Silence fell after this speech. Melody searched her mind for words, but nothing appeared. After all, words would never be good enough to respond to a tale of misery like this.
“So ye see now why Thomas resents me,” he continued after a moment. “Ye understand why me councilors watch me warily. And ye must understand why there’s a brand over my heart. I seared it all away to prevent this from happening again. Love blinded me to me brother’s hatred. Love made me kill him, just as love and grief made me ignore me wife’s misery until it was too late. I can never trust anyone, and that’s why I can never take a bride, never have another heir. I daenae wish to forget me son.”
“You are right that I can’t imagine how you feel,” Melody said at last. “Such a tragedy… I don’twantto imagine it. The pain you must be going through…” She shook her head and cleared her throat. “But you can’t keep punishing yourself and those around you, Callum. You do see that, don’t you? You owe it to your wife and your son tolive, to be the man they knew you could be. You survived. Doesn’t that mean something?”
He met her gaze through red-rimmed eyes.
“Sometimes survival is just that,” he murmured. “Survival. Thank ye for yer kind words, Melody, I… I care for ye more than ye ken,” he lifted his hand, trailing the back of his knucklesacross her cheek. “But yer words daenae change the facts. I daenae want a bride. I daenae want an heir. And I daenae want to ruin yer life, too.”
A moment of silence opened between them, tight and crackling.
Melody glanced away first.
“I understand,” she said at last, rising shakily to her feet. She reached for him, but seemed to think better of it. Her hand paused mid-air, then fell to her side. “Thank you for your honesty. I… I think I need some time with my thoughts.”
He nodded and said nothing. She hurried to the door, and he made no move to follow her.
Once Melody was out of the tower, she picked up her skirts and broke into a run. She knew that tears were coming, and did not want to risk somebody else seeing them. Now that the councilors knew that Callum intended to tell her the whole truth, it was fair to assume that others would hear about it, too.
She didn’t want sympathy. She didn’t want pity. She didn’t want clicking tongues of understanding or quick, knowing smiles.
Luck seemed to be on her side, and Melody reached her room without anybody seeing her. Tears had already begun to fall, but they were thankfully silent ones, dripping quietly down her cheeks and off the edge of her chin.
She closed the door behind her, turned the key in the lock, and advanced across the room to where Callum’s gift sat on her desk. The wooden horse was as beautifully crafted as she remembered. The creature seemed almost poised to break into a gallop. It reminded her of Faun more than of Thunder now, and she wondered briefly if Callum had modeled the horse on Faun after all.
The wood was light in her hands, and the grain smooth. He must have sanded it perfectly, as there wasn’t a splinter to be felt. Melody stood there for a moment in her dark, gloomy room, in front of the fireless hearth. Closing her eyes, she pressed the wooden horse against her heart, breathing in shakily.
Then she threw the carving down onto the stone hearth with as much force as she could muster, splintering it into a thousand pieces. She shouldn’t cherish it. It was all over anyway. When the echoingcrashhad faded, Melody felt tears rolling down her cheeks. There was a splinter in her fingertip.
25
Athumping knock on the door woke Melody out of an uneasy sleep. She jerked awake and gasped aloud at the sudden stabbing pain in her neck. The cause of her discomfort was pretty clear. Outside, the dawn was gradually breaking over the sky, and she had somehow managed to go to sleep sitting up in a chair before the cold hearth. Her neck twinged, probably from having fallen asleep with her chin on her chest.
A single sheet of paper drifted from her lap onto the hearth. Melody picked it up, pressing her lips together.
It was a sketch of Callum, of course. In the picture, he sat sprawled out in a chair, much the way she was now, and was lifting up his head to look at the sketcher. He cradled a baby in the crook of each elbow. Not much could be seen of the babies, since they were well swaddled and wrapped in warm shawls, but one seemed to be yawning, and the tiny, wrinkled hand of another emerged from the folds of the wrappings.
Nonsense,she scolded herself bitterly, and crumpled up the paper, tossing it aside. The knock came again, and she levered herself stiffly out of the chair.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she called tiredly.
It occurred to her, as she turned the key in the lock, that it might be Callum, come to tell her that he’d reconsidered. That perhaps he deserved happiness and a future after all. Perhaps it was Sophie, come to deliver an impassioned speech about not giving up, and that Callum only needed to be made toseehe was loved, and all would be well.
Neither of these scenarios seemed particularly likely, so Melody was not surprised to open the door and find neither Sophie nor Callum there.
Angus Matheson and Thomas Johnson stood in the hallway outside, both looking as uncomfortable as the other.
“Forgive the early intrusion,” Angus said briskly. “But I thought we should come to speak with ye, to understand what ye think. I take it that the Laird told ye the truth, then?”
Melody swallowed, nodding. “He did.” She glanced over at Thomas and found that he was watching her intently, with no small amount of interest.
“And?” Thomas prompted. There was a sort of earnestness in his eyes now, a spark which she hadn’t seen when he’d beenin the councilor’s meeting. There had been a listlessness there. Somethingheavy.
Where had it gone?
She gestured for them both to step inside. It seemed unbearably rude to leave them out in the hallway. Angus walked in first, and she heard a sharp exhale. That was probably on account of all the wooden pieces left scattered on the floor. She had spent most of her evening nursing the splinter out of her finger, and then had sketched until she fell asleep. Hardly any of the wood had been cleared up.
Angus said nothing, however, for which Melody was grateful. She wasn’t sure how to explain away the broken horse.
