“No, Conall, you will hear it!Distraught from your betrayal, I married Hamish in a wild rush and the thing was done, no going back!Then I bore your son, yourbastardbairn, and life grew harsher still.Hamish tolerated him, but he hated the boy”—Lorna lowered her voice to a hiss—“and sometimes I detested the lad, too, for every moment that he reminded me of you.Love and hate for a sweet innocent child who I’ll soon leave behind me—och, Conall, look at the wretch I’ve become for having once loved you!”
Her pained outcry making Colin cease playing to rush to his mother and throw his arms around her knees, Lisette felt certain from the furious look upon Conall’s face that he would wrest the boy from her.
Lorna loved Colin and yet hated him?Even so, such pity welled inside her for the woman, that she grabbed Conall’s arm to stay him, soft pleading in her voice.
“Please, let’s leave them for now.It’s so difficult a time for Lorna and Colin—please, Conall.Later when your anger has cooled, you can talk again and mayhap decide what else to do.I don’t believe for a moment that Colin is in danger here—oui, Lorna?Give them these last days together…”
Lorna nodded desperately as if realizing what she had revealed, while Conall swore under his breath and turned on his heel to leave Lisette staring after him.
“You see?”came Lorna’s hoarse query as Conall stormed from the room.“He didna heed you at all!You think you know the man you’ve married—but you dinna know him!How can you after so short a time?Aislinn told me in the infirmary how you came tae be wed only days ago.I knew him for weeks longer and look what he did tae me!I tasted his love just like you—aye, run after him, Lady Campbell, and see how long you’ll hold him!”
Lisette did, hastening to the door with Lorna’s words ringing in her ears.
Her heart pounding.
Her stomach still churning from hearing Lorna calling her son a bastard.
Bastard!How many times had Isabeau railed at her so cruelly and called her the same?
By the time she was out in the hall, Conall had disappeared down the steps and she could but follow after him, the joy of the morning fled.
Yet what had she expected?Lorna would welcome her with open arms?Conall had seemed so sure that all would be well, yet it wasn’t well.
A woman who hated her—hated Conall—slamming the door so fiercely behind her that Lisette jumped.
She could hear Colin sobbing from inside the room and she turned around, wondering if she had been wrong and mayhap the boy was in danger.
Would Lorna truly harm him?
Did she despise Conall so much that she would tease him with the prospect of rearing his son and then do something even more reckless than marrying her blacksmith years ago?Something akin to revenge that would take Colin from him forever?
As if Conall shared her thoughts, he came bounding up the steps and she hastened toward him, two somber-faced guards hard upon his heels.Within three strides, he met her and pushed her firmly against the wall.
“Dinna move, Lisette.”
His voice sounded so harsh, his eyes darkened with anger, and he gestured for the guards to follow him to Lorna’s room where he shoved open the door.
Lisette heard her anguished cry and Colin’s heightened sobs, and then Conall rushed out with the weeping boy though Colin had flung his little arms around his father’s neck.
Another moment and they had reached Lisette while the two guards barricaded the hastily shut door with their bodies—Lorna banging upon it and calling out for her son.
Her cries desperate and heartrending, which made Lisette’s eyes blur with tears even as Conall, supporting Colin with one arm, took her by the hand and drew her along with him.
If he had seemed furious moments before, now he looked grimly resolute as they went down the steps together.
Colin hiccoughing and murmuring brokenly, “Mama…M-mama.”
Chapter16
“Colin seems happier now,” Conall murmured to Lisette, who stood next to him watching his son at play in his new surroundings with Sorcha giggling at his side.
The two bairns, one only four years old and the other thirteen, might have made an incongruous pair due to the difference in their ages—but from their laughter, Conall knew he had made the right choice to bring them together.
As soon as Sorcha had entered Colin’s room down the hall from Conall and Lisette’s own bedchamber, the boy had ceased his muted sobbing and smiled again.Aye, thank God for the resilience of children!
Sorcha had suffered greatly for one so young and Conall suspected his son had suffered, too, during his short life—och, he could hardly bear to think of it.Yet Colin had a stalwartness to him that made relief melded with pride swell inside Conall, his newly attained role of fatherhood awaking emotions within him that he’d never before experienced.
Just as his beautiful Lisette with her arm laced through his own made him feel as if life had become complete in a way that he could never have imagined.He had been blessed with a wife and a son almost overnight…the depth of the protectiveness he felt for them like nothing he had ever known, either.
