Her husband was out the courtyard and racing up the mountain before Leah even caught her breath.
19
Fox couldn’t see.
Rain lashed Corrie Finn, whipping sideways in enormous shifting sheets, obliterating features and turning the landscape an indistinct gray.
It figured that his premonition of looming menace involved an actual storm.
After all, storms were the metaphor of his life.
He couldn’t see through the torrent how to be a good husband to Leah.
How to protect Madeline from the elements and ensure she remained in his care.
At the moment, he wasn’t even capable offindingMadeline.
But he was now, thanks to the freezing rain and terror, stone-cold sober.
Thunder cracked, the force reverberating ominously off the peaks surrounding the bowl of Corrie Finn and causing the ground to shake. Water spilled down the mountain slopes, heedless of its path, cascading into countless waterfalls. The river where he and Leah’s brothers had fished was now a raging torrent. Despite regularly receiving substantial amounts of rain, the Highland landscape never quite knew how or where to channel it.
Tucked into the weak shelter of a stand of Scots pine, Fox squinted, trying to see his way through the violence of the storm.
He shuddered to imagine Madeline in this, to think of what might befall her small body were she to take a wrong step.
“MADELINE!” he roared into the wind.
Thunder boomed in reply.
Madeline had scarcely left his side from the moment he had clawed his way back from Coorg. He remembered the first time he had held her, scooping her plump infant body into his arms and cuddling her to his chest, relishing her baby scent. And then, all the months after that, rocking her through the long nights when Susan simply . . . could not.
How was he to find the girl in this driving rain?
His teeth began to chatter, an aftereffect of the alcohol as much as the cold wind. Pulling his sodden greatcoat closer did little to warm him. Worse, the movement sent a stream of rainwater sliding off the brim of his hat and into the crack between his collar and the back of his neck. He hissed as the icy wet trickled down his spine.
Bloody hell.
This feeling was familiar. This barren . . . hopelessness.
He was lost.
Alone.
Fighting the storms of his life in this pathetically inadequate way.
He detested his self-pitying thoughts, even as he was helpless to stem them.
You can do better.
You are better.
He could practically hear Susan’s ghost join Leah’s voice, both women reprimanding him.
Fox knew they were right. Of course, they were.
Hewasbetter than this.
Abruptly, he saw himself from the outside looking in . . . a broken man, drowning the pain of his past in too much whisky and too many excuses.
