Gelis balled her hands on her knees. “Even so . . .”
He shook his head. “ ’Tis no good, lass. The MacRuaris have been damned since time uncounted. Some of us, like myself and others who have gone before me, must carry a greater share of Maldred’s burden.”
“Maldred wishes to ease that burden.” Gelis’s fingernails dug into her palms. “I could feel it when he appeared to me. He hasn’t damned you. I know it!”
“Then I shall prove it to you.”
Striding across the room, he went to another of his strongboxes. This one sat near the untidy pile of her own coffers. A bit dented and battered, and with its iron strapping showing signs of rust, the chest appeared much older than any of her own or the large one he kept at the foot of the massive oaken four-poster.
His face grim, he bent to lift the coffer’s lid. “See you this,” he said, pulling out a long quilted leather war-coat of ancient style. “It belonged to my father. And this” — he thrust a hand deeper into the strongbox and retrieved a high conical helm, equally tarnished — “was his as well.”
Holding up the objects for her to see, he continued. “They are two of the very few treasures I have of him. Valdar ordered most of his possessions destroyed, so great was his pain when my father died. I hid these at the time and have kept them all these years.”
“To be sure, and you saved them.” Gelis stood. “You were only a boy and needed your memories —”
He made a choked sound, its bitterness spearing her.
“Memories, aye, but I also kept them as a warning.” He put the quilted armor and the helm back in the chest and lowered the lid. “I wanted a reminder to keep me from e’er again thinking ill of another soul.”
He looked at her then, his eyes dark. “Especially a soul I dearly loved.”
Gelis dropped back into her chair. “I don’t understand.”
“Nae?” He arched a brow. “Then perhaps you will if I tell you that the day my father rode out hunting and plunged o’er a cliff when a swift black fog descended was a day we’d had a terrible argument. I’d —”
Gelis gasped. “Dinna tell me you —”
“Aye, I did.” He took a ewer from the table and splashed a measure of ale into a cup, gulping it down before he went on. “We’d been at odds for some time. I wanted to join his squires at their swording practice and he forbade me, saying I must wait another year. The morning he went hunting, I took an extra sword from his solar and joined the squires anyway, telling them he’d given his permission.”
“But he hadn’t,” Gelis guessed.
Her throat tightened and her heart wrenched for the boy he’d been, the darkness he’d carried so long.
“Nae, he knew naught of it — until he returned unexpectedly, having forgotten to strap on his sword, of all things.” He poured another cup of ale, this time bringing it to her and thrusting it into her hands. “Needless to say, he found me in the midst of his sword-practicing squires, swinging a blade nearly as long as I was tall.”
He paused, motioned for her to drink.
As soon as she took a sip, he went on. “Ne’er had I seen him so furious. He flung himself from his horse and flew across the bailey to grab me by the collar and drag me into the keep in front of all and sundry. I was shamed and — at the time — vowed that I hated him. When at last he rode out again, I wished he would ne’er return.”
“And he didn’t.” Gelis finished for him.
He nodded. “No one e’er saw him again. Not alive anyway.”
“Ach, Ronan.” She sprang to her feet and ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck. “You canna — absolutely canna — think it was your fault. ’Tis tragic, aye, but —”
“It was but the beginning, sweetness.” He disentangled himself from her arms. “You know of Matilda. My second wife, the lady Cecilia —”
“I know of her, too!” She hastened after him when he paced away. “Anice told me —” She broke off at once and clapped a hand to her lips.
But it was enough.
She knew.
Ronan released a breath. “Anice spoke true, I am sure,” he said, seeing no point in lying. “Lady Cecilia was ill content here. She loathed the glen and she hated me. And” — he went back to the opened window, once again needing air — “she ne’er missed a chance to remind me of her unhappiness.”
“But why?” His new lady bristled. “How could she not have been glad-hearted to be yours? You —”
“You do me proud, lass.” He looked at her, her indignation warming a cold place inside him. “But Lady Cecilia was no’ wholly to blame. She was a city lass, a sea merchant’s daughter from Aberdeen on the distant North Sea coast. Our dark hills and the quiet of the glen frightened her. Nor did she understand our ways.”
