Magda went quiet. That they would begin having babies as soon as possible would be the obvious assumption, and yet it was something she hadn’t fully considered. She felt uncertain. Magda realized she had an idea of herself that she’d grown up with, a particular understanding of who she was that was etched at her core. She’d defined herself by her childhood, her home, and even her parents. To consider motherhood somehow set all of those elements into strong relief.
“I . . . I just need to think. But I do love you, James.”
“And I you, lass.” He laid her back gently, taking her hands in his, holding them in the cool sand over her head. “And I you.”
They passed the rest of the morning with slow, hushed kisses to the sound of the surf.
Chapter 35
“They’ll greet me as a hero, hen.”
“Don’thenme,” Magda snapped. The day had come for James and his men to leave the Camerons and head south, to a fate Magda refused to contemplate. He said he wanted to have a child, and she’d let herself see that as a sign they could finally settle down. Make a life together. She’d thought it meant an end to his campaigning—a sign that he’d escaped an unthinkable end on the gallows.
He gave an easy laugh and cupped her chin for a kiss.
She pulled her head back to look at him, her eyes sharp on his. “Really, James.”Is this it, finally?The moment he’ll need her help, and she’ll be too far away?Just like Peter.“Don’t go. Please. Or, if you go, take me with you. But you can’t just leave me here.”
“I shall return to you, scores of Lowlanders at my back, to quell this turmoil once and for all.” He took her face in both hands and refused to let her go. “Truly, Magda,” he said in a whisper, “it’s but a momentary parting. I know you think there’s some gruesome fate I’m to meet, but I tell you that is not the case.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I have it on good word that all is lost for the Campbell and his Covenanters. All are ready to rise and march for me.”
“But you can’t just leave me.” Her helplessness was turning to anger. Would their lives together always be this? Always good-bye? Would he still be rushing off to danger when they had children together? Rushing off to save the world?Just like Peter.
“Oho, pretty lass,” he said playfully. “But I can.” Her glare in response tempered the humor in his tone.
“Truly, Magda,” he added seriously. “Regardless of my destiny, it is far safer for you in my family’s care. You simply cannot march about the country with me and scores of fighting men.”
“What if you get killed? No, really,” she added bluntly, seeing the cavalier flash in his eyes. “What if thisisthe time? And you die? And I . . . what? I languish the rest of my days with a bunch of strangers, hundreds of years before my birth?”
Fear had been a constant drone, vibrating through Magda’s every cell since she’d arrived. She was utterly exhausted from it, and she finally felt herself snap.
“I tell you, hen, I will not—”
“Or . . . okay . . . say you don’t die this time.” She pulled away from him and stepped back. “Isthiswhat I have to look forward to? To you gallivanting off at every opportunity, leaving me to sit around and . . . what? Sit with the other women all day while I worry I’ll never see you again? Should I be like . . .” She pitched her voice to a low hiss. “Should I be like Margaret? Napier is with you more often that he’s with her. Is that what you’d have for me?”
“I’d not—” he tried to interrupt.
“I can’t have your baby, James.” Her voice was flat. Her feelings had ravaged through her, laying waste, leaving Magda feeling utterly empty. James might be her world, but without him this place never would be, and somehow it’d been the question of getting pregnant that had shed a harsh light on it all. Magda couldn’t be abandoned there, couldn’t envision bringing a child into a place so alien. Not if she might have to do it alone.
“I can’t have your baby in some filthy bed with some leech-using doctor, and then sit around for the rest of my life having more babies and watching them play while I spend my days hoping and praying that you return home alive. I can’t bear anymore loss, James.”
“That will not be your life,” he said evenly. His voice was steely, his body rigid. “You have my word. But for now, Magda, I must go. Just this once more. The wheels turn, plans are set in motion, and I cannot simply run from it all.” He stepped toward her, and she flinched back to avoid his touch. Hurt flickered across his features, but he pressed on. “No man can know his own fate. But even if he could, my country’s destiny is larger than my own. That is what I need to attend, at this moment, above all else. But you have my promise, I shall do all in my power to return to you. And I will be a good husband, here, with you. And I will put that bairn in your belly,” he said, and Magda finally let him take her in his arms.
She didn’t doubt any of that. Nor did she doubt that he’d get himself killed with these crusades of his. Just like her brother had. She couldn’t endure that sort of pain again.
She wouldn’t endure it.
Summer was almost past, and MacColla had kept his word, leaving James a few hundred men of Clan MacDonald to stand at his back. Rollo and Ewen rode with him, but he’d sent Magda with Tom back to Montrose.
It had been hard parting as they did. There had been something in her look that he’d not seen before. Defiance flashed in her eyes on the day they left, replacing her usual desire to satisfy, appease, accommodate. He found he loved her all the more for it. He would prove to her that he wasn’t just any man. Magda deserved an extraordinary life, and that was what he would give her. But turmoil and uncertainty reigned in his country, and his first priority was to ease Scotland into peace.
They marched south, not for battle, but merely to supplement their forces. He would return safe, and spend the rest of his life proving his love to her. He’d not let an army of nannies raise his children as he’d been raised. He’d be by his wife’s side, reminding her every day, for the rest of his days, that she was his.
“What was that about?” Rollo trotted his horse up to James’s side. He’d started to wave at a woman peeking from a cottage window, but when their eyes met, the woman simply began calling frantically to her children to herd them inside.
Though they’d run into many friendly faces on the road, an equal number got skittish at the sight of them, as if the mounted throng were the angel of death itself, sweeping over the country, looking for a place to land. James had been chilled to see that the majority of those he’d seen had been women and children, compared to so few men.
