Page 29 of It’s in his Highland Kiss

How could she bear such a thing? How could she go on living if Eiric died?

Her feelings for him had crashed over her like a wave when she had realised that he would soon be in grave danger. She had never before come to terms with them, and having to face them had proved harder than she had thought it would be.

She loved him, of course; she always had, ever since they were young. But there was something more there now, something that she couldn’t quite recognise. It wasn’t an infatuation, nor was it simple lust; it was something else entirely, and it scared her just as much as the thought that Eiric could die.

“Ye’re angry,” Adaria said, pulling Marion out of her thoughts. “Anger will serve ye weel sometimes in battle, but nae always.”

Marion didn’t try to deny that she was angry. After all, Adaria was perceptive, and she would know that she was lying.

“Which is it now?” she asked.

“It’s nae helpin’ ye noo,” Adaria said. “Tell me . . . why are ye angry?”

Marion hesitated. She didn’t want to burden Adaria with her and Eiric’s argument, and she certainly didn’t want to hear the lecture that was sure to follow once Adaria found out that Marion wanted to fight in the war. She doubted that the news would go over well with her, and she had already fought with one of her closest people; she didn’t want to fight with Adaria, too.

“It’s me son, isna it?” Adaria asked before Marion could come up with an excuse. “Aye, of course it is. He’s just as gloomy as ye are.”

“He is?” Marion asked, perhaps with more enthusiasm than she would have liked. “I mean, I’m not gloomy. I’m angry. There is a difference.”

“It seems to me like ye’re both,” Adaria said, as she approached Marion with a sigh, looping her arm around her own and dragging her away from the training grounds. “Let’s go on a walk, shall we?”

Marion nodded in agreement and followed Adaria around the courtyard. There was a chill in the air, but most of the cold had already passed, and Marion was happy to have a breeze blow against her skin. The training had left her overheated, and the cool wind was welcome.

“Why did the two of ye fight?” Adaria asked. “Did somethin’ happen?”

Marion contemplated not giving Adaria the true reason why she and Eiric had fought only days prior, but in the end, she decided that it was always better to tell her the truth. She took a deep breath, steadying herself for whatever it was that Adaria would say to scold her.

“He won’t let me fight,” Marion said. “In the war, I mean. I told him that I want to fight, that I want to do anything I can for Scotland, but he won’t let me. He says it’s too dangerous, and that the battlefield is not a place for a woman.”

Marion glanced at Adaria as she spoke, waiting for her judgement, but the wrath that she had been expecting from her never came. Instead, Adaria sighed and gave her a small smile, in which Marion could detect a hint of sadness.

“Eiric doesna want ye to get hurt, and neither do I,” she said. “Of course, I dinna want Eiric to get hurt. If I could stop him from fightin’ that war, then I would, but that’s what lads do, isna it? They go to war, they die, and they leave their maithers behind to bury them.”

Marion had been so caught up in her own worry and her own anger that she hadn’t even considered the kind of pain that Adaria must have felt, knowing that her son would soon be going to war. It must have been hard on her, Marion reasoned, hearing her husband and her son talk about strategy and politics, the entire time knowing that Eiric would be out there, the sword in his hand the only thing keeping him alive.

She and the laird had never managed to have other children. Eiric was the only one she had in the world, and his loss would devastate her.

His death would kill her, too.

“I’ve seen women in battles, lass,” Adaria continued. “I’ve seen them fight and die like men, and I’ve seen their maithers and their faithers mournin’ them even more than they mourned their sons. But those were times of need, times when every single pair of hands counted.”

“But Edan and Eiric are saying that we don’t have enough forces,” Marion pointed out. “Haven’t you heard?”

“Och, I’ve heard,” Adaria assured her. “I’ve heard, but I’m still holdin’ onto hope. Prince Charles has promised us help, that of the French, and if we have it, weel . . . then the Sassenachs stand nae a chance.”

Adaria sounded quite certain that Scotland would get the help of France in the end, but Marion couldn’t be as optimistic. In fact, she couldn’t be optimistic at all. The only thing that she could think of was Eiric, dead on the battlefield, his heart pierced by an English blade.

“I still want to help,” Marion said. “If something happens to Eiric, then I’ll always wonder if I could have done something to prevent it. I’ll always wonder if I could have saved him, had I only been there.”

“Ye’re a good fighter,” Adaria said. “But dinna think that ye’re a match for the English. Marion, they . . . that’s what they do. They fight, and they take, and all we can do is try to stop them, but our lads . . . I dinna even think that our lads are a match for them. They’ve been fightin’ ever since they were bairns, but they’ve also been tendin’ to the horses, they’ve been herdin’ the sheep, they’ve been fixin’ the walls. Fightin’ isna their life, it isna the only thing that they do. And ye dinna even have half of the experience that they do. What will ye do in the battlefield?”

Adaria was making a good point, but Marion didn’t want to admit it. She didn’t want to admit that she was weak. She had been weak her entire life, and she was sick of it. She wanted to be the kind of person who could fight, who could protect the people she loved.

But she would have to accept that she wasn’t, she thought. She would have to accept that, once more in her life, she was helpless.

“I suppose you’re right,” Marion said with a sigh, a hand coming up to scratch at the back of her head. “I’m just . . . scared.”

It was the truth, plain and simple. Marion was scared, more so than she had ever been before. For the first time in her life, she had something to lose: Eiric, Adaria, Scotland itself. She used to live a life that had nothing in it, nothing to give her joy or purpose, nothing to make it worth living, and now that she had everything she could have ever asked for, the war was about to snatch it all out of her hands.