Such simplistic questions, a bairn could answer them! He turned his face up to the rain, hoping to wash away his frustrations. He didn’t want to be irritated by his mother. He had other things that irritated him.
Obviously, she was trying to tell him something.
Sorcha and her mysterious talks. She waited patiently for him to respond. He certainly hadn’t followed his mother with that trait.
“One must tend to one’s planting, giving it everything it needs to bloom, lest the plant dies and ye starve,” he answered, biting back his irritation as much as he could.
“People are much like plants, aye? I give ye much love and affection. Your father gives ye instruction and discipline. Your siblings and cousins give ye perspective and camaraderie. Would ye have bloomed into the man ye are if we had been derelict in our duties?”
Reade shook his head. “Nay. I presume no’.” He turned to face his mother. What did any of this have to do with his marriage arrangement? “Mother, forgive my thick-headedness. What are you trying to tell me?”
“No’ everyone is planted in an environment where they might thrive,” she answered and turned her affectionate gaze to Reade. She studied his face as she waited for him to understand what she was trying to tell him.
He had been asking after Blair and his wedding to her, so he surmised that his mother must also be discussing her. That perchance, unlike him, she hadn’t been tended to like a tender plant. That her roots and stalks had withered, and as a result . . .
Reade tilted his head at his mother. “Are ye suggesting that ‘tis a reason why Blair might have no’ borne a child?”
“Sometimes it happens, Reade. Dinna mistake that. But ye should know that a woman might have a bairn with one man when she did no’ have one with another. If ye tend to your marriage as a gardener tends to his garden, with a tender hand and ardent care, fruit has the chance to bloom.”
His mother’s face glowed as she kept her gaze leveled on him. With her other hand, she reached for his. “Do ye understand what I’m saying to ye, my son?”
Reade’s chest was hollow at his mother’s words. He had hoped that Blair Gordon’s inability to bear children was the perfect argument to get him out of this marriage, but from his mother’s words, he knew that his argument had fallen on deaf ears.
“Mother, I dinna want to wed the lass. I dinna know her, and she’s a supposed spy, aligned with the Campbells. Why shackle me to a woman like that?”
Sorcha gave his hand a slight squeeze. “Your father has explained the importance of aiding the Hamilton lass. She was a Hamilton before she was a Gordon. And if she does have information to share, we can elicit it from her while we keep her safe from the Campbells. And, Reade,mo mhac daor, ye are forgetting one thing. Men and women with arranged marriages fall in love all the time. There is something to be said for a shared experience.”
Reade snorted. “A marriage as a shared experience? ‘Tis a mild way of defining a love and a lifelong commitment.”
“Be kind to her,” Sorcha advised him.
He grimaced. “I’vetried–”
A wise smile creased Sorcha’s lips as she leaned in and patted Reade’s chest. “Nay, ye have no’. Keep trying and try harder. Son, give it a chance and have faith in your father and I. We would no’ steer ye wrong.”
“Mother –”
She patted his chest again. “Come. Let’s find a warm hearth and consider your future with this lass. Perchance ‘twill no’ be the doom and gloom ye believe ‘twill be.”
Reade knew that tone well enough — Sorcha was done with her lesson. Reade didn’t answer but cupped his mother’s hand in the crook of his elbow and escorted her back inside. A warm hearth awaited.
That night, Reade fellasleep after tossing and turning, unable to find comfort with his consternation. When he did finally sleep, his night was filled with nostalgic and gut-aching dreams.
He dreamed of Camden. In his dream, they were riding together in the woods to the southeast. They were racing, Camden laughing in the boisterous way he had, as though he wanted everyone around him to hear his laugh and join in. Taller than Reade, and slimmer, Camden handled his horse with ease and raced ahead of Reade, his brown and red plaid flapping in the breeze. The light was bright in the dream, almost too bright, and Reade lost sight of Camden as he rode ahead, disappearing in into the brilliantly green trees and brush.
When Reade did come upon him, the jovial nature of the dream changed, encroached with shadows. Reade rode up on Camden, who had stopped riding and sat immobile on his horse that had halted in a patch of illustrious green sunlight. Reade rode around to face Camden, calling his name, but Camden didn’t answer. Once Reade shifted his horse around, he could see the reason why. A silver blade stuck in Camden’s chest, the hilt and hand guard bouncing lightly, a strip of Campbell plaid tied around it.
The dream-Reade tried to help his cousin, but when he pulled out the sword, Camden’s lifeblood exploded from the wound, coating Reade, the horse, and Camden. Too much blood, and his cousin slumped forward, dead.
In this dream, Reade panicked, not knowing if he should do something more to help Camden or if he should leave and ride for help or search for the perpetrators. In the end, Reade froze, watching as his dearest friend died right in front of him. The dread of that frozen moment pained him, like a hammer caving in his chest, and the world began to spin out of control.
It was at that moment that Reade woke, shocked out of his troubled sleep and coated in a layer of muggy sweat. He shot up in bed, at first confused about where he was and what he was doing.
Then the dream came back to him, the vision of his cousin on his horse, blood soaking his tunic, and Reade’s fury at the Campbells and the death of his cousin wash over him in hot, aching waves. It had been a while since he’d had this dream, one that had haunted him nightly months ago.
And as had happened then, his mind asked the same relentlessly unanswered questions.
Why had the Campbells killed him so mercilessly? Cut down in the prime of his life when old Campbell lairds, fattened and warm by the hearth, sent out young men to fight and die for a false king? Why did they have no loyalty to Scotland, to the Highlands, and to the true king? What was wrong with them that drove them to slay a fellow Highlander whose only crime was riding in the woods?
