Page 67 of Lady Len and the Mysterious Mac

He nodded. “Then,” he said with every last ounce of his strength, “that is what you should do.”

* * *

Ellen’s heart stopped beating. He would send her away? Now? After everything? After she’d surrendered herself, body and soul? After they’d finally consummated their wedding vows before God?

“Is that what you wish, milord?”

He stared at her, his hard amber eyes as cold and sharp as the sword he might as well have run through her belly. “Aye,” he said. “It may be best.” Then almost as an afterthought he added, “It’s what you want still?”

After so much truth, Ellen had almost forgotten how to lie, but if he didn’t want her here then this was her chance to go, and she found herself nodding. “Yes.”

He nodded too, no longer looking at her. “I’ll make the arrangements. You may leave tonight.”

Her stomach dropped, or maybe her stomach stayed in place and it was the world dropping away.

“After the ceremony?”

He shook his head. “Why wait? My father shall accompany you.”

“He’s well enough to travel?”

“He’s well enough.”

Was it all preplanned, then? And the laird himself in on it? How long had her husband been plotting to send her away? And had the other night been a claiming, knowing she would go?

“I shall pack,” she whispered.

Without another word, Si turned on his heel and left, and Ellen buried her face in her arms and wept.

Everything which followed happened so quickly, Ellen hardly had a moment to reflect, not that she was keen to. They would travel by carriage to Aberdeen. Instructions for their passage to France, along with a letter to the convent, were being sent on ahead.

Dear Gawyn refused to drive them, claiming his vision was not reliable in the late evening light and a storm was on the way.

Si offered a stopover for a few days in Inverness to see her family, but Ellen declined. It wasn’t fair to the laird. If France would heal him, then best get him there quickly, and besides, she couldn’t bear her family’s disappointment. The only thing she’d ever been good for, a strategic marriage, had failed almost before it began. Si was a good man. He’d honor the alliance even as she disgraced him before his whole clan, but her father would never allow himself to live down the shame.

After packing her trunk and a smaller valise, she crept into Si’s library to pick out a book for her journey. Somehow after all these years, her Bible offered little solace. What business had she becoming a nun?

The room smelled of him, of moss and earth and sweaty musk, and for a moment she just closed her eyes and breathed. Years from now, when walking alone near a forest stream, would she catch a whiff of rich damp soil and think of him with fondness or with an empty sort of longing?

There was a volume on the shelf called Paradise Lost, and Ellen couldn’t think of a more apt description of her current circumstance, so she added it to her valise, almost certain he wouldn’t begrudge the theft, but realizing how little she actually knew him.

Seedlings lined his window ledge, and she studied them, as though she could glean insight into his inner life. She imagined the careful way he must have tended them, his big, sure hands pouring measured water and tenderly caressing the leaves. She couldn’t help comparing them to his own seed, which he would never have the chance to nurture and watch grow into a child.

Returning to her chamber, Ellen noticed the MacKenzie plaid draped across the back of the chair, and fresh tears sprang to her eyes. She added it to her valise as well, though she’d no right to wear it now. Then she went down to the chapel to wait.

The room might not be much, but she was pleased with how it had turned out. It was like a bright, calm center in the bustling, chilly castle. Si might pretend to miss the point, but she was happy knowing it would be there for him when she was gone—a place to rest and clear his head in this new world which he would now face alone.

She was still sitting there in the quiet stillness, trying to remember how to speak to God, and how to listen, when there came a clamber in the corridor, followed by a surprised, “Oh! Milady!”

Greer looked in, gestured for someone to wait, and then came in to sit beside her.

“Why d’ye look as though you're going on a journey?” she asked.

Ellen plastered on a smile. “Because I am.” It didn’t even sound like her voice.

Greer looked at her hard and saw right through her smile, reading the despair in the depths of her eyes. “Because of all this? He was that angry?”

Ellen shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “Some things just don’t work out.”