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“But you wanted to know, and I find that I want to explain myself.”
“Now that you don’t have to?”
She laughed softly. “Yes. I only kept things from you to protect you, not that I did a very good job of it.”
“I see that now.”
“When my mother was put to death, Cyrus and his wife came and took me away to a better life. His wife wanted a child, and he said he did, too. But Cyrus wanted more than that—a young witch he could train and control. I didn’t learn this until very recently, however. To me he was a teacher, someone who protected me and my craft.”
“You were with them for a long time?”
“Ten years or thereabouts. I was a child when they came to Scotland looking for an orphan.”
“You trusted them at first?”
“Not at first. I was in a terrible state, but Mama Beth was so kind, and Cyrus taught me to appreciate my secret nature. Then things changed and I discovered that he had only kept me in order to become my suitor, my owner.”
“What of his wife?”
Maisie rested her head on his shoulder. Roderick felt he knew the answer even before she said it, because he felt damp tears on his skin.
“She died at his hand, because he wanted me in her place.”
Wrapping Maisie closer, Roderick stroked her hair, running his fingers through it before cupping the back of her head as he kissed her. That, he saw, was an immense burden to her, and understandably so.
“What of your childhood?” she said later. “You haven’t said much about the time before you were at sea.”
“That’s because there’s not much to tell. I was born in Dundee, an only child. We had very little. My father hunted for rabbits in the hills and sold them at market. I used to play down by the harbor and watch the ships come and go. The sea life called to me.”
“Your parents?”
“Long gone. The men of the Libertas are the only family I know.”
“And me. You have me now.”
Do I? Roderick didn’t know how to respond to that, so he rocked her gently in his arms, holding her close to him until she eventually dozed, and for a long time after.
* * *
On the second day of their voyage north from the Tay estuary, Roderick returned to his quarters to check on her. It seemed he could not go long without seeing her. The threat of imminent separation, no doubt. The very thought of it made him feel thwarted, useless and frustrated. In his heart, a battle was being fought. Love for a woman was forcing him onto a different path. Would she accept him at her side?
When he entered the cabin, she scarcely noticed, for she was poring over the letter from Gregor, reading it once again. She had already read it many times and marveled on it.
“You could recite the words without the page,” Roderick said, to announce his presence more than anything.
She lifted her head and looked his way. The frown she’d worn disappeared, and her eyes lit at the sight of him.
That tugged at his heartstrings. How could he bear to be parted from this woman? It was the biggest dilemma of his life. If all he could do was see her safely to her kin and continue on with his responsibilities, then so be it. That steadfast reasoning only made him grumpier. Quickly, he crossed to her side.
“It is why I felt a connection here, because he’d been here before me, before he’d met my twin. It was so vague, but it was there nonetheless.” She glanced at the page again and then around the quarters. “I feel it much more clearly now.”
“You will always be a mystery to me, Maisie from Scotland, but I no longer question your ways.”
His comment softened her expression and she looked at him with great fondness. “If it were not for you I might never have discovered where my sister was. I am forever grateful to you.”
Roderick did not want her gratitude, he wanted her. Plain and simple, he felt unaccountably possessive, as if he had a right to own this woman, a woman who clearly could not be owned by anyone. “No, you would have found her, no matter what. I have merely hastened your path in the right direction.”
She looked into his eyes, as if searching his soul, and it troubled Roderick so much that he turned away and went to his maps. The one currently laid out depicted in some detail the treacherou
