“I’ve slept,” he said weakly, knowing she wouldn’t believe him for one second.
“Aye, you’ve slept about as much as a newborn bairn sleeps on its first night,” Tilly clucked her tongue.
“All right, Tilly. I’ll pour mysel’ intae bed in a minute. I’ll have a rethink about it tomorrow; maybe I’m missing something obvious. Maybe I’m overthinking things, seeing things where there’s nothing tae see. Thank ye for listening tae yer older brother spout his nonsense off again, Tilly.” Kieran stood up, stretching his back out. Tilly stood up as well, and he wrapped her in his embrace for a brief second before walking out of her rooms.
“I’ll see ye tomorrow. Hopefully, Bailey will be somewhere closer tae climbing out o’ that bed. It does him no good tae lay around like tha’.” Kieran couldn’t bring himself to even smile at the thought of his friend recovering well from his injuries. It was early days yet – all it would take was one infection, and Bailey could be gone. Kieran would never forgive himself if that happened; his clan had lost too much already.
He walked back to his own rooms slowly, crawled into his empty bed, where emerald-green eyes and raven-black hair danced through his dreams the entire night long.
Chapter Eight
The days that followed seemed to crawl by like molasses dripping from a spoon.
Kieran still had no answers as to what had happened or why his men had been killed in cold blood for no discernible reason. He was drowning in guilt while the battle still haunted his dreams.
His clan was desperate for answers – his people were becoming restless with the lack of movement in finding those responsible for the attack. No one wanted justice more than Kieran himself. The anger and fear were spreading through his clan like wildfire. Everywhere he went, the villagers wouldn’t meet his eyes – they would barely acknowledge his presence.
Some of the families that had been directly affected had continued to request that the perpetrator be found and judged. What they did not understand was that it wasn’t that simple.
Kieran had tried everything – he had returned to the forest every day after the battle had happened, hoping to find something, anything, that would help him narrow down who was to blame. He kept telling himself that he would find something; he just hadn’t noticed it was there, in the woods, all along.
His efforts were futile, he finally admitted to himself. There was nothing in the forest to tell him who had called for his men to be attacked. There was no concrete proof that it had even been a planned attack, to begin with.
While Kieran was warring with his grief and guilt, he found himself torn in two. The memory of the Sassenach would not disappear. She, too, haunted his dreams. Kieran had no idea how to reconcile the strongest emotions he had ever felt within himself. Grief and pain had him by the throat on one side; the burning desire for the Sassenach had his heart on fire on the other side.
He felt like a traitor, especially to those families who had lost their men. He felt he had no right to feel anything other than guilt, yet there he was, feeling a desire so strong it was nearly debilitating.
A knock on his private study’s door startled Kieran out of his musings.
“Enter,” he called out, to find Bailey poking his head around the door.
“I’m awful sorry tae disturb ye, Kieran, but I must speak tae ye,” Bailey’s grim expression had Kieran on guard immediately. He motioned for Bailey to enter the room, closing the door behind himself.
Kieran had to admit, there was at least one silver lining to tide him over when it came to the tragedy of losing so many of his men – Bailey was alive.
His friend was healing quickly; the wound in Bailey’s side would still take weeks to come to heal fully, but he was strong enough to be out and about the castle grounds. To Kieran’s amusement, there was nothing that had excited Bailey more than being told he was finally fit to eat solid food again.
Eithne had saved Kieran’s closest friend’s life. He could never thank her enough for that.
“What’s got ye troubled, old friend?” Kieran stood up, moving over to the sideboard underneath the large window behind his desk. “Will ye have a dram?” he asked Bailey, looking at him over his shoulder.
“Aye, I’ll have if yer having.” Bailey nodded.
Kieran poured them both a stiff measure of what he considered to be the nectar of the gods before taking his seat again.
“I get the feeling I’m going tae need another glass when this is over,” he said, raising his eyebrow at Bailey.
“That ye will. I’ll cut tae the point. A large portion o’ our crops were destroyed last night.”
Kieran inhaled sharply, “How much o’ it?”
“All o’ the wheat, Laird.” Bailey hung his head as though it were his own fault that they had lost so much of their crops.
“How?” Kieran found he could hardly breathe.
It was too late in the season to plant again; the fields could not be prepared in time to plant a different crop, even if they put every man in the castle to work on it. The crops just would not be ready for harvesting by the time autumn arrived, and without wheat, many of his people would suffer. The wheat they had planted was supposed to see them through the winter.
There was no way to replace the crops that they had lost. No matter what Kieran did, he could not plant anything of worth in those fields to tide them through the winter into the following spring.
