He groaned as he stood, his body still protesting the labor of two nights prior, the endless hauling and tossing of heavy buckets of water. He stood for a moment, arms stretched overhead, his head hanging down, relishing the relief in his muscles as he moved gently from side to side. He crossed tothe ewer and splashed water on his face, letting the bracing cold ground him.
Later, he would regret these moments wasted. He would agonize over whether or not those seconds—maybe a minute or so all told—could have made a difference.
But he didn’t know any of that yet, so he took the moment, sucked in the breath. It would be better, he told himself, to have his head on straight before he went to seek out his wife.
When he was ready, clean, and dressed in new clothes, he left the room and crossed the second floor of the Keep toward the guest chambers where Ailsa and her sisters had been given rooms upon their arrival. He knocked, first at her bedchamber door, then at each sister’s in succession.
No answer.
He frowned faintly and turned for the front staircase. They must have already gone down to breakfast, and he had no doubt that the four sisters were traveling in a little pack. They were close, he knew, and there was no way Ailsa would go anywhere but to their loving embrace after he’d been so unkind.
Damn, he was going to have to apologize to all of them, wasn’t he? He’d be lucky if Vaila didn’t try to stab him.
It was only when the Great Hall yielded no sight of them that Ewan began to feel the first prickle of unease.
He did, however, find Mairi, who was poking listlessly at a bowl of parritch, looking as though she hadn’t slept for a week.
“Have you seen Ailsa?” he asked his sister, who blinked at him a few times as if the question didn’t quite make sense. “Or any of the Donaghey lasses?”
The next few blinks before Mairi shook her head seemed to last an eternity.
“No,” she said slowly. “I’ve nae seen any of them this morning, and I’ve been down here…” She glanced at the mostlycongealed bowl before her, then pushed away the unappetizing mess. “An hour, perhaps?”
That prickle of worry hardened into a knot in Ewan’s stomach. An hour. If Mairi had been down here an hour, and it was scarcely past dawn, the sisters could not have already broken their fast and been gone, could they?
He went back up the stairs, fighting with himself to stop from running. Maybe they were just ignoring him. Christ, he hoped they were just ignoring him, that Ailsa was tucked into her bed with her sisters, all of them cursing his name enough that they had just flat refused to come to the door when he’d knocked.
This time, when Ewan didn’t receive any answer after pounding on the door, he let himself into Ailsa’s guest room.
But there was no sign of Ailsa or her sisters. And it wasn’t just that they were absent—though, of course, they were. It was that there was scarcely any sign that they had been there to begin with. There was no abandoned clothing strewn about, no errant pins or ribbons. None of the cheerful chaos that a lifetime with Mairi had taught Ewan to expect of a woman’s bedchamber.
They didn’t arrive with much, he told himself to combat the mounting dread as he repeated this process in the next room.It just looks so empty because they haven’t had a chance to replace their things yet.
But there was nothing to be found in any of the chambers.
Ewan felt his breath begin to come hot and fast as panic threatened to swamp him. It was as though she was gone, as though she had never been here.
But she couldn’t begone, could she? She wouldn’t have justleft.
If you never had come here, he would still be alive.
Except, perhaps, she had heard those words and hadn’t just heard his pain and his anguish.
Perhaps she had heard those words and heard that he wanted her togo.
Every fiber of his being rebelled against believing it. All he needed was one sign—anysign—that they were still here.
And then he seized upon it. The horses. They wouldn’t leave the horses.
He clung to the idea.
He turned his heel and raced toward the stables, ignoring the odd looks that the men gave him as he sped past.
He was their Laird now, he remembered with a mental note that felt so strange that it seemed to almost be coming from someone else’s thoughts. He should be affecting calm, proving to his people that there was nothing to fear. Showing them that things would settle down after the fire and his father’s murder. Making them believe it, even if Ewan didn’t believe it himself.
But he couldn’t. He couldn’t make his feet slow, couldn’t fix his face into a cool mask.
His wife wasmissing.
