“Och, nae, he changed after Gilbert sent him off to fight in Scotland’s wars. It had only taken a sennight to realize what a skilled fighter and brilliant strategist Constantine was. He remained a soldier fer a long time. He started changing after that. He smiled less when he came home. He barely slept and grew agitated often. But the lasses still loved him. He met Alison and they eventually wed.”
Ismay held up her hand. She knew most of the rest from Constantine telling her.
“What kind of child were ye, Ismay?” Joan asked, appearing completely engrossed by learning what kind of children they were.
But Ismay couldn’t tell her. She couldn’t tell her that she’d been a filthy waif who needed the mercy of a stranger tokeep her alive.
So, she just smiled and shook her head at herself. “I was a quiet child. I kept to myself most of the time. When I met Alistar MacRae I knew he wasna the man fer me. When he cut off my hair at my mother’s dining table, I was frightened of what he might do after we were wed. So I ran away. ’Twas cowardly.”
“Cowardly?” Hilary asked incredulously. “I would say ’twas quite a courageous thing ye did to protect yerself! I am certain he would have hurt ye. Best that ye left before he did.”
“I put myself and possibly others in grave danger,” she insisted quietly.
“Mayhap,” Joan said, hesitantly, “ye should have let Hugh send word to the Lochiel.”
“And distract him on the battlefield?” Ismay gave her a horrified look. “Nae! I am certain there is nae reason fer our alarm. If MacRae meant to come here, he would have been here already. The tavern isna far.”
The others agreed with her, and soon they were laughing once again about this silly thing or that. They all agreed, it was better than weeping over the men they missed.
Ismay had to push them out of her chambers toward midnight, blaming her sleepy eyes for sending them away.
Alone, she wiped those same eyes as tears spilled from them the instant the door closed. Then she set about packing. She didn’t have much more than what she arrived with: a few more dresses which she would take to sell and the trinkets her father had given her. She donned her old breeches and coat and a man’s tattered plaid.
Tucking her hair under her bonnet, she left her chambers a little after the second hour past midnight. She stayed close to the wall as she descended the stairs, afraid someone might be awake and see her. Hugh and Bethia did not usually stay awake too long after dark. But she would hate to run into either of them. She tiptoed and scurried in the shadows like a thief in the night, there to rob the inhabitants oftheir safety. Not her. Nae. She was getting out before they were threatened any further.
She left Tor Castle the way she left her father’s house in Raigmore. But tonight she wasn’t escaping for her safety. She was going for the safety of others.
With each silent step she took, her heart broke a little more. She didn’t even get to bid farewell to Constantine or thank him for everything he had done for her, especially heal her heart. Mayhap, she would return one day. MacRae wouldn’t look for her twice in the same place, would he?
She left the castle and began to run. Darkness overtook her, sounds of nocturnal wildlife filled her ears. She remembered this lonely feeling from her journey to Lochaber. Like being the only person left in the world. The thought had become comforting to her in her three months alone, but not anymore.
Now, she felt cold, besides the drop in the fall weather. The world had changed in a short time. She had discovered that there was a man alive out there who could help her love instead of feeding her hatred and hurt. Was she wrong to want a life for decades more with a man like that?
She had to stop twice to lean against a tree and cry her eyes out. She cried harder and shed more tears for having to leave Tor than she had shed into her stew at Lewis’s tavern and inn.
But fear kept her going, farther away from the place she was starting to feel was home.
She hadn’t slept when the sun began its lazy ascent. Her feet were blistered as she traveled. Ah, she remembered that too. Her feet were a testament to becoming harder after struggle. Staying still had weakened her.
The worst thing was the food she had saved from the night before. It smelled rotten. She put it away as her belly grumbled. She had become spoiled by eating a rich breakfast inthe morning.
Thankfully, by noon she found a small inn near the town of Torlundy. She was able to pay for a meal and a room for the night with one of her silk dresses.
After eating delicious hare stew with turnips and carrots and freshly baked black bread, Ismay went to her room and slept until the darkness settled over the inn.
She dreamed of Constantine and when she woke, she missed him more than ever. Would she ever see him again? Aye. Aye, she would. Someday.
She wept in the darkness outside the inn. She knew she wasn’t safe out there all alone. It was a terrible feeling, and one she’d lived with every day after she ran away from her mother and her betrothed.
Her betrothed. Ha! She almost laughed through her tears as she made her way southeast in the darkness. She would never marry Alistar MacRae. She would die first—or keep running.
Horrifyingly, she thought it possible that she could even kill him in order to save herself from becoming his property. She remembered his crass words in front of her mother, his condescending smirk when he vowed that she would be his, his contorted, angry face before he stepped behind her and sawed off her curls with his dirty dagger. If possible, she hated him more now than she had. For now, she knew what a true man, a good man, was like. Constantine’s radiance made Alistar all the more dark.
A forest spread out before her. Rather than walk through it, she traveled the extra distance around it until morning. She kept going, ignoring her painful feet and empty stomach.
A small sign on the road indicated that she was approaching Inverlochy Castle. She went the opposite way, not knowing it had been abandoned over a decade ago, but only thinking of avoiding another castle likely owned by a clan chief. She headed toward the hills and glens until early evening, when she came to a vast glen covered in a lush carpet of purple thistle.
She stopped in her tracks and lifted her hands to her chest. She had seen late blooming thistles in Constantine’s misty hills, but she had never seen anything like this, with thistle growing through the early frost, vibrant and hearty, surviving where other flora would die.
