She stared unblinking at the brocade canopy overhead while Clovis clucked his tongue, shaking his head.
“The lough this time of year is still too cold, Laird, surely you considered that before you tossed her in…”
Gabriel’s dark scowl silenced the man, who sighed heavily and went back to the bed.
Aye, he had told Clovis the truth of what happened so the healer would know how to care for Magdalene, the mere recounting of it making Gabriel feel sick inside.
Hating himself.
Cursing himself that he had lost his temper and so misjudged Magdalene’s swoon.
Misjudged the depth of the lough at that spot when he should have noticed, if not for the hurt and anger that had blinded him even to Finlay fishing so close by.
Aye, hurt, cutting him so deeply that he was nearly beside himself from the pain of it.
She wanted nothing more than to leave him, Magdalene had made that very clear time and time again. He had no idea what had made her falter in the road and collapse into his arms, but he knew as surely as she breathed that it had something to do with him.
She hated him. He was certain of it…while the intense ache in his heart at that moment told him that he loved her.
More than life itself. When she had sunk into the depths and he hadn’t been able to find her—God help him, the pain he felt that she wanted nothing to do with him was no excuse for what he’d done to her!
He hadn’t considered the coldness of the water.
He hadn’t considered anything, just assumed she would land on her bottom and open her eyes to shriek at him—his belief that she’d feigned her swoon confirmed.
Yet what would he have done then? Revealed in the face of her sodden outrage that he knew her madness was nothing but a ruse? Even though Clovis had advised him to earn her trust with patience and kindness so that Magdalene wouldn’t fear she might suffer the same wretched fate as Debora? So that she wouldn’t be pushed so far as to lose her grip on sanity after all?
A terrible lump in his throat, Gabriel moved closer to the bed as Clovis came around to meet him, the healer’s expression grim.
“I fear she’s giving up, Laird. She stares at nothing and willna speak—”
“No, that canna be.” Gabriel had whispered the words fiercely, but still Clovis shook his head.
“I’ve seen this before. If one canna reconcile what life has become, then hope is lost and so the will tae live—”
“No!”
His roar resounding in the room, Clovis jumped and so did Euna and Donella, who stood silent and wide-eyed near the door.
A small gasp came, too, from the bed, and Gabriel cursed himself even more roundly.
Mayhap the task was lost upon him and there was nothing he could do to save her.
He was a warrior, after all. What did he know of true gentleness?
Aye, hugging a child was easy enough to do, but he had consigned more men to their graves than he could count. He knew more of fighting and death and bloodshed than anything else. He had never imagined that he would have the responsibility for caring for so many lives, and he’d done his best toward them, but now he had a wife, too—whom he had failed at every turn.
Gabriel sighed raggedly, for the first time in his life not knowing what to do. He glanced over at Magdalene, who had rolled onto her side into a ball, the covers quaking above her.
Quaking!
“Leave us.”
“Laird?”
Gabriel met Clovis’s confused gaze and waved toward the door, one sudden desperate idea fueling him. “You…the women, go!Now!”
His emphatic command brooking no argument and no dallying, Clovis, indeed, did clear the room after hustling Donella and Euna out the door in front of him.
