Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-one

Morgan’s mount flew over the heathered turf, its iron-shod hooves barely skimming the earth. If he wanted, he could close his eyes and pretend for an instant that he was back on Pookah, the wind whipping through his hair, the scent of freedom flaring his nostrils.

But Pookah was dead and Morgan had learned that there were some things more precious than freedom. More precious even than pride. Pride would have dictated that he return to Castle MacDonnell and mass his clan for an attack on the treacherous Camerons.

Instead, he was thundering toward Cameron alone to lay final siege to a woman’s stubborn heart, his only concession to pride the bright new tartan that enveloped him.

Violet clouds tinged the horizon. The sky slowly darkened to the sapphire blue of Sabrina’s eyes. A fat moon hung above the mountain peaks like a frosted pearl. Morgan aimed the horse for that guiding beacon, praying he wouldn’t be too late to catch it before it drifted forever out of his reach.

It might have been any peaceful spring night at Cameron Manor.

Brian and Alex played chess before the drawing room fire. Pugsley dozed on the hearth. Elizabeth tucked a slender needle through the ivory linen of an embroidered fire screen, her sewing basket open at her feet. Dougal sat behind a walnut desk, surrounded by the leather-bound registers of the spring planting. Pugsley’s snores counted off the unfolding minutes.

They all started baldly as a thunderous banging sounded on the door. Pugsley lifted his head. His curly tail began to wag.

Dougal flipped a page, his eyes still riveted on the ledger. Elizabeth tied off a knot and snapped the excess thread away with her teeth. Alex captured Brian’s rook and removed it from the board, his face grim.

The massive wooden door trembled in its frame beneath the force of the blows being rained upon it. A manservant rushed in from the kitchen, but Dougal stayed him with a warning glance. Pugsley leapt up with more enthusiasm than he’d shown in weeks and began to caper back and forth in front of the door.

Dougal stroked his beard, weariness etched in every cranny of his brow. He wasn’t sure his family could survive another MacDonnell siege. He knew his daughter wouldn’t.

The ancient wood of the door splintered beneath one mighty blow. Pugsley scampered out of the way, then began to bark in short, excited yips as the chieftain of the MacDonnells stepped through the debris. Morgan quieted him with a single look. Chastened, the dog slunk to his belly and buried his nose beneath his paws.

“I’ve come to see my wife.” Morgan’s voice rang in the taut silence.

Dougal stood. Elizabeth continued to sew, her needle flying through the linen with flawless rhythm. Brian scrutinized the chessboard as if his entire future hinged on his next move.

“Sabrina is no longer your wife,” Dougal said.

A spasm of pain crossed Morgan’s impassive countenance to be replaced by dark fury. “Perhaps not in the eyes of your English laws. But in the eyes of God, I’m still her husband.”

Alex lumbered to his feet to stand at his father’s side. “Now, friend, there’s no cause to be unreasonable—”

“I’m not your friend,” Morgan snarled. “Nor am I interested in reason. Not when the Camerons twist it to suit their purposes. The only thing I’m interested in is Sabrina.”

Dougal’s shoulders slumped. “Very well. Brian, fetch your sister.”

“No!”

Morgan’s sharp command made them all flinch. But it was the pistol in the MacDonnell’s hand that stilled Brian half out of his chair and made Elizabeth gasp.

“No,” Morgan repeated. “I’ll stomach no interference from any of you this time. Especially not you, Dougal. I’ve had enough of your meddlin’ to last me a lifetime.”

Dougal stepped in front of his wife. “Don’t do something you’re going to regret, lad.”

The lamplight gleamed off the sleek barrel of the weapon as Morgan leveled it at the laird’s chest. “I already have. I trusted a Cameron.”

Morgan thundered up the stairs, clearing three of them with each stride. He marched around the gallery, his steps echoing eerily off the wooden floor as if the manor had never known the ripple of human laughter or the joyous strains of song. A darkened corridor unfurled before him.

He plunged down it without hesitation, seeking the door he remembered from boyhood, the door he had so often endeavored to pass, lured by the tinkling music of girlish laughter.

He threw open that door now to find that time had stopped for all but him. The chamber was deserted, the bed’s coverlet as smooth and undisturbed as the faceless visage of the rag doll perched on the pillow. A miniature tea set still sat on a rosewood table. Morgan picked up one of the tiny cups, his fingers grown suddenly too big for his hand.

Then the little chairs were no longer empty, but filled with the ghosts of his regrets: Sabrina, eyes sparkling, spiral curls dancing; the faceless doll slumped over her cup; a paint-spattered kitten licking cream from a saucer and looking absolutely ridiculous with a doll’s feathered hat tied beneath his furry chin.

A little girl’s pleading voice bled through the silence. Come have chocolate with me, Morgan. Isabella, Doll, and I are having gingerbread today .

The cup slipped from his graceless fingers, shattering on the floor.

Morgan eased the chamber door gently shut as if to preserve its memories intact. He flew through the darkened corridors of the manor, throwing open door after door to find only more ghosts, more regrets. He burst back onto the gallery, fists clenched and chest heaving with frustration.

At the top of the stairs, a single door remained undisturbed. Morgan’s breathing slowed as he approached it, measuring each silent step as if it would be his last.

The polished oak of the solar door felt cool beneath his palm. It swung open without a sound.

He should have known she’d wait for him there, bathed in moonlight as she’d been that autumn night a lifetime ago. She reclined upon the settee by the widow, her white nightdress glowing beneath the kiss of the moon. Gazing at the luminous orb as if held rapt by its spell, she dragged a hairbrush through her unbound hair, the motion dreamy, her profile pensive.

Morgan hesitated in the doorway. He felt as if he were profaning holy ground. Disturbing a shrine to the life she had chosen over the one he could give her. A life of empty peace instead of bittersweet joy and travail. No risks. No pain. No loss because there was nothing to lose. He knew what he must do now. His own sense of loss threatened to overwhelm him.

The finches chirped a welcome from their cage, but Sabrina didn’t even turn her head.

She stroked the brush through a dusky curl. “It wasn’t very sporting of you to lock my family in the kirk. You gave the servants a terrible fright.”

“You know damn well I don’t fight fair. If they want out badly enough, they can break the bloody windows.”

She cast him a chiding glance over her shoulder. “Mama would never permit it. Those windows are over a hundred years old. They were shipped all the way from Heidelberg.”

Morgan moved to stand behind her, his own gaze not on the candlelit kirk across the ancient bailey, but on the shimmering waves of silk spread over Sabrina’s shoulders. She eased the window open an inch, as if polite curiosity were all that motivated her.

She tilted her head, utterly aloof and farther out of his reach than the distant moon. “They’re very quiet, aren’t they? Perhaps they’re praying for your soul.”

“They ought to be prayin’ for yours. If you still have one, that is.”

She pushed the window shut, cutting off the night breeze and smothering them in a peace Morgan now found to be more oppressive than his clan’s querulous demands had ever been.

“If you’ve come to rob us,” she said, laying the brush aside, “Mama’s jewels are in the coffer beneath the loose floorboard in the corner. You’ll find the snuffbox on the table inlaid with genuine gold. Oh, the Cameron claymore is right over there above the hearth. It belongs to you rightfully anyway.”

“Just as you do?”

A delicate bloom stained her cheeks. It was gone as quickly as it had come, leaving her face both bloodless and expressionless.

Morgan destroyed the serenity with vicious satisfaction, his voice ringing harshly in the perfumed air. “I didn’t come to take anythin’, lass. I came to return somethin’ that belongs to you.” He reached into his plaid and drew out the spray of dried gorse, tossing it carelessly into her lap.

Her hands betrayed her, scrambling to gather the scattered blooms. Then as if realizing what they’d done, they collapsed like broken wings into her lap. Her lower lip began to tremble.

Morgan moved to block her line of vision. “What did you tell yourself, lass? That you were bein’ noble? Makin’ a grand gesture of sacrifice by settin’ me free?”

“You deserved more,” she whispered, a tear clinging to her lashes before falling to water one of the shriveled blooms.

He dropped to one knee beside the settee. “You’re damned right I did,” he choked out between clenched teeth. His vehemence shocked her into meeting his gaze. “You lied, lass! You lied to me and you lied to yourself. You’re not noble or brave. You’re nothin’ but a petty coward, Sabrina Cameron, and even if your legs were sound, I doubt your spine would support you!”

Tears were running freely down her pale cheeks, but Morgan ignored them as well as the betraying sting behind his own eyes. “You were right about one thing though. You’re not worthy of me. I want a woman of courage who’ll stand beside me through good times and bad, whether it be on her feet or on her knees. I’ve no use for some feckless lass who runs away at the first sign of trouble. Aye, Sabrina, I deserve far more than the likes of you for a wife.”

He climbed to his feet, forcing a note of dispassion into his voice even as agony flayed him. “So god-speed to you, lass. I wish you no ill. I wish—”

But Morgan couldn’t finish. A lifetime of lost wishes and broken dreams clogged his throat. Reaching down, he gently wiped beneath her eye, catching a trembling teardrop, more precious than any gem, on the callused pad of his fingertip.

Sabrina’s eyes were beseeching, and he knew that if she had uttered one plea, one word in her defense, he would have stayed. But she held her silence, the very silence that had been their undoing. Morgan’s fist clenched, destroying the tear in the same motion that sought to preserve it.

He turned on his heel and left her without another word.

Sabrina sat in numb misery, listening to Morgan’s footsteps recede. The terrible truth of his words excoriated her. All of her noble intentions had been a sham, a pathetic travesty of self-sacrifice. Rather than risk his rejection or the mockery of his clan, she had struck the first blow, rejecting them first. She hadn’t been able to walk, but that hadn’t stopped her from running away.

She reached for one of the precious gorse blooms only to have it crumble to dust at her touch. It wasn’t Morgan’s pride that had finished them, but her own. The same pride that had kept her from falling to her knees at his feet one last time, the same pride that now clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from calling him back.

The serenity of the moon seemed to mock her. A haunting wisp, white against the darkened sky, floated past the window. Sabrina blinked away her tears as another ghostly plume drifted upward to disappear against the ivory backdrop of the moon.

She tugged the window open. The acrid stench of smoldering wood stung her eyes. She traced the wisps of smoke downward to discover a single stained-glass window at the back of the kirk writhing with flame. In a moment of sheer madness she thought Morgan had set the blaze to punish her for her cowardice. Her heart rejected the notion in the same beat.

“Morgan!” His beloved name tore from her lips, the longing of a lifetime written in the single word.

But Sabrina was deafened to her own scream by an unearthly keening that swelled and rolled, cresting on a wave of pure unbroken majesty.