Hard-Hearted Highlander

“Whisky,” he said, his voice rough with an emotion he hadn’t even realized he was holding.

Barabel disappeared into the adjoining storeroom to fetch it.

No one said a word. The two children stared at him, and Rabbie stared back. He didn’t know what to say to them, and at last, he spoke to them in Gaelic. Did they speak English? “I, ah... I knew your mother.”

The lad looked up at that admission.

“I donna remember her,” the girl announced in English. “Mrs. Maloney said I look very much like her. She was bonny and so am I.”

“Aye, she was, as are you,” Rabbie agreed. The lass—Fiona—must be five or six years old now. Ualan was nearly two when last Rabbie had seen him, and he guessed him to be seven or eight years now. “She loved you both,” he said.

Fiona smiled. The lad didn’t utter a word.

“I knew them all,” Rabbie said, and was embarrassed to hear his voice crack. “I even knew the two of you.”

Fiona’s eyes widened. “You did? I donna remember you.”

“You were a bairn, lass,” he said to her in English. “You played here at Balhaire, aye?”

The children stared at him. Perhaps they didn’t believe him. He began to perspire; he could feel a bead of it running down his back. As he gazed into those vaguely familiar faces, he could see Gavina and Seona’s eyes in the children. He could see the lad’s father in him, in his rust-colored hair, just like that of Donald MacLeod.

Barabel returned to the kitchen with a flagon. “Why do you stand idle?” she chastised the children as she handed Rabbie a flagon of whisky. “Finish your chores, the both of you,” she commanded.

Rabbie had glanced once more at the children before leaving. He was disquieted by their presence. What was to happen to them? Perhaps he didn’t want to know—to know would require some action on his part, at the very least, some thought or feeling. He couldn’t summon the strength for it that evening.

He’d taken the flagon to the top of the fortress tower, and there he had crouched on the parapet, drinking to numb the hopelessness in him. He’d absently viewed the bailey below—quite a fall that would be—but he didn’t think of jumping.

At least not that night.

No, he’d found himself instead thinking first of those orphaned children, and then of the woman with the dark hair and hazel eyes and deep red gown. Or rather, he’d thought of the way she’d glared at him. With disdain. As if she had the right to disdain him. Somehow, the maid and the children became tangled in his muddied thoughts. He was angry that she could possibly find fault with him when there were two children working in the scullery because of the English forces.

The cold eventually sent him inside, long after that haughty little Sassenach had left Balhaire, long after the candles had been extinguished and everyone had gone to bed. And then he’d tried to sleep.

It was impossible.

It puzzled him—how could a man desire sleep so utterly above all else, and yet be unable to achieve it? But between his perpetual anguish and the hazel eyes burning their disdain into his mind’s eye, he’d slept very little. Frankly, he wasn’t certain if he’d slept at all in the last two days.

And now had come the day he’d be forced to take the chit riding.

Why did women believe it such a bonny pastime to amble aimlessly about the countryside? Even when he was in good spirits he chafed at the futility of such exercise. And, naturally, his family distrusted him so completely that Catriona had once again been dispatched to chaperone him. She was leading the charge, and she determined a picnic was the thing. She’d asked Barabel to prepare a basket for them. A picnic!

“It’s a bonny day,” she’d said when Rabbie had complained. “She will like it.”

Rabbie didn’t picnic.

Aye, but he’d resigned himself to it. Even his father had lost patience with Rabbie’s surly apathy, chastising him this morning for having left the room the other night without bidding their guests good-night.

Truthfully, Rabbie had lost patience with himself. It wasn’t as if he enjoyed his state of mind, but it was beyond his ability to affect. He struggled to shepherd his thoughts in a brighter direction. He couldn’t seem to move them at all. It was as if a boulder had been placed before him, and until he could push it away, he was destined to stand still. No matter what he did, no matter how he prayed or swore that this day would be different, he could not move that boulder of melancholy. It grew bigger and heavier every day.

And today was no different.

He was to meet Catriona on the road. She’d gone to call on their father’s cousin, whom they called Auntie Griselda. Quite unfortunately, she was failing. Catriona was especially close to Zelda, and visited her every day. While he restlessly waited, his thoughts spinning, Rabbie had ridden to the cliff above the cove. Now, here he stood, his toes just over the edge.

The tide was out, and from his vantage point he could see how the color of the water below him changed from green to dark blue where it deepened. If he leaped, spread his arms, he would sail out far enough to land in that hole. If he weighted his pockets with rocks, he would sink so far below the surface they might never find him.

He would disappear, like Seona, never to be heard from again.

The task of picking up rocks seemed too complicated and tiring.

Rabbie sighed, then wondered after the time. It was morning yet, the sun not fully overhead. Catriona would be furious with him if he was late. Not that Rabbie cared. He almost welcomed her fury—it served to test the boundaries of his desolation. He longed for something that would force him to feel anything other than rage, or despair, or the worst—absolutely nothing.

His only saving grace, he supposed, was that he did not want to find that thing at the expense of his family. He had told himself that his sole task today, the one thing he must accomplish, was to ride with the English lass to Auchenard, a hunting lodge that belonged to Daisy’s young son, Lord Chatwick. It had been entrusted to Rabbie to keep in good repair until Ellis had reached his majority. It was scenic, Catriona said. The girl would like it, Catriona said.

A wind suddenly gusted up from the cove, pushing him, lifting the hem of his cloak and his hair, which he hadn’t bothered to put in a queue. Rabbie quickly stepped back from the edge, his heart pounding with the abrupt surprise of that gust. And yet, wasn’t that what he’d wanted? For a gust of wind to topple him from this ledge?