“Is that all ye want?” she asked. “To protect me?”
Kieran nearly laughed at the absurdity of the thought.
Protection? Hardly.
“Nae, lass. I only said protection because it’s a logical reason for us tae marry. But there are a thousand illogical reasons for us tae marry.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “I love the way your eyes crinkle when you laugh. How ye tease me out of my bad humor. But the simplest reason is this—ye are my best friend. And I cannae bear the thought of facing even one more day of my life without yourself firmly at my side.”
Jamie said nothing for a long moment.
So long that Kieran feared he had overstepped. That he had perhaps misread their situation.
But staring down at her, Kieran realized that her lips were trembling. A tear splashed onto her cheek.
Oh!
She said nothing because her heart was too full to speak.
“Ah, lass.” He swallowed against the telltale sting in the back of his own throat. “Nod your head if ye mean tae say, ‘Yes.’”
She vigorously nodded and then launched herself into his arms, burying her nose once more into his neck.
He held her for a long while.
Allowing the soft sound of her happy sobs to melt into the rocky swish of waves lapping the ship.
20
Eilidh lay still on her bed, her body curled into a ball, terror raking her insides with vicious claws.
Her numbness had shattered into jagged shards, and she had no idea how to remake it.
After racing to her room, she had immediately stripped, hands shaking so badly she tore a button off the waistcoat and tripped on the trousers.
She now wore one of her old dresses—a blue muslin gown that never failed to kindle a smiling light in Simon’s eyes.
Anything to quell the sense of otherness within her.
To purge that wild, foolish girl who had made such recklesslystupidchoices and allowed herself to be trapped aboard that ship.
To ground herself in the reality of her lifenow,to the future she wantednow.
She shook and trembled on the bed for a long while, trying desperately to rebuild emotional walls around her heart. Anything to stop the agony lashing her chest, the ghastly tension that banded her lungs and made breathing nearly impossible.
Thiswas why she avoided the past.
Thiswas why she could not risk remembering.
Such black terror had not visited her in nearly four years, not since returning to Britain.
The first year after the wreck ofThe Minerva, Eilidh could scarcely sleep. She moved through days on New Caledonia with the Gillespies, dragging the leaden weight of her missing memories behind her. Her unknown past felt dark and oppressive, rendering her weepy one moment and utterly despondent the next. Melancholy was a constant companion. Something had irreparably broken within her, and she had no idea how to fix it. How to silence the never-ending cacophony of pain.
On the ship back to England, she had stood more than once on the deck, staring down at the deep ocean, pondering the lull and dark of it. How easy it would be to just fall, allow the water to cocoon her—to render her mind and body as weightless as starlight as she sank down, down, down—stopping the pain forever.
She had not succumbed to the urge. And miraculously, the black terror had gradually receded once she landed in Britain.
Eilidh thought that perhaps the reprieve had something to do with returning to an environment that was familiar and so unlike the wet, tropical heat that had stolen her memories.
Reverend Gillespie was less sanguine. He called it a gift from God. A blessing for her righteousness, for repenting of the wickedness she had no doubt fallen prey to while aboardThe Minerva.
