She sat on the floor for a long while after, one hand loosely pressed to the porcelain pot, the other mopping tears from her cheeks.
All those men. Gone. Killed. How many widows still wept their grief over husbands who had gone down withThe Minerva? How many fatherless bairnsgreitedfor fathers they would never know?
How could she have intentionally caused such tragedy? Created such far-reaching pain?
It took nearly an hour for Eilidh to gather her wits enough to change into a night rail, bank the fire for the night, and close the shutters.
But as she crawled under the counterpane, the trembling started. A dreadful quaking that chattered her teeth and chilled her fingers. Emotional pain made manifest.
Her numbness had shattered into crystalline splinters, each more cutting than the last.
This was what she had feared, was it not? That once the numbness utterly vanished, she would be a quivering mass ofterrorpainfearhorrorhurthurthurt—
She burrowed further under the counterpane, but it did little to stem her shivering. In fact, the more tightly she curled into a ball, the harder she shook.
Would she ever be warm again?
Terror banded her chest. Each breath hurt, as if pulled through glass shards.
She wrapped her hands around her head, her forehead nearly touching her knees as she lay, but it didn’t help.
She couldn’t manage another moment with this pain, this fear, this anxiety.
Help!
Thiswasthe black terror in its truest form.
The pain that had driven her to the ship’s railing on the return home to Britain. The feeling that had her staring at the ocean, thinking how easy it would be to fall, fall, fall and leave all the pain behind forever.
How could she continue breathing until morning, suffering through this blackness, this anguish raking her with fiery talons?
She couldn’t.
Curled inward on her bed, fighting the blinding panic, she remembered the comfort of waking up with her head on Kieran’s shoulder.
She had felt safe with him. So safe.
Ye will always find a safe haven in me, lass.
She staggered from the bed, dragged on her dressing gown, and lit a candle from the coals in the fireplace. Her feet padded up the central staircase, winding higher in the castle until she stood before Kieran’s bedroom door.
Her hand clenched into a fist, wrapping around the wool of the dressing gown. The candle wobbled in her still shaking hand.
She shouldn’t be here.
But . . .
She would merely slip in and rest in a chair in the corner. Just sitting in the same room would be enough. It had to be. He was a sound sleeper, after all. She would leave before sunrise.
He would never know that she had sought solace here.
That when the pain in her heart had felt too heavy to bear, her only thought had been to come to him.
She tried the door handle.
Not locked.
She tentatively pushed it open and stepped inside, closing the door silently behind her.
