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He'd embraced his solitude as a sort of penance. Is that what Marjorie did? The difference was, unlike him, she bore no sins on her lovely shoulders.
He pinned her with an accusing look. “Do you think by working with the folk at Saint Machar, you can right the wrongs of all Aberdeen?”
“I'm just trying to help. ” Her voice trembled.
He should've let it be, but he couldn't bear the thought of Marjorie choosing such a lonely life. It was fine for a worthless soul like him, but she had a right to more. “What imagined sin do you atone for?”
“What imagined sin?” She pulled away, tugging the plaid up to tuck it over her breasts. “How can you, of all people, ask that, Cormac?”
“Good Christ, Ree, is this about Aidan? You isolate yourself because of something that happened when we were children?”
“And what is it you do?” She propped herself up on her elbow, her voice finding its strength. “What do you call living alone in some tumbledown pile of rock, fishing alone all day?”
“This is about you—”
“You keep saying that, Cormac. You keep saying it's only about me. How could you possibly think this” — she gestured between them — “has naught to do with you?”
“You speak truly. ” He grew subdued. He was there, lying with her, God spare him. He sent up a desperate plea for forgiveness. “But I gave up on my life long ago. ”
“You gave me up,” she whispered, sinking her head onto the pillow.
“Aye, I gave you up. I'd failed Aidan, you see, and I saw suffering in solitude as a sort of penance. And then the war happened. ”
“What happened in battle to change you so?”
“You have no idea the sins I have to atone for. But you, Ree, you've committed no such sin. Are you to grow old, alone, and with no one to care for you?” The thought infuriated him, lighting tinder beneath his words. “You need more. A home of your own, bairns aplenty. ”
Her loneliness was a tragic waste. She was a woman of such passions. The way she ignited at his touch, it was clear she longed for completion. She should have a man to share her bed. He scowled, despising the thought as it came to him. “Don't you want a man about?”
“Perhaps it's the man who'd never want me. ” She leaned up, angrily plumping the pillow beneath her.
“No man would ever—” Realization dawned. And it was devastating.
Cormac had once thought he'd never be worthy of her. He once thought he'd never be capable of feeling the joy of it if he did. But now he knew differently.
Though he couldn't imagine himself ever being deserving of Ree, now he had a fantasy of what it would be. He remembered the sight of her splayed before him, innocent in body but with lust in her eyes.
“Och, Ree, to be with you… “ He considered it, and he knew joy and loss in the same instant. “'Twould be wrong.
To sully your pure soul with my dirtied hands. ”
“They call you the devil, Cormac, and I think you are. Who are you to say what I need? What happened to you at war? What are the shadows in your eyes? Who are you now? When did you become this” —
frustrated, she adjusted
herself, kicking the sheets from her legs — “this… man?”
He'd kept his past cloaked in shadow for so long now, he no longer knew who he was protecting with his secrecy.
He was too tired to fight it any longer.
“Fine, Ree. You wish to be my confessor; so be it. ” He lay on his back, bringing his arm to rest over his head, stealing a glance at her from the corner of his eye. How would she hear his story? Would she offer perfunctory reassurances with eyes gone cold and a smile grown false? There was only one way to find out. “I became this man when I went to war, a boy of thirteen. ”
Marjorie's stomach fell.
Thirteen. The bald fact of it gutted her. She remembered Cormac as a boy of ten. Just three years after Aidan's disappearance, and he'd gone off to battle? She tried to picture him as he'd been, all lanky limbs, a fringe of long eyelashes around grinning eyes.
She pictured the boys of Saint Machar. How might Paddy look, a musket slung over his back? To imagine young Cormac trudging far from home, off to God knew where, to fight in the Civil Wars… her stomach churned at the thought.
She schooled her face. She was being squeamish. Many boys fought for their clan at such an age. “So young,” was all she managed to say and keep her composure.
“Young,” he agreed. “But not in my own head, aye? It always was vinegar not blood that coursed through my veins. ”
She gave him a gende smile. “I remember. ”
“But it turned sour after Aidan. ” He stared blindly up at the ceiling. “After I couldn't save him. ”
“How could you possibly have saved him? You were only ten—”
“Hush, Ree. You asked my story, and it's my story I'm telling. ”
She nodded mutely, wondering how he could blame himself. It was a wonder they hadn't lost Cormac that day, too, suffocated in that godforsaken chimney.
But hadn't she also been blaming herself all these years? The thought was too painful to touch. Instead, she gently prompted, “So you had something to prove, then. When you went to war?” He shot her a look with brows raised, as though she'd just given voice to the greatest of all understatements.
“I always had much to prove. The battle, this battle,” he amended, studying the scars on his arm, “was in '51.
That's one year after my da died. ”
“You'd have thought you were man of the house,” she said, understanding. She struggled to make sense of males, and yet sometimes their reasoning could be so simple. “You and Gregor both. You'd have thought you needed to prove yourselves men. ”
“Aye, there was that. And I was fair guilty, too. ” He inhaled deeply, shutting his eyes against the pain of it.
“Don't forget the guilt. ”
“Guilt?” she asked quietly.
“That it'd been Aidan, and not me, who was taken. The fates had ignored me, and so I dared death to take me. I courted it. I accepted every fool's errand. Any danger I could embrace, I did. I ran off to spy when others were too scared. Part of me thought, if I were good enough, I'd someday find Aidan. But I never found him, and death never found me. ” He shrugged. “And so I was just fourteen when they made me a scout. ”
“Your courage made you successful. ”
He gave a bitter laugh. “'Twas folly, not courage. A lad's bravado and a goodly dose of luck are what brought me success. ”
He seemed to run out of words then, and she let him have the silence. What lifetimes he'd lived, all by the time he'd become a man grown.
She turned onto her side to face him. Reaching a hand out, she outlined the fine tracery of scars along his forearm. Though he stiffened, she persisted, running her fingertip along the uneven surface, over unnaturally smooth knots of flesh, across small discs of satiny-thin skin. “You were telling me about these. ”
“These,” he said simply. They both studied his scars until he brought his hand over hers to conceal them. “You wish to know about these, Ree?”
“Aye, Cormac. And be serious this time. ” She smiled, trying to break the tension. “I assume Bridget can't claim these wounds in addition to that crooked nose of yours. ”
“It's not as crooked as all that. ” Though there was humor in his words, he seemed to be having trouble summoning it to his features. “No, my sister can't claim these. Though mayhap if she'd been on the battlefield, the Royalists would've fared better. ”
She edged closer to Cormac, reassured by his attempts to lighten the mood. She'd not let him feel alone in the telling of his tale. “Which battle was it?”
“Do you remember Worcester? 'Twas in 1651. ”
She groaned inwardly. Of course she remembered the Battle of Worcester. It marked the end of the wars. “Aye, I recall it. The Royal
ists lost. ”
“No, Ree, the Royalists were decimated. Thousands of Scotsmen killed to Cromwell's two hundred. ” Cormac grimaced. “The bastard called it his 'Crowning Mercy. '“
She registered the reality of what he'd told her. “But Worcester is so far away. You were only fourteen. ”
“Aye, we'd covered nigh on forty-five leagues in a week, marching deep into England. I told you I was a scout, traveling with Rothiemay's Foot, out of Aberdeenshire. And march we did, straight into a rout… “ He grew silent, and she waited. She wouldn't push him; rather she'd let his story rise to the surface as slowly as he needed it to.
She brought her fingers to his brow. Their candle had long since guttered out, and she studied his face by
moonlight. Gently, she combed her fingers through his hair, drawing it back from his forehead. A strand had tangled in his lashes, just as it used to do when he was a boy. Feelings of unutterable tenderness swelled within her, clutching hard at her throat.
She waited and stroked his hair, and finally his story came.
“As a scout, I didn't see much of the battle. I had other duties. ” Something dark flashed in his eyes, and the notion of what some of those duties might've entailed made her flesh crawl.
“I knew, when the officers sent me off, that we were destined for a crushing defeat. And yet, it had lit something in me. I suppose I thought there was something more I could do for the cause. I snuck farther afield than any of the other scouts had before. I was deep in Cromwell's camp when I discovered something. ”
“What?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“The Parliamentary soldiers… Cromwell's 'New Model Army,'“ he amended sarcastically. “They were gathering up innocents. Later, I found out that, by the end of the battle, they'd taken ten thousand prisoners. All men and boys, every last one shipped off to Barbados or to the colonies. ” She couldn't help her gasp, knowing at once what that would mean for him. “So you were afraid they'd take you, too?”