Page 56 of Promised to the Forbidden Laird

“We lost men in every season. Some tae battle. More tae cold, fever and wounds that shouldnae have killed them.” His jaw tightened. “There was never enough food. Never enough shelter. Orders came from men who hadnae seen the ground upon which they expected us tae die.”

Donaldina looked down at the cairn stones.

“Lachlan hated poor orders,” she said.

“Aye.” A shadow of warmth entered Roy’s voice. “He was remarkably willing tae explain their failings tae anyone wearing a finer coat than his own.”

That sounded like her brother. The ache it caused was almost sweet.

Roy continued. “He kept men laughing when they had little cause. When rations failed, he told them hunger improved the imagination.”

Donaldina smiled before she could stop herself. Then Roy’s expression changed, and the smile left her. “I still see them,” he confessed.

The words came quietly.

“Lachlan?”

“All of them.”

Donaldina’s attention sharpened. Roy looked beyond the cliff, into some darkness farther away than the sea.

“The men I couldnae reach. The ones I ordered forward. The ones who trusted me when I told them we would hold.” His fingers curled at his side. “Sometimes I dream they are standing where I left them. Sometimes they ask why I returned when they didnae.”

Donaldina’s throat tightened. Roy had spoken of war before as though it were weather endured: bitter, violent and beyond question. He had never spoken of guilt.

“Ye brought men home,” she reminded him.

“Nae enough.”

“Perhaps nae number would feel like enough.”

Roy said nothing. The wind lifted his shirt against his body. Donaldina remembered the scars beneath it, the marks across his chest and back, each one evidence that death had reached for him repeatedly and failed.

She thought those scars proved how often Roy nearly died. She understood now that he carried the dead within him as surely as he carried their wounds.

“When did ye last sleep through an entire night?” she asked.

Roy’s eyes remained upon the horizon. “Before the war.”

The answer struck her with quiet force.

“Years?”

“Aye.”

“And ye have told nae one?”

“Hamish kens.”

“Kenning isnae the same as speaking.”

“Nae.”

Donaldina looked at his face, at the rigid calm he wore even now.

“Why did ye tell me?”

At last, Roy turned toward her. The stars reflected faintly in his gray eyes.