twice, had she not?
A hand raked through his hair as he stood up none too steady.
For the whisky, then.
~.~.~
Freya hid her auburn hair in the hood of a cloak which had seen much better days. A present from her husband. The green hue faded, it displayed mending on many spots.
