Everything seemed more peaceful. But inside Nicholas’ head was a chaotic hum of alarms. They told him to run, to be strong and throw her out before her enormous eyes called to him—or he thought they did—before her laughter lured him like a siren song and smashed his body against the cliffs.
He couldn’t sit still. Pacing didn’t help.
“I do not want her here,” he said, looking over the shallow strath while the last shards of sunlight clung to the earth. “Even if I agree to this, she will not stay and Elias will suffer all over again.”
Rauf followed him around the wall. “Not if ye are here, Nicky.”
Nicholas stopped and turned around to look at him.
Rauf took a step back.
“This is my fault. I know,” Nicholas grieved. He wanted to ask Rauf what he could have done. But he already knew the answer. He could have stayed and raised his son. But he wanted to give in, give up, die. He hated everything that reminded him of what he’d lost, including his son. Selfish or not, he wouldn’t have been a good father and he hadn’t wanted to ask his brothers and the mothers of their children to help raise one more.
But that was two years ago when all his hurts and doubts were fresh. That was before he’d left Lismoor and traveled to places that were not designed for anyone’s protection, including his, places where people lost their entire families to rivaling tribes or natural catastrophes. Before he’d gone to Berwick and faced what haunted him.
Or so he thought.
There was no time for regrets now. He’d come back for Elias, not a ghost he thought he’d exorcized. He had to decide what to do about Julianna. His son had been quiet for over four hours for the first time since Nicholas had been home. The babe seemed to be fond of her. She still had to go. He’d find someone else. Elias wouldn’t care. He needed a motherly type. There had to be someone who could do it. He would go out and scavenge the village for someone tomorrow.
“Let her stay the night,” he told his commander. “I will not send her out into the dark. But she must leave in the morning.”
“Nicky, ’twill be harder fer the lad if she goes now. Let her help ease him into it. ’Twill give us time to find someone else.”
Nicholas thought about it and shook his head. “I cannot, Rauf. You were there. You heard her rejection. She called me what I had always been to her. A servant. A childish—”
“In truth,” Rauf corrected, “I didna hear her say a thing aboot that. I was carryin’ yer brother the hell away from that mad abbess. Her, I remember!”
“Then you do remember Julianna,” Nicholas stared him in the eye. “And still you invited her here?”
“I remember her now, after ye have reminded me,” Rauf told him defensively. “All right, then, Nicky. She called ye a servant. So now the winds have changed andyeare the noble.” He tossed up his hands and his shoulders along with them. “I canna say I believe she is here fer any other purpose than to care fer Elias. She didna know ye were ye until this mornaftershe had heard me tell Molly aboot the babe and landed in my saddle before I even knew she was behind me. I didna invite her here. I had no say in the matter.”
Nicholas knew that determination she possessed. He remembered how she’d told her parents straight to their faces that she loved him. She was eight.
He smiled remembering how he’d felt when he’d heard about it later that night. Despite a whip across the back in the morn, and a warning to stay away from the governor’s daughter, it was one of the best feelings he’d ever felt.
He couldn’t let her stay. He wasn’t sure he could withstand her.
“Tomorrow, Rauf,” he said coolly and stepped around him.
“Where are ye goin’, Nicky?”
“Out.”
“D’ye want me to come?”
“No.”
He went back inside the keep, hoping he didn’t see her and hurried down the stairs. He’d almost reached the second landing where the doors were.
“My lord?”
His shoulders bunched up around his ears. There were other women in the keep; the laundress, two maids who were Mattie’s friends whose voice it could have been. But it was Julianna.
He closed his eyes and paused in his steps.
“My lord,” she repeated.
He turned to face her, not realizing his shoulders were still up. Hell, he didn’t want to look at her. She was already emblazoned on his soul. Everything about her was.
