“Ah.”
“He told me . . . he told me of your heroism inkilling—” She choked on the word. On the imagined scene of Tavish being tasked with taking others’ lives, war or no. “—killing a French general. He described how you took the shot—half lying down as you did for that final shot yesterday. Well over three hundred yards distant with a stiff breeze blowing. An impossible shot, Colonel Archer declared. And yet, you downed the general with ease. And then reloaded, aimed, and fired again, killing the officer who ran to assist his fallen leader.”
The most astonishing thing I’ve ever seen, Colonel Archer had said.It’s been four years, and it’s still talked about in hushed reverence.
Little did Colonel Archer understand how Isla would react to his storytelling. The horror of it. Of imaginingherTavish bearing the physical and moral responsibility of that act. The boy she knew would have grieved over taking another’s life.
Tavish said nothing.
“You don’t speak because I assume that scene still haunts you,” she continued. “That, yes, you did what you must that day—and the thousand days before and after it—knowing that your actions saved more lives than the ones you took. But it didn’t leave you unmarked.”
They walked in silence, listening to the rustle of wind through the leaves and the call of starlings quarreling in the trees. The clouds continued to darken overhead. It would likely rain before luncheon.
Finally, Tavish cleared his throat. “Ye be correct, of course. Our actions as Rifles saved more lives than the ones we ended. But that doesn’t mean the lives we took had no value. That French general had a wife and three daughters waiting for him at home. Four women who surely suffered greatly because of the general’s loss. I learned of this later from a prisoner of war we took. There are no winners in war. Only horror and heartbreak.”
Isla had to take several steadying breaths. Anything to tamp down the knot ofpainangergriefthat filled her throat.
“I know they all see you as a hero. And they should. You are! But . . .”
He clasped his hands behind his back. “But?”
“I hate it,” she whispered. “I hate that you had to become exceptionally good at killing others in order to survive.”
Isla paused and looked up at him. Really looked.
His gray eyes held storms, thundering clouds and tumultuous winds. Pain and loss and the moments in between when he had to pretend the pain and loss had never happened. Had he relegated her and their relationship to that same in-between place?
“I hate . . . I hate that it feels like I never knew you.” Her hand closed into a fist, as if she could contain the sting of that truth. “I just knew some version of you. But not all of you. I didn’t know that you could shoot a gun, much less that you were a crack shot. I didn’t know you were quiet in company but always observant of others. I didn’tknow.” Her voice broke. “And now I wonder how much else I didn’t know. How deluded I was. How naive.”
His hand lifted, as if he would cup her cheek or pull her against his chest. Because, as she knew, it wasn’t in his nature to see her suffering and not offer comfort.
His hand hung there between them for a moment before dropping. As if he recalled just in time that offering her comfort was not something he was permitted to do anymore.
And that terrible grief swelled under her breastbone. How much longer would she be able to keep it at bay? To see him and not . . . remember all that had been lost?
“Ye knew me, Isla. Ye knew me as no one else has, before or since. Ye may not have known the outward bits of me. Shooting a rifle, my abilities there, that is merely one of a thousand things that Ido. But those skills are not who Iam. They are not the heart of me—the soul ye knew and loved.”
It hurt to look at him. To see her Tavish peeking out from his gaze. It surged upward—the disorienting feeling she had experienced in the lake just yesterday. Somehow, she inhabited two places at once—the devastated girl who had lost her lover and all hope in one awful stroke, and the resilient, thriving woman who had risen from the ashes of that girl.
Without meaning to, her eyes dropped to his mouth, to those pillow lips that still surfaced in her dreams. Her pulse thumped when she daredto recall how they had felt pressed to her wrist. The soft give of them, followed by the gentle rasp of his night whiskers against her skin.
Just the memory caused a disturbing weakness in her knees.
Attraction hummed between them like a living thing. Like a band strung too taut, just waiting for that final bit of pressure to snap.
She lingered too long, staring, lost in memory.
Who knew what might have happened had Mother Nature not intervened.
A large wet raindrop splashed onto her nose.
Isla startled and looked to the heavens, only to receive three additional raindrops to the face for her trouble.
“Blast!” Tavish nodded to the lake, where a wall of rain rushed across the water toward them.
Whirling, Isla scanned the landscape for some sort of shelter.
“There!” She pointed toward an outcropping up the path, rocks overhanging a small hollow. Without thinking, she grabbed his hand and began running.
