There is someone there.She thought without breath. Her hands fidgeted by her sides and her legs shook in fright. Someone was watching her. She strained her eyes, using all of the visibility that the moon allowed her that night, but she could not see the person. There was only a shadow standing there, tall and broad, staring back at her.
It is an animal or just a tree?She tried to convince herself because her mind rejected the alternative. It was a man, standing in the woods under cover of darkness looking watching her.
“Who goes there?” She asked the night, but the figure did not respond or move. It was almost as though he was lifeless, or he was toying with her.
“I will scream if ye do nae speak,” she threatened, but the figure did not move still. All she could make out was just the glimmer of the moonlight in his eyes. Whoever it was that stood in the woods was much stronger than she was and had long legs with which he could have easily caught up to her if she had run, but there was no other option, so she ran.
Ceana ran faster than she had ever run in her life. She looked back, and he is in the middle of the pathway, watching her run still. That was the last time she looked back until she was at the door of her home. She repeatedly banged on the door before her father answered it, and she just rushed into his arms, holding tightly onto the safety he had always provided her.
“Ye should have been back home early. We were worried about ye,” he scolded her, but she spoke no words to defend herself. She was only happy that she was alive.
After a brief and unfinished supper, she went into her room and there, she lay awake still waiting and watching her window, hoping to hear a pebble strike her window.
Would Torcall come tonight?
* * *
Torcall's walk home was horrid. He was furious but knew not what to do with it. He could never stay mad at Ceana for long, and some days, he even feared that it was an impossible feat for him. Had it been a stranger who had accused him as she had, he would have punched him in the face. There was nothing he could do with a woman and especially one as precious to him as Ceana. He was not used to having anger and no means to unleash it.
Do nae think about her;he told himself and tried to stand by it. Getting home, he planned to head straight for his chamber but came across Rannoch eating alone in the dining room.
“Ah! Ye are home. How is the lass--the beautiful lass that has ye sneakin’ around the house as though ye are a love-struck youth?” Rannoch asked him.
Torcall reached for his anger and hoped to unleash a little of it on his cousin, but he found none. He wasn’t angry, he realized. He was sad, saddened by her words still that had cut his chest open like a knife.
Torcall came to the table and sat next to his cousin.
“It didnae go well,” he confessed. Rannoch did not look surprised.
“Where is yer faither?” Torcall asked his cousin.
“He headed to bed early.”
Torcall took a deep breath and with it a decision to confide in his cousin. They had never spoken about the matters of the heart so often in the past. Still, there had grown up together and regarded one another as brothers.
“We were havin’ a laugh, and then she got mad at me —”
“Women are like that,” Rannoch said dismissively, but Torcall did not agree with his words.
“Ceana is nae like the other women,” he said before he sank in his seat. “She accused me of bein’ the killer.”
That revelation made Rannoch sit up in his chair with interest written all over his face. “How dare she? Ye have been a gentleman with her, and she makes such an outrageous accusation?”
“I do nae ken why she said those words, but—”
“Did ye give her a piece of yer mind?” Rannoch asked him, cutting him off again.
Nay,Torcall shook his head. He had been so angry and had feared his temper around her.
“Of course, ye didnae. Torcall, the man who would slay a man for lookin’ at him the wrong way cannae tell a woman that she has wronged him,” Rannoch mocked.
“She kens that she did me wrong,” Torcall argued, but it was not enough to convince his cousin.
Rannoch sat up in his seat and leaned towards his cousin so their eyes would meet, and his cousin could see the seriousness in them.
“Ye have to forget her,” he told him. “Ye do nae a lass that speaks to ye that way. Forget her.”
Torcall wanted to tell his cousin that it was impossible for him to simply forget Ceana, but he knew that was not the answer his cousin wanted from him, so he said nothing.
