She cocked her head. “Rustic,” she said thoughtfully. “I can deal with that.”
He found himself smiling. He was about to say something more when she abruptly changed the subject, catching him off guard.
“What about your family?”
His mirth faded as quickly as it came, replaced by a hard knot in his chest. “My family?”
“Yeah, you know: mother. Father. Siblings.” She paused and glanced at him sidelong. “Wife?”
He paused, reluctant to go down this road. Isabelle waited patiently and if there was one thing he’d learned about her, it was that she was unlikely to be put off. “I dinna have a family,” he said finally. “Other than my sword-brothers in the Order of the Osprey.”
She looked at him sharply, her eyes wide and filled with compassion. “No family? Oh. I’m sorry, Magnus.”
He shrugged. “Dinna be. It was nobody’s fault. I was orphaned when I was twelve. Both my parents died from an illness that swept through our village.
Isabelle gasped. “That must have been horrific,” she murmured, but Magnus shrugged it off.
“Life was hard back then. Still is,” he said matter-of-factly. “I ended up in a monastery. A monk found me on the streets and took me in.”
Isabelle’s mouth dropped open. “You were amonk? Tonsure. Habit. Prayers and all that?”
Magnus barked out a laugh, shaking his head. “Hardly. The brothers tried to teach me their ways of prayer andpenance but I was too stubborn, too wild. Nay, I was more like the resident troublemaker than anything else.”
He paused for a moment, memories washing over him. “A nobleman came to the monastery and offered to take me off their hands. I think they were glad to be rid of me to be honest. So I went with the nobleman and he became my mentor. Taught me everything I know. He became a second father to me.”
“What was his name?”
Magnus didn’t reply at once. He stopped walking and turned to face the sweeping vista of the moors, his eyes trained on the horizon as if by doing so he could look back through time to happier days.
“Eamon,” he said at last. “His name was Eamon. He was proud, fierce, bad-tempered. But he was also honorable, fair, kind-hearted.”
“Was?” Isabelle said softly. “You said was. Is he not here anymore?”
“Nay,” Magnus breathed softly, thoughts of the past sparking an ache inside. How would his life had turned out if things had been different? If he’d not done what he did? “Eamon died a long time ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Isabelle said. “And the Order of the Osprey? You joined that after he died?”
Magnus fiddled with the lead of the halter, surprised by Isabelle’s insight. “Aye,” he muttered. “Something like that.”
He was surprised how easily the words tripped off his tongue. Not the truth. Never the truth. But as close to it as Magnus could bear to go.
“What about ye?” he asked, hoping to change the subject. “What family do ye have waiting at home for ye? A husband, perhaps?”
She gave him a flat look. “Hardly. I don’t think I’m the marrying type. In fact, I’m beginning to think I’m not therelationshiptype.” Her expression took on a wistful tone and she looked away, staring out at the horizon just as Magnus had done. Magnus sensed there was an old pain there and more to the story than she said but also sensed it would not be wise to push it.
“Parents?” he asked. “Siblings?”
She shrugged. “My parents divorced when I was five and both remarried. I lived with my mum until I was eleven and then I was sent to boarding school. My dad lives in Singapore with his new family, my mum in Dublin with hers. I don’t see them very often. During the week I work in a bank. At weekends I peruse flea markets or crochet blankets. Pretty boring, huh? “
She said it matter-of-factly, but Magnus wasn’t fooled. There was a faint undercurrent of hurt in her words and something else...loneliness. Why did she seem to think she wasn’t brave or special when it was clear to him that she was both of these things? Irene MacAskill clearly saw something in Isabelle too otherwise she would not have brought her back to this time. Which begged the question:whyhad she brought Isabelle back here?
Sometimes we need help to make these choices. Sometimes we need someone who sees through the masks we wear and sees us as we truly are.
Isabelle Ross was an enigma indeed.
They walked on, their boots crunching through the heather and bracken, the shrill call of unseen birds the only sound other than the whine of the wind. Occasionally, a lark would call out from above or a deer would dart from the cover of the bracken but aside from this, they were alone.
Isabelle broke the silence after a while. “The Order of the Osprey—what exactly do you do? I mean, besides rescuing damsels in distress?”
