“Tomorrow, I believe, after breakfast, so they may travel in daylight.” And she would be alone, completely alone save for little Bonnie.
She would have to fight her own battles then.
Alan began, “I want ye to know—”
An interruption occurred before he could complete the sentence. Father and Earl MacKallan came around the side of the house, and the earl hailed them.
“There ye be. Showing Mistress Annista the estate, are ye?”
“A small part o’ it. Mistress Annista has informed me she likes to ride. We shall have to procure a suitable mount.”
Annista eyed Alan again, in some surprise. He had kept his word about that, and promptly. Would he keep it also in other regards?
It would be well if she could find one person here, even just one, to trust. Curious if it turned out to be her unwelcome husband.
Because, aye, Father would leave. And she would have to exist here among strangers.
“So we shall,” said Earl MacKallan, all bluff heartiness. One would never take him for a man who’d allowed his son to beleaguer a woman to her death.
“I want to see my sister’s grave.”
All three men stared at her in dismay.
“Aye, aye,” Earl MacKallan attempted to soothe. “All in good time.”
“I wish to visit it now.”
Earl MacKallan’s eyebrows shot up.
“I will tak’ ye,” Alan said.
“Aye,” said Father. “We will all go. Neilan, is it far?”
“No’ at all,” Alan answered for his father. “She is buried just beside the chapel.”
He took Annista’s arm gently.
She let him.
Chapter Eleven
Annista should have known Robena lay close by. Indeed, she believed she had known and had been able to feel her nearness yesterday when they were in the chapel.
The tiny burying yard with its few graves—all family, no doubt—looked almost pretty in the sunlight. An iron fence surrounded it, and the yew tree stood there, a reminder of the ageless eternity into which all these souls had passed. Soft green turf covered every grave.
But one.
No one needed to tell Annista beneath which mound her sister lay, after all. It was bare still, a wound in that green turf that had not healed, just like the one in her heart.
Well, she told herself, to be fair, there had been a winter between and no fit time for tending a grave. Still and all, was there anyone who cared to tend this one? There was a marker set at the head of the dirt mound, looking stark and newly carved.
Emotions flooded over Annista as she approached the place. Her feelings seemed far too close to the surface since her arrival at Kallan, and she had less control of them. But she could think only one thing, “My poor lass is alone here in death as she was in life,” and her heart broke for it.
“Och,” she exclaimed and stood before the terrible spot, eyes finding the deeply carved letters on the stone.
Robena MacKallan. Twenty-two years of age. That was all. No birth date, though Annista knew it very well—the sixth of March. No death date. No words of comfort or repose. NoDearly lovedorDearly missed.
No one here had loved her. No one was missing her.
