He couldn’t bear to think about it.
When Niall learned what had happened to her, he nearly went mad with rage and grief. He felt as if someone had taken a blade to him and sliced him right across the middle. Eviscerated him. Pulled out his insides and burned them right in front of his eyes.
He’d known then the full horror of his mistake and the cost of his stupidity. If he’d swallowed his pride earlier, he could have protected her. He could have prevented it from happening.
He refused to listen to anyone telling him differently.
He’d gone to her, ready to beg her forgiveness, ready to crawl on his hands and knees if he had to, to do whatever he could to prove to her how much he loved her.
But she refused to see him. Through the window that day, he could hear her tell her brother that she never wanted to see him. To send him away. That he was dead to her.
She was bruised and bloody—beaten to within an inch of her life—and hearing those words come out of her mouth when all he wanted to do was hold her in his arms had been a blow that he still had not recovered from.
He’d wanted to push his way in there and make her listen to him, but her brothers had held him back and told him that it would be a mistake. That he needed to give her time. That he needed to be patient.
Niall knew exactly how to bide his time. He’d gone after Colin Campbell with a vengeance that only had one possible end. The man who’d ordered Annie raped had died at the end of Niall’s sword in a forest on the road to Inveraray last winter.
Despite the efforts on Niall’s behalf by his new Campbell brothers-in-law—Jamie and Duncan, the new Laird of Auchinbreck—Niall had been outlawed for it.
Ironically, his and Annie’s positions had been reversed. But he wouldn’t have it any other way. Niall had made his choice. He knew what he was doing and what he was giving up. And nothing would have prevented him from seeing justice done.Highlandjustice.
Colin Campbell had paid for his sins, but it seemed that Niall was still paying for his.
Niall’s temper—which he’d been trying to restrain—flared. “I’ve been patient for months. How long is she going to punish me for this? Can’t you do something?”
Patrick’s gaze turned decidedly less friendly. “What would you have me do? Force her to see you?”
Niall paled, suddenly realizing how he sounded. “Jesus. Christ. No, of course not. I’m sorry. I’m just”—his furious pacing around the solar ended with him flopping down hard on a chair—“frustrated, damn it.”
“Well, you’ll have to be frustrated a little longer.” Patrick paused, seeming to debate with himself about whether to say more. “Annie has changed, Niall. She isn’t the same girl you knew. You have to consider the possibility that she might never change her mind.”
Niall thought about that practically every minute of every waking hour. And most of his sleep as well. It was what woke him up at night in a cold panic.
She has to forgive me.
He shook his head and told her brother what he told himself. “I can’t let myself believe that. I have to have faith.”
He’d failed her once, but he would not fail her again. He would keep coming back until she agreed to see him.
* * *
Annie had hoped that he’d given up. But a week after Niall made his first appeal to Patrick, she saw him riding through the gate again and made sure to avoid her brother’s solar for the rest of the morning.
Which wasn’t a problem as every morning before the midday meal for the past two weeks she and Robbie had been meeting in a secluded corner of thebarmkinfor him to instruct her in warfare. Or at least in skills that might help her defend herself, such as using a knife and, if she could get her instructor over his embarrassment, in hand-to-hand combat.
Her brother had come to watch a few times, but otherwise they’d been left alone. Annie was pretty sure Patrick had told Robbie to use this corner of the yard to be as far away from the other men practicing as possible. He didn’t want her to be a distraction—or the cause of gossip.
He was too late for that, but she would not add to his worry for her by pointing out the whispers and pitying glances that followed her wherever she went.
It seemed as if some people blamed her for what had happened to her while others probably thought she should have killed herself in shame.
But that sin had never crossed her mind. Even in the confused haze and chaos of the hours and days after she’d been brutalized, Annie had never been confused about who the shame belonged to. The vile men who’d raped her showed their own weakness by doing what they’d done.
Her brother’s expression was inscrutable the few times he’d watched Robbie and her. But maybe the gruffly issued corrections he’d given about how she was standing or holding the practice knife were praise enough. And perhaps even more tellingly, he hadn’t put a stop to it.
She didn’t dare ask him about the trews though. Although she’d meant it as a joke when she’d said it, it quickly became apparent that the heavy folds of her new gowns were going to get in her way.
After her foot caught on the hem for about the tenth time, she had taken to practicing in a shortleinethat fell to just above her knees and a borrowed cotun to protect her chest and arms from any accidental slices of the blade—theoretical slices as she’d yet to touch a real blade. Her feet were much too small for any of the men’s boots, so she wore simple soft leather brogues over her hose.
