Page 73 of Lady Len and the Mysterious Mac

“My sweet boy,” Auntie Alys said, reading his face and pressing her forehead to his. “My darling, darling boy, how I’ve failed you.”

“No, Auntie.”

“I certainly failed you if you’ve carried this around your whole life. Your mam was my cousin and my dearest friend. She’d be devastated and downright irate with me to hear ye blamed yourself all this time.”

He couldn’t think, could scarcely even breathe. After so many years, he didn’t know how to be if not guilt-ridden.

“You’re a man of science. You know women die in childbirth. But they also get fevers and suffer accidents. People die for all sorts of reasons, you know that.”

He looked at her skeptically and she shrugged.

“They get thrown from horses, and they drown on ships that sink in the ocean.”

“So you’re saying I may have sent her away to her death, anyhow,” he said helplessly.

“I’m saying you don’t get to decide who lives and who dies. Even as laird.”

Si’s heart beat so quickly it was surely going in reverse, and his thoughts along with it. “She willnae wish to come back.”

“I forgot ye knew everything,” she chided. “How terribly inconvenient that must be.”

“She didn’t wish to marry at all,” he said sadly.

“D’ye want to know why I chose her for ye?”

He nodded.

“When I met her, she was a sickly wee thing, stifled by those around her into believing she was incapable of anything at all. She couldn’t walk down the street without someone worrying she’d faint dead away. But it takes real strength of character not to break under all that condescension and contempt, to just keep trying to do better. And she managed it with such kindness. You could tell by watching her, she was meant for more. She had a servant’s heart, same as you do Silas. And I knew you were battered. I didnae ken why, and I’ll surely regret that until my last breath. But I saw in her, in that deep goodness, a partner who could protect your heart even from yourself.”

Tears ran down Si’s cheeks. His hand still tingled where he’d held hers to assist her into the carriage.

“I’m such a fool,” he whispered.

His aunt reached for him and he crumpled against her chest like the nine-year-old lad he was inside.

“No such thing,” she murmured into his hair. She stroked his head and shushed him softly before pulling back to look him in the eye. “Your mother was the most precious person in the world to me. I should have done a better job of remembering her to you.”

“You had your own life, Auntie.”

“And what is that, where family’s concerned?” She smiled sadly at him. “Wee Ellen Mackintosh may have believed she wished to be a nun. But I saw the way she looked at ye in the kirk on your wedding day, and I saw what she did in that chapel next door. Who d’ye think she did that for? It was for you. And Himself. And the whole of Clan MacKenzie. She’s not Wee Ellen Mackintosh anymore. The two of you just make sense. And, as I said, I’m never wrong,” she reminded him again, and somehow he knew she was right.

But what did it matter, except to prove what a dolt he was?

“It’s too late.”

“Bah,” she said. “It’s never too late. How long’s she been gone?”

“Hours. They’re stopping at an inn tonight. I suppose I could ride out, beg her to forgive me. Tell her I…”

Alys covered his hand with hers. “Telling her you love her would be a start.”

He looked up at her sharply. Love? But then he supposed that must be what this shattered feeling in his chest amounted to.

* * *

A light rain began to fall on the road that led away from Castle Leod, the town of Strathpeffer, and the County Ross. Ellen envied the driver. Sitting alone in the rain as he did would afford her plenty of cover to weep the bitter tears banging against her ribcage without giving her away.

In the end, she had been selfish, trying to be the Lady of Leod in the way she wished to, instead of being whatever it was that Si needed her to be. She had hoped fixing up the chapel and educating those around her would help in some small way to elevate his station and ensure the loyalty of the clan. But the one thing he’d asked of her, to speak to the assembled men, that single thing she had flatly refused to do.