The sight nearly did in what remained of Eilidh’s heart.
Would Kieran have held their own child with such reverent awe? Would the same wide smile have creased his face?
A scene flared through her mind’s eye.
Not a memory but a flash of a future that would never be. Of Kieran laughing, chasing a wee girl with black curls across the lawn of Kilmeny Hall, catching her around the waist and spinning her in a circle. Eilidh could almost hear the lass’s shrieks of delight.
Kieran raised his head, fixing her with pale eyes. “Come see, Eilidh. She is beautiful.”
She wanted to refuse.
She wanted to shake her head and run from the room.
Instead, her feet moved, leading her to Kieran’s side.
The baby was gently slipped into her arms.
Oh!
Lady Dahlia was so unutterably tiny. And yet, perfect, as well. A button nose. A swoop of forehead.
“She’s already got red hair,” Ewan pointed out in awe.
So she did. Eilidh ran a finger over the sparse red-gold fuzz.
Ye are so loved, little one,she thought.Never forget how loved ye are.
That same feeling of loss andwhat ifsqueezed tighter.
Vividly, the interior of that villager’s hut surfaced. The sun winking through the palm fronds of the roof, as she stared upward, day after day. The smell of blood mixed with that of the sea. The quiet voice of Mrs. Gillespie reading aloud from Psalms and theshh-shhof the elderly island woman who would pat Eilidh’s hand in comfort.
The aching feeling of emptiness. The sense that more than just memories had been stripped from her.
“Do not grieve the child. It is for the best,”Mrs. Gillespie had murmured.“A child conceived in such sin would not have had a fortunate life. God has blessed you both in this.”
Eilidh had chosen to believe Mrs. Gillespie’s words. She had only allowed herself to feel relief.
Relief that she would not have to care for a child who would have been an outward symbol of immoral choices or trauma orsomethingshe had no memory of.
Relief that the baby would not be subjected to the hardship of life as the illegitimate child of a missionary in the South Pacific.
But when Eilidh stared into the wide, gray eyes of Baby Dahlia . . .
It was hard to remember that relief.
Dahlia would have every advantage that life could give a child—love, stability, wealth.
Eilidh had only had love to give to her babe.
But . . . the Gillespies had been wrong to think that would not have been enough.
Love would have driven her to protect her child.
She would have suffered all the horrors she suspected lurked in her missing memories, if only she could have kept her baby, if only her battered body had not rejected it.
It was what a mother did, was it not?
Sacrificed anything for the life of her child.
