So he didn’t reply to Rose’s words, merely nodded dumbly. He felt her pause behind him as though she wanted to say something else but then heard her footsteps crossing the floor and the door closing softly behind her.
The room felt colder, emptier with her gone.
Cailean clasped his daughter’s hands in his own and bowed his head, resting his forehead on his hands and screwing his eyes closed.
Please save her, he prayed. He didn’t know who he was praying to. To Beatrice’s Christian god? To Maggie’s pagan ones? He didn’t know and he didn’t care.
Please save her. I will do anything you ask. Please. I’m begging you.
But he got the feeling nobody was listening.
Chapter Sixteen
Rose gave uptossing and turning in her bed, threw back the covers, and went to sit in the chair by the window. Dawn was breaking out over the ocean, the sky clear and the sea calm, but Rose’s emotions were anything but. She’d not slept. Now she pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes to try and keep in the emotion that tightened her chest. It did no good. The tears came anyway, leaking from beneath her eyelids and running down her cheeks.
This could not be happening. It couldn’t.
Images of Catriona’s tortured expression flashed through her head, and her stomach knotted with dread and despair.
Why her? Why a nine-year-old girl? What had she ever done to deserve this?
Rose knew it was futile to ask such things. Through the years of treating sickness, she’d learned that there was no rhyme or reason to it and that it could strike at anyone, young or old, fit or unfit. Asking such questions only drove you mad.
Yet she couldn’t help it. The despair she’d seen etched on Cailean’s face broke her heart. He didn’t deserve this either.
Rose thumped her fists down on the arms of her chair in sudden fury. It was better to feel anger than the sick sensation that bubbled underneath it, the sensation that would rise up and swallow her whole if she let it.
Guilt.
Was this her fault? Had she caused this? The rational part of her mind wanted to deny it. Yet some deeper, more instinctive part whispered that this was because of her. Because of what she’d done that afternoon.
Her thoughts went flitting back to that moment on the headland. That moment with the storm crashing around her and the waves lashing the rocks and that voice in her head whispering, “Come to me.”
But she had not. Cailean had stopped her. And in response, she’d felt a burning anger from whatever lurked beneath the waves. Anger led to vengeance.
Wasthisthat vengeance? Was Catriona being punished for what she, Rose, had done?
The tears came again, and she leaned forward, curling over her stomach as the sobs wracked her. She wasn’t strong enough for this. How had she ever believed she was? She was just plain old Rose MacFinnan, and despite everything she’d tried to do to help these people, she had failed.
Now Cailean’s daughter was going to pay the price for that failure.
No, she thought.She won’t. I won’t let that happen.
She wiped away her tears, straightened in her chair, and took a deep breath. From her seat she could see the sea in the distance at the bottom of the hill, looking quiet and tranquil now that the storm had passed. The sea. It all started and ended with the sea.
And in particular, with agoddessof the sea.
“Lir!” Rose bellowed, rising to her feet. “Lir! Attend me! I want some answers, damn you!”
The sea goddess had brought her here, asking for her help. Well, now she needed some help herself.
She turned in a circle, her fists clenched at her sides. “Lir!” she bellowed. “Where are you?”
There was no response. That ember of anger deep in her bellybegan to burn again, flaring to life and washing away Rose’s grief. Instead, fury filled her veins. She was tired of being used. Lir had asked for her help but had offered none of her own. Well, enough was enough. It was time for answers, and if Lir wouldn’t respond to Rose’s call, then she wouldmakeher.
Rose’s gaze flicked to the desk and the platter that held the crumbs from her breakfast. But it wasn’t the platter she was looking at.
It was the knife that sat on it.
