Lachlan stood with his head lowered for a long moment, and when he looked up, Finley could see the glistening in his eyes—the emotion, the triumph. He held out his hand, and Geordie clasped it.
Lachlan had gotten what he wanted.
He turned to look at her, and Finley thought her disappointment must have been clear on her face, for his brows knit together, breaking the moment for him.
She didn’t care; her heart was breaking in the same moment.
“Finley,” he said, turning to her and taking her hand, pulling her against his side to support her. He whispered into her hair, “Let’s get you to the chief’s house so that one of the mothers might tend your arm.”
This time it was Finley who pulled away. She went to Kirsten, who slid her arm around her waist without hesitation, taking some of Finley’s burden, which was not entirely physical.
“I release you, Lachlan Blair,” Finley said. She turned her head to locate Marcas and addressed Lachlan’s foster father. “I release him from our vows. We have not known each other. He is free.”
“Finley,” Lachlan said, his face a mask of confusion. “I thought…I thought we cared for each other.”
“We do,” she said. “Sure, we’re friends.”
“We’re more than that.”
She shook her head. “Nay. You’ve made your choice—the same one you told me at the very first you’d make. You’re only keeping your promise. And so I’m keeping mine.” She dropped her eyes and said to Kirsten, “Take me to my da, please. I want to go home.”
“Wait,” Lachlan turned to call to her as she passed. “Stay with me. Here, at Town Blair. I want you to be my wife, here.” He reached out to touch her, but it was her injured arm and so Finley flinched away, although he hadn’t truly pained it.
“This is not my home,” she said, and then turned away from him. “And you are not my husband anymore.”
She lifted her chin as she made her way through the crowd, and gritted her teeth as, one by one, both Carson and Blair warriors honored her with a bow as she passed.
Her father was waiting to take her into his arms. “My gel, my gel. I’m so proud.”
“Take me home, Da,” she hiccoughed into his chest.
And he did.
Chapter 18
Lachlan was the Blair.
A month had passed since that terrible night ofLá Bealltainn, the night the ben had nearly run red again. The night Vaughn Hargrave had escaped, and Murdoch Carson had died. The night Geordie Blair, Archibald’s son, had come back from the dead.
The night Finley had left him.
He’d spent his days finding his way once more in a town that was at once familiar and foreign. Before Lucan Montague had ventured into the vale on his fine black horse, Lachlan would have stepped into the chief’s place with nary a blink. But now—so much more had happened than could be reconciled to the mere passing of time, and it was an awkward return for Lachlan in more ways than one. They buried the dead and moved on, though.
Well, most everyone moved on. Kirsten Carson had returned to the place of her birth along with her friend, but Dand made the trip to Carson Town nearly every day now, openly wooing the blond Carson woman with both fine’s blessings. There would be a wedding after the autumn butchering. They thought it fitting to celebrate the salmon run with it, both towns together. A healing.
Lachlan hoped he’d be healed by then, too. Healed in his relationship with Marcas, still strained and awkward, though neither one wished it that way. Healed of the pain of betrayal. He’d hoped it could return to the way it was before he’d left. But there was a shadow now between him and everyone else in the town. Not quite visible, nothing anyone could put name to, not ominous. But there.
Dand never spoke to Lachlan of Finley, although Lachlan had overheard bits of gossip that Carson Town had thrown her a fete, and had offered to send her to Edinburgh to make a match there. Just like Myra Carson…Myra Annesley. There was more than one murmur that several of Lachlan’s own townsmen had their eye on the spirited Carson lass who had saved Town Blair from a fiery fate.
Finley Carson, who used to be his friend.
Lachlan’s every waking moment was filled with thoughts of her wavy red locks, the delicate freckles on her nose. Her long legs that could nearly match his, stride for stride, in a foot race. The way she’d kiss him passionately, and then in the next moment laugh at him, fight with him, her sparkling blue eyes enchanting him with her fairy charm.
Every word she’d said to him on the beach the night ofLá Bealltainn, when she’d begged him to stay at Carson Town, rang in his head like a haunting, tinkling song.
He thought, too, of the friends he’d made at the town on the bay—the families who had accepted him and helped him, even knowing the truth of who he was, even with the past of his clan following him nearly to their ruin once more. Did they hate him now? Lachlan thought they had every right to.
Lachlan sat at the table in his grandfather’s house after a short meeting of the fine. Everyone had left straightaway afterward; none had stayed for a drink like they used to in the old days. Harrell Blair was dead. Searrach was gone—probably dead as well. Lachlan had no intention of marrying again, perhaps ever. Who would have him, in truth, the Blair or nay? He poured himself another cup of the last of the Irish and sipped it in the light of the single, smoky lamp as it flickered over the brooch on the tabletop.
