Gwendolen quickly stood. “Of course he would be concerned. He was my brother, and he knew how I valued my virtue. He would not have wanted to leave this world believing that I’d been forced into wedlock, or beaten or subjugated. He cared for me very much.” She addressed Gerard directly. “Did you tell him that I was agreeable to the match? Because I cannot bear to think that he died believing I was unhappy. If I could have been there, I would have told him that all was well. That the MacEwens are in good hands.”
There it was again, Angus thought. That expression she tossed around so freely—that “all was well.”
Was it? Now that her brother was dead, and Angus was not responsible for his passing, would everything be well? Would this mean she would never betray him as Raonaid predicted? And would Angus finally be able to stop looking over his shoulder at every turn?
He despised himself suddenly for such selfish thoughts, when he should be thinking only of his wife’s grief. She had just been told that her brother was dead.
Angus went to her. He wanted to take her into his arms—it seemed the right thing to do—but she held up a hand, indicating that she had no intention of weeping or collapsing, at least not here.
Onora, on the other hand, dropped to her knees, let out a gut-wrenching sob, and wept into her hands.
Lachlan knelt down and held her close, while Gwendolen stared into Angus’s eyes.
“Take me out of here,” she said. “Take me beyond the gates of Kinloch.”
Somehow, he understood exactly what she needed, so he reached for her hand and led her out.
***
A light rain began to fall shortly after they crossed the drawbridge and galloped toward the forest, but Gwendolen did not wish to turn around. “Don’t stop,” she said as she raised the hood of her cloak. “Keep riding.”
Her arms tightened around his waist, and he urged his mount forward, but slowed to a trot when they entered the woods, where they were sheltered from the rain.
When they emerged a short time later, out of the brush at the edge of the river, he felt the cold drops pelt his cheeks and wondered if this particular destination had been the wisest choice.
He walked the horse upriver to the waterfall. Angus looked up at it and realized why he had come here so often in the past, in particular, as a lad, in the years after the death of his mother. He had come to drown out the sound of his own thoughts. The noise of the water rushing headlong over the rocks and plunging into the eddying pool below was deafening in his ears, and the chilly mist that rose up from the raging waters had a numbing effect on his body.
Gwendolen swung off the horse and strode to a rocky perch that overlooked the foaming pool below. Angus tethered his horse to a tree branch and joined her on the outcropping. The violence of the cascading water churned up a breeze that blew the damp, ebony locks of her hair. She pushed her hood away from her face and breathed in the fresh scent of the water and the pines surrounding them.
“I’ve been here before,” she said, shouting over the din of the falls. “Murdoch showed me this place not long after Father claimed this territory as his own. Did you know that? Is that why you chose it?”
“Nay. I chose it because I used to come here as a lad after my mother died. I’ve not been here for many years, but I always suspected something would bring me back one day.”
Gwendolen looked up at the ashen sky, which mingled with the rising mist. Her face was wet from the weather, and her full lips glistened with moisture. “And here we are, mourning the loss of another loved one. Perhaps you have some gifts of sight as well, Angus, but you are not aware of them. Perhaps we all do.”
“I have no such gifts.” He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Otherwise I would have seen you entering into my life. I would have had more hope earlier for some kind of a future.”
She gazed at him wistfully. “I saw you coming intomylife. The night before you invaded, I dreamed of a lion breaking down my bedchamber door and growling at me. Then he tore my room apart before my very eyes.”
Angus felt his brow pucker. “You did not tell me this before. Is that why you hated me with such passion, and feared my touch?”
“No, I hated you because you were my enemy and you killed my clansmen. In my dream, I spoke softly to that lion, and soon grew to love him. Perhaps that’s why I resisted you so desperately. I didn’twantto love you.”
Angus studied the flecks of silver in her brown eyes. “So you tamed the lion in your dream.”
“Aye, and he was gentle after that, but I continued to fear him. I still do. He is a lion after all.”
More than anything, Angus wanted to protect Gwendolen from harm or discomfort, and for that reason he felt compelled to warn her against loving him—for he was not sure he could ever be the man she wanted him to be. He was trying, but he was certain that the violence in his nature would always persist.
“You should continue to fear that beast,” he said. “A lion has sharp teeth.”
“And a mighty roar.” Abruptly, she turned and stepped into his arms, knocking him off balance. “Angus, my brother is dead, and I am ashamed.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Ashamed? Why?”
She was not the one who had ordered his death, and if Murdoch had not been lying on his deathbed when Gerard arrived in Paris, he might be just as dead today from a knife in the belly.
“I cursed my brother for not returning to us sooner,” she explained. “I cursed him before God. What kind of a sister am I? What if this is my punishment for such wicked thoughts?”
