He didn’t respond, didn’t react. His silence stretched on and on, his only movements, the slow, heaving movement of his shoulders as he grappled with this shock. Vaguely, Ailsa realized that James had positioned himself at the door and was blockinganyone else who had been summoned by Mairi’s screams from entering the private scene.
When Ewan spoke, his voice was controlled, even, and deadly.
“I am going to kill Gordon for this,” he said, sounding almost calm. “I am going to find him, and I am going to kill him. I don’t care what it takes. I don’t care what it costs. I am going to track him down. And then, I am going to make him pay.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ewan had never foundthe stairs of the Keep so difficult to mount as he did that night, after spending hours upon hours ensconced with the elders of the clan, all of whom had been stifling panic—with varying degrees of success—at losing the clan’s primary form of incomeandits leader, all in the same day.
None of them had tried to hide that they were looking to Ewan to have the answers.
He had prepared for this all his life. He’d always known that he would be the Laird someday. But he had never expected that day to come so quickly. And he was learning that nothing had prepared him for assuming the role under this heavy mantle of grief.
He had tried his best to be the leader they deserved. And yet, he’d found himself, time and time again, glancing to his father’s habitual seat, seeking reassurance.
The sight of the empty chair had been a blow every time.
Eventually, the endless barrage of questions—very few of which Ewan had any concrete answers to—had trickled and then stopped, and the gathered clansmen had all headed for their beds, none of them feeling anything but the heavy, inescapable sense of loss.
His father wasdead. He couldn’t stop seeing how small and frail Phileas had looked, so at odds with the vigorous, lively man he’d always been. He couldn’t stop seeing the horror in Mairi’s face, nor the bloom of a bruise across her face where the bastard had struck her. He couldn’t stop hearing his mother’s heartbroken wail when he had given her the news.
He forced his feet to keep moving. One step. Then another. Then another.
He was almost startled to see Ailsa when he opened the door to the room; he’d half-forgotten she’d be there, and the other half of him had expected her to already be asleep. But she wasn’t even abed, instead pacing in front of the dying fire, hands clasped so tightly in front of her that her fingers were white with the pressure.
“Ewan,” she breathed as he entered. She sounded relieved. He couldn’t understand why; there was nothing to be relieved about, not when the terrible thing had already happened. “Are ye well?”
She flinched just after saying it, and he knew that she hadn’t meant it how it had sounded. Rationally, he did know that.
But he had spent so long that day fighting for rationality, clinging to it by his fingernails after suffering an unspeakable loss—twounspeakable losses, without any sleep to help him withstand them. And he had been asked so very many, many questions.
It was this one, no matter how well-intentioned, that made him snap.
“I am not well. My father is dead.”
God help him. It hurt to say it out loud.
“I know,” she said, and again, he struggled to rationalize that shedidknow. She knew his pain acutely, accurately, and recently. But he was lost to the hurt.
“My father is dead,” he said again, voice shaking with the emotion he’d fought so hard to suppress all day, “because of the trouble that ye brought down on our heads.”
She paled, and he knew he should stop, but he just couldn’t. Whatever part of him held control had vanished. He was all pain and anger, and it came pouring out of him like an infected wound weeping to clean itself.
“I’m sorry,” Ailsa said. She had her hand pressed to her throat like she feared an attack, and Ewan knew he would regret that later, regret all of this, but he still just could not stop. “Your father, he treated me and my sisters so well, embraced us like he was our father, too?—”
“But he wasn’t,” Ewan interrupted icily. “He was my father, mine, and Mairi’s. He was my mother’s husband. And now he is dead. He isdead, and if you had never come here—” He choked, almost like the words were determined to physically punch themselves free from his chest. “If you had never come here, he would still be alive.”
Ailsa took a step back, like she needed to recover from that blow. She blinked once at him, then cast her eyes toward the ground.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’ll… I’ll leave ye. I shouldnae have troubled ye, not tonight.”
He didn’t say anything. He made no move to reassure or comfort her.
Indeed, he turned his back on her, glaring at the fire as she quietly moved toward the door and then left, closing it behind her.
The silence became monstrous the moment she was gone. It filled the space, leaving no room for Ewan himself. It threatened to crush him, devour him. He didn’t really want to be alone, he found at that moment. He oughtn’t have chased Ailsa away.
But he also couldn’t make himself turn to call her back. He couldn’t make himself do anything but stand and stare at the flames and try his damnedest not to fall to pieces. When he did tear himself away from his position, he was only able to make it as far as the bed, a few feet away. He sat, then laid back, his body feeling far heavier than it had the last time he’d lain here.
