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‘So, I am doubly impotent now, in your eyes. The man who stole my betrothed has also stolen my fight. Most likely, he has gone to his doom, for the King will as like stretch his neck as take him into his army.’
‘That is beneath you, Owen.’
‘Aye ‘tis, but being the honourable fool did not get me anywhere, did it? Tell me, Morna, have you come to pity me or beg forgiveness?
‘No pity, Owen, for you seem to have plenty of that to give yourself.’ He turned away at her words. ‘I have come to beg forgiveness for what I did at Fitheach.’
‘Why? Have you come to regret giving your heart to that villain?’
‘Owen let us not talk of Will. I came to say that I regret wounding you.’
‘Humiliating me, Morna, that was what you did, before all the men I gathered to come and fight for you, before Cormac. How could you take my heart and throw it into the dirt for someone so unworthy of you?
‘Because I love Will.’
‘Love him! The very notion of it. I would have thought you had more sense, Morna.’
‘You are right, Owen, I have no sense, and I am selfish too. For years I have thought only of myself. I played with your regard for me. I basked in your admiration without a thought for your feelings. In truth, I believed you to feel a passing infatuation for me, nothing more. It is only since my whole life has been ripped apart that I have come to realise just how awful I was.’
‘So if Ramsay had not taken you, what would you have said in answer to my proposal?’ he said, and Morna winced at Ramsay’s name said aloud.
‘I would have said no.’
‘You do not spare the blade, do you?’
‘I need to be truthful, Owen.’
‘And we must always worry about what you need, Morna.’ He sighed deeply, and his face twisted in bitterness. ‘Why refuse me when we could have been happy?’
‘You should thank me for sparing you the fate of having a wife who does not love you, or did you not care about love?’
‘Don’t speak of love. We were perfect for each other, our families, our rank, my allegiance to your brothers. Now, instead of the Sutherlands and the Buchanans being joined, Cormac’s family is allied to the Bains, through you.’
‘He had other reasons to wed me, Owen.’
‘Aye, and I know what reasons they are. I know in my gut that you were on the brink of giving yourself to me on more than one occasion when we snuck off to the woods in secret. Or did you feign all that ardour, those heated kisses, your hands all over me?’
Morna’s face grew hot as she looked at his handsome, angry face. ‘No, it was real, and I felt it, and I am not ashamed of it, for we wanted each other, but can you truly say it was love for either of us? Owen, I would have made you a terrible wife.’
‘I suppose you would because you do not love me and you have no common sense.’
‘How so?’
‘Well, you spurn me, a decent man who would do right by you, for a cutthroat, and then, so Ravenna tells me, you have spurned him because he is trying to be more honourable.’ He smiled to soften his words. ‘Men cannot win with you, can they?’
‘I suppose when you say it like that, I am a fool.’
He looked up at her, his handsome face softening. ‘Aye, a fool I will always be fond of, though it pains me to say it.’
‘I never deserved you, Owen, truly.’
‘No, you did not, but you don’t deserve my bitterness either. Enough of this, Morna. I will think of it no more. You are his now, and I must live with it. Do you think this Bain fellow will come back for you, to keep his bond with the Buchanans?’
‘I do not know for certain what he will do or what I will do. I begged him not to throw his life away fighting for the King, but he went anyway. I told him I would not be at Fitheach when he returned.’
‘Then it seems that wedding him has brought you no more happiness than wedding me.’
‘Yet I love him, Owen and my heart is his forever. There can be no other.’
