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“The water is too cold for you, my love.” His arms raised for her to wash his armpits. “And you are forbidden to—.”
“—go into the river. I know.” He had heard the rule a thousand times. Only this week.
“Exactly.” She rubbed his tiny feet. “It is dangerous. Especially when it rains, and the water rushes even faster than usual.”
The disgruntled expression on his lovely face did not move her this time. “Next summer, I will finish teaching you how to swim. Then you can try it. But only when it does not rain.” She reinforced. Though rain, as a rule, would be the pattern in this corner of the world. He nodded as she washed his hair.
She was rinsing Ewan’s hair when the pounding on the front door started. Her hazel eyes widened on the barred sturdy wood as her heart descended into a gallop stronger than this fierce pounding. Washcloth and soap fell in the water with a splash she did not hear due to the blood buzzing in her ears.
The pounding returned louder, so strong that the walls trembled.
Her frame stood in the room frozen, a million possibilities flashing in her mind. None of them optimistic. Fists curled, her attention ran around the modest room in search of a way out, something to use as a weapon. A magic spell to hide her son.
When it repeated yet for the third time, Freya gulped air at the same moment she steeled with courage. Cowardice would lead her nowhere. The intruder would have to leave by whichever means she might use.
On shaking legs, thrashing heart and valiant stance, she unbarred the door and opened a narrow crack enough for her face to peer out.
The adrenalin which had been pulsing with dread, now pulsed with…awe.
Hazel eyes widened anew, this time to take in the visitor. The one who never left her thoughts every minute of the day—or night, especially night. He, who she had avoided like the plague for the last four years. He, whom she would love to her last breath. He, her husband.
Drostan, her silent breath prayed.
Drostan, standing there with his six-feet-four of powerful male, wavy chestnut hair and eyes the colour of old-whisky, the most beautiful eyes in this entire planet.
Drostan, whom had bestowed on her one whole year of married bliss and then given her the most precious thing they could have made together.
The man she had loved long before the McPhersons and the McKendricks agreed on an alliance.
The husband she must leave, so he kept living while she died inside. And kept on dying every sunset since, her heart shrinking a bit more, drying a drop more. Giving up one last hope.
The early November sunset on the backdrop, designed his broad frame clad in that green, black and white tartan which made him even more magnificent, more impressive, fierier.
Never would she succeed in forgetting the fire. That which they ignited in their wedding night and kept blazing every single night and every single time their eyes crossed during the day. The one which had simmered during their too lengthy betrothal with stolen kisses in sun-drenched woods, forbidden caresses on foggy loch margins, whispered promises in darkened halls. The wrenching same one combusting her skin now as they stood inches apart, separated by a door that would burn to cinders should they touch.
One memory followed by another killed her in her lonely hours and then they revived her, granting the necessary fuel to live another day, fight another day, insist another day. Until she wished she suffered from selective amnesia to hold these conflicting emotions at bay. To stop wishing for things she would never, ever have again. To stop her heart from shattering when her mind conjured him, which it did with exasperating frequency.
“Freya.” His deep voice emitted.
Her gaze snapped up to his to find him scowling at her as if she was the most unpleasant creature to crawl the Earth. And who could blame him? She had left him after all, regardless of her motives. Those she would not talk about, not to him, not to anyone. His life depended on it, their son’s safety depended on it.
Drostan stared at his wife as if she had transformed in a ghost come back to the living. A woman he had not seen in four long years. Someone who vanished—disappeared, abducted, dead?—in thin air, like she had never been there, never married him, never taken him in her… A woman who betrayed her wedding vows. Something not strange to a McPherson, let’s face it. Taran’s deceased wife had done the same, had she not? His brother-in-law had needed the firm touch of his sister to overcome the wreckage.
Until this moment, Drostan tried to understand what had happened. One day she had been in his manor, the next she had become a mere figment of his imagination. The McKendricks had looked for her tirelessly. For one year, he had assigned his men to follow any lead, any information, any scrap of vestige to find his wife. No one came back with her. Or with answers, for that matter. The questions abounded. The hollow nights multiplied. Worry turned to loss, turned to rage, turned to betrayal, turned to worry again. Four years and no cue, no solution, nothing.
Solely to ride to this god-forsaken cottage and have it reveal her whereabouts.
Two of his tenants planned to get married; and they came to him to request the use of this place. They said it had been abandoned for a long time and they intended refurbishing it and making it their new home. So, he decided to have a look at it and judge its conditions for himself.
And here she stood, safe and in one piece, albeit dressed in little more than rags, a leaner figure, huge eyes dominating a face so beautiful it shifted the ground under his feet. The fallen auburn hair where he had dived his nose countless times to inhale her scent, register its softness; and find the curve of her neck below with his hungry lips. The fragment of reminiscence scalded his blood like it had not been scalded in…four years. Or thirty-four. As she had been the only woman to turn him inside out with the slightest glance. Still was, by the looks of it.
Damnation!
He focused—or tried to—on her disappearance. If she lived here unharmed, it must be because she chose to abandon him without a word, an explanation, a confrontation. The coward’s way out in the middle of the night. And that was u
nforgivable!
“Mommy.” A child’s voice whimpered in the shadows inside. “I am cold.”
