Page 21 of Promised to the Forbidden Laird

“And yer mother?”

“Later.”

“Brothers? Sisters?”

“Nae.”

The responses felt like doors closing. Donaldina might have seen them as rudeness if from another man. From Roy, they seemed less like refusals and more like a defense so aged that he no longer noticed raising it.

“Was there nae one?” she asked.

His jaw shifted. She regretted the question immediately. Whatever tentative peace existed between them might not survive curiosity pressed too far. Yet Roy did not tell her to be silent. He looked out across the water. The last of the sun vanished, leaving a thin, colorless glow along the horizon. It touched his face without softening it.

Donaldina chose her words carefully. “Have ye ever loved someone enough tae miss them every day?”

Roy remained still. A gust moved over the path, lifting the edge of his cloak. Far below, a wave struck the cliff with a deep sound that traveled through the stone beneath their feet.

She thought he would not answer.

“Once.”

Nothing followed… no name, no explanation, not even the courtesy of pretending the memory belonged to some distant, harmless affection.

Once.

The word held a whole absence.

Donaldina looked at him, but his expression closed again. Whatever person he had missed had left a wound time had not taught him to speak of. She did not ask whether it was a woman. She did not ask whether the person had died, abandoned him, or made a choice he could not forgive.

They turned back toward Dun Ard. The path seemed less narrow on the return, though darkness had gathered upon it. Roy remained nearest the cliff. Donaldina walked at his side, their shoulders occasionally brushing when the trail curved.

She always believed grief isolated the sufferer. Walking beside him beneath the darkening sky, she began to wonder whether it merely taught one wounded person to recognize another.

Morning entered her chamber in a pale and unconvincing fashion. A thin light pressed against the windows, revealing more gray cloud than day. Donaldina sat near the hearth with an untouched cup of honeyed milk cooling beside her.

Across the chamber, Mairi folded a gown that had already been folded twice. She had been Donaldina’s companion since they were both girls, though no one looking at Mairi’s solemn expression would have guessed she had once tied Lachlan’s boots together before a council supper and allowed Donaldina to bear the blame.

This morning, she said little. That was how Donaldina knew a question was approaching.

Mairi placed the gown into the chest, then removed it.

“Ye are staring out the window,” Mairi mused.

Donaldina shrugged. “I am observing the weather.”

“For half an hour?”

“It is a complicated sky.”

Mairi looked toward the blank expanse of cloud. “Aye. Fierce complicated.”

Donaldina reached for the cup and discovered the milk had gone cold. She set it down again.

Mairi folded the gown for a third time. “Laird MacIver returned late last night.”

Donaldina’s attention shifted to her before good sense could prevent it. “He was inspecting the cliff path.”

“With ye,” Mairi supplied.