She felt like she had been waiting a lifetime for Tavish to make his return, and now that he was close, her whole system spun with panic. She didn’t know what she was going to say to him, but she had rehearsed it a hundred times in her mind, at least what she could start with.
Tavish, I know that something is happening with the MacCairn, and as your wife, I think it’s only right that…
But all of that flew from her mind at once the moment she saw him standing in the doorway. His face was streaked with dried blood, dirt smeared along the side of his jaw, the scent of smoke clung to his hair.
His eyes were dark, and his face was written with fury. She could only imagine what must have happened to leave him so angry even after he had ridden so far to get here, and whatever certainty she’d been clinging to faltered in an instant.
“Tavish,” she gasped as she rushed over to him. “What happened? Are ye… are ye alright?”
“I’m fine,” he muttered, brushing her off as he made his way to his desk to pour himself a large cup of whiskey.
He didn’t say a word as he took a long sip, not even bothering to ask her what she was doing there, though it must have seemed odd to him that she had decided to appear out of nowhere like this after he had been gone all day.
For a moment, she just stood there in the doorway. She didn’t know what to say to him if he would have taken anything from her in that moment. All this time, he had been so insistent that he was capable of dealing with whatever was thrown in his direction, but he seemed so… so vulnerable now, even in the midst of all his fury.
If she had been sensible, she would have left this conversation for another time. She would have allowed him to sit there and stew in his anger until he had calmed enough for her to have a real conversation with him, but she could not bring herself to leave him, not so soon. Not after what Emma had told her.
If there was anything to the rumors that the MacCairns were causing such trouble to the clan, then it was her duty as his wife to make sure she stood by him and supported him in any way she was able.
She approached his desk slowly, like she might startle him if she approached too quickly. He made no move to pull back, hardly even seeming to notice her.
Now that she was closer to him, she could see him better, lit by the spill of light from the hearth; he looked as though he was barely keeping himself upright, not physical exertion but mental toil having left its mark on him.
He filled his cup once more and tossed back another gulp, like it was antivenom to whatever poison was pulsing through him in that instant.
She moved to the hearth, where a clean cloth had been left; one of the maids had come by while she was in there to take careof the place, and Ailsa had insisted she was capable of handling it herself, even if all she really wanted was to be alone.
She turned to him again, and this time, his distant eyes seemed to land on her once more.
“Go, lass,” he told her, voice gruff. “Ye’ve no reason to be here. I’m fine.”
“Ye’re nothing of the sort,” she replied as she reached his side, sinking down to her knees and reaching up so she could cup his face in her hand.
His eyes met hers, and she noticed dark rings beneath them that seemed etched out of stone. She was sure she had not seen him look so exhausted in all the time she had known him, and it made her chest ache to see him struggling as badly as he was.
She reached up to clean the blood and dirt from his face, moving gently. None of it, at least, seemed to have come from wounds on his own body, but that didn’t mean that he was entirely unharmed.
Whatever he had seen out there, the weight of it still lay heavy on his shoulders.
He watched as she worked to clean him, her hands moving from his face to his neck, brushing the cloth along his jaw almost tenderly. It was a far cry from how they had come together in the forest before, when their lips had crashed together with a passion that felt more like a battle than an embrace. But he didn’t need her fighting him, not now.
He needed someone on his side. And, as his wife, that was exactly where she belonged.
Her silence unnerved him, she could tell. He was used to having her come at him with all manner of accusations and demands, but as she sat and tended to him, that quiet seemed harder for him to bear than anything he had so far.
She brushed the cloth over his lips, tugging on them slightly, and he drew his gaze away from her, fixing it on the windowoutside. He had been gone long enough that the moon was now out, casting the bluish light through the arrow slit, and it struck her that he must have not eaten all day, too focused on what his people needed of him for anything as basic as his own needs.
“I wish Callum were here,” he admitted, finally.
His words were rough and hoarse, rising from some place deep inside of him that he hadn’t exposed to her till now.
She sat back on her heels, gazing at him, silently imploring him to keep going.
“He… he knew how to talk to people,” he continued, shaking his head. “How to charm them. But it was never false, not when it came fae him. They loved him. They would have followed him to the grave if he had asked them to because they knew he’d never have asked for something so selfish. But me…”
He shook his head, his jaw tightening.
“They follow me, but they dinnae trust me,” he admitted. “They know that I can fight, but that’s all I can do. And I dinnae ken if I’ll ever deserve that trust. They look at me as if I am made of stone, and I… Sometimes, it feels as though I am. As though I’ve had to be. “
