His words did nothing to soothe her or her less wary of what might become of Torcall before daybreak.
“They would take him to the Laird MacGregor. There might be a trial, and there, I would speak me words,” he assured her. “I would speak the words that I ken are true. But now, I shall go to yer mother and yer sister and make certain that me family is safe.”
Ceana could not argue with her father even though she wished he could have done more to help Torcall. She wished she could have done more also to save him. She wished she could have been much stronger and had been able to push her way through the crowd to find him. But alas, she had failed him and walking back to her house, she could not help herself from thinking about the many things she could have done right by him.
Even after he had come across the body, she had not told him that she thought he was innocent even though she had believed it. She looked to her father and still felt anger towards him. She felt he could have done more to protect Torcall, and even though she knew she was unfair to him, she could not help it. Her heart was heavy with worry about him.
She wondered the fears in his mind as he was taken away. He would look behind him and see people cursing and yelling at him, yet he was innocent. He tried to save the woman’s life, and he failed.
She wanted to cry for him, for her fears for him, for her fears for the horrors that awaited them all with the killer still free and unknown, for the helplessness she felt inside her and for the death of the third woman.She was so young.
They got home, and it was written all over her mother and sister’s expressive faces that they already knew what had happened. Someone must have come along the path to tell them everything that had happened. They were still holding the knives she had given them before leaving the house.
Her mother arched her brows in anger at her. “Why did ye leave like that? Ye worried yer sister and me.”
“I apologize, mother. I didnae wish faither to leave alone,” she told them half-heartedly. She could not think much further than Torcall.
“Did he do it?” Her mother asked her husband. Ceana turned to her and waited on his words. It was important to her that her own family trusted Torcall’s innocence as she did.
“I doubt he would have done it. Torcall is a good lad,” her father replied, tired from the struggle of the morn and walked into his home to get some sleep. He was no longer a young man, and things that would have tired him in the past tired him now.
Ceana turned to her mother and sister, but neither showed any sign that they believed Torcall did not do the things he was accused of. She saw none. Her mother was the first to go back inside the house before Alina followed her.
“Lock the door when you come in,” Alina said, avoiding her elder sister’s hurt face before she also disappeared into the house.
Ceana stood out there contemplating the idea of following the mob to make certain that he was alright, but she envisaged a repeat of the last time she had been in a crowd with him. They had pushed her and had outmuscled her at every turn. Despite all her efforts, she had not been able to get close to him. She had not been able to talk to him and hope that her soft voice, which he had always complimented, would have calmed him. She had not been able to touch him and try to run her fingers on his rock-hard muscled body, which she had often relished.
Swearing that she would not fall asleep until the day was much brighter and she could venture out to find him, she went into the house. Everyone was in their rooms by the time she made her way into the house. There was an air of silent gloom in the house. Ceana headed for her room and sank onto her bed. Her eyes were weary, tired from waiting on Torcall to show up and now waiting on the day to break so she could see him again. But even eyes knew they would not find sleep despite their nagging.
She lay there, and her only thought was about Torcall. He was always alone, had always been since she knew him. Despite the tragedy of his parents, he had turned out rather well. He never did mope around, but he always made her smile. She did not know what she would do with herself if anything were to happen to him.
Over the past few days, she had come to depend on him for her emotions. Even her mind had come to do the same. She would smile or burst into short laughter when she was alone, just thinking about him. There are days she would frown at the thought of him being with another woman even though she had not seen him with one. It was insecurity born out of a desire for him, one that she wanted him to reciprocate and wanted to never end.
He had wanted to leave the clan,she remembered and sank even deeper into her bed. She thought of many things that either of them could have changed to avoid the outcome of that morning, but the more she thought, the more she realized she was spiraling. There was nothing they could have done differently. If things had been different, then the good parts, too, would have had to go.
He would never have held her hands. He would never have kissed her. They would never have spent time at the loch together. She wouldn’t have snuck out of her room at night to be with just anyone. She had done so for him, and it could have been no one else but him.
Ceana sat up on her bed with a heavy sigh before she sank back into it again. Her mind was restless. She needed someone to believe her, someone to be on her side and help her save Torcall. He wasn’t with her, could not be because he was fighting even for his own life, but she did not wish to be alone.
She shot up from her bed when she heard a sound. Someone was awake, she realized. Listening in, she heard the lazy dragging of feet that her mother greatly disliked and knew it was Alina who was awake.
Ceana stepped out of her room and came to her sister, who was quelling her thirst.
“Ye couldnae sleep either?” she asked Ceana.
Ceana nodded. “I am worried about Torcall,” she told her sister. Alina turned her face away, burying herself in her drinking.
“Well, I am nae worried about him. I am awake because I worry about the family of the woman who was just killed. I worry about Bridget’s parents too. Who has a heart so dark that they would just kill people like that?”
“It wasn’t Torcall.”
“Ye do nae ken that. Ye didnae see anythin’. Ye just speak in his defense because ye are in love with him. He has a temper. Everyone kens that and-” Alina stared her elder sister in the eye, daring her to refute her logic “-he ken the women who were killed. Why does nae that worry ye? I have a fear that when we come to ken the name of the woman, we would see that she is another woman from yer Torcall’s past,” Alina argued.
Ceana saw the logic in her younger sister’s words but still did not believe it because she knew the truth. Torcall would never harm anyone that did not deserve it. He certainly would not have raised his hand to strike any woman. Tam was more of a suspect than Torcall was, but Tam was known to be an arrogant man who just seemed spoilt by the wealth and affluence he was born into.
“The neighbors say that he claimed to have seen the killer, but he didnae stop him. They said he wanted to save a dead woman.”
Ceana shook her head at how much of the real story had been tainted and interpreted by clan folks.
