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Gram let a smile curl her lips, but her chin remained stubborn with purpose. “You have hidden yourself away for too long. You are full recovered, yet you remain here rather than return to Skye. Can you tell me why that is?”
Vying for time, Morgan shed her sopping wet cloak on a chair. Pulled off her gloves, tossing them on her bed. Shook the snow from her hair.
“It is long past time for you to go to him.”
Morgan felt Gram’s words like a body blow. She whipped around, hating the revealing sting of tears. Cam wasn’t worth it. “Go? To him? Are you insane? That’s just what I’m not going to do.”
Gram remained as unmoved as stone. With a patience that Morgan had always envied and hated, she settled into a chair by the fire. Folded her hands in her lap. Obviously, this wasn’t going to be a lightning assault. More like a drawn-out siege. “You would rather hide behind the safety of Daggerfell’s walls than join with the enemy? Take the battle to him?”
“You’ve hit the nail on the head. Enemy. As in opposite of love. As in he’s not worth my time.” She stomped to the hearth. Made a great show of warming her hands. Ignoring Gram’s unasked-for advice.
“Your actions reveal the lie of your words. I have seen your heartache in the somber light of your gaze. In the sorrow of your heart. In the tragedy of your dreams.”
Morgan remained silent. If
she let Gram have her say, mayhap she’d give up and leave. But every accusation battered Morgan’s already bruised heart. Tore open a wound barely healed over.
“His sorrow is no less than yours, myrgh-wynn. And perhaps affects him more. He does not have the comfort of family. Nor the peace of his own conscience to offer reassurance.”
Gram had the persistence of an army sapper. Tunneling under Morgan’s defenses. Weakening walls. Pulling apart her arguments one brick at a time.
Morgan clamped her mouth over the harsh words that threatened to spill from her lips. Remained with eyes focused on the fire. Did everything but plug her ears with her fingers.
Still, Gram wouldn’t let it rest. “He is a proud man with the soul of a warrior. It will take a powerful woman to match such strength.”
The breech forced open, Morgan had no choice but to swing around to challenge Gram. “He left me. Remember? I offered him my love”—she beat her chest with her fist—“I sacrificed my future for him. And what did he do? Walked away from all of it. It wasn’t good enough.” She swallowed around the final truth. “I wasn’t good enough.”
And there it was. The real reason she sheltered within the safety of her rooms. Her greatest fear.
Gram nodded as if she’d already known what Morgan hadn’t admitted even to herself. Mayhap she did.
“Don’t you see, Gram? All I did, and I wasn’t enough.” She hated the crack in her voice, the weakness behind it.
“Perhaps the colonel thought leaving you was giving you what you wanted. Perhaps he thought he wasn’t enough for you.”
Morgan sank onto her bed, clutching the bedpost as she rested her head against the gnarled wood. Could that have been Cam’s reasoning? Could he have assumed that by bowing out he offered her back her freedom? Released her from what she’d stupidly referred to as the prison of his love? Why had she even said that? Why hadn’t she seen then what stared her in the face now? That no amount of Amhas-draoi power mattered if she’d no one to share her days with. Or her nights beside.
Taking a deep steadying breath, she closed her eyes, hating the spiraling doubts, the complete blindness of men. He should have known. He should have asked.
She should have told him.
When she opened her eyes, Gram stood, a smile of success lighting her face as if making Morgan cry had been her sole purpose. Her job here accomplished.
Morgan swiped a sleeve across her face. Sniffed. “If you’re so wise, where is he now?”
Gram laughed. “You two are more alike than you wish to believe. Like you, he fled to the one place he felt most at peace. Home.”
She stood on the shore of a loch, its icy blue brilliance mirroring the mountains surrounding it. The dirty storm clouds overhead.
Old snow curled in the corners of the rocks, blew through the cliffs. The sad cry of a loon sounded lonely across the waters. Returned in echo.
She rubbed her arms briskly, trying to warm her courage before climbing the path that led to the solitary farmstead.
It was just as she’d dreamed it. Built of local stone, the house seemed to grow from the hillside behind it. Bleak and storm-scarred with thick walls mortar-chinked to keep out the Viking winds howling down from the Orkneys and a slate roof sprouting chimneys, though smoke rose from only one. Scraggly trees leaned like old men in a garden left fallow and waiting patiently for spring.
Morgan knocked, though she knew Cam wasn’t home. She’d reconnoitered before plunging headlong into what could be an amazingly awkward situation.
Strathconon’s tenants spoke of the colonel as a solitary man, taken to spending long days on the moors and mountains. Never rude, yet holding himself apart from the life of the valley. No trips to the village. No evenings spent in the company of his neighbors. No visitors to his isolated holding on the edge of the estate.
