by R. L. Syme
But Valc was hers, and she would never let him go.
Chapter Sixteen
Valc was amazed at how much the salt air calmed him. The feel of the wind on his face gave him a peace, a centeredness. He truly felt at home.
Somehow, whenever life seemed to fall apart, he could board a ship, head out to sea, and everything made sense. Auden had scolded him for sending Cadha away the previous night. He’d been even more condescending when they left at dawn without seeing her.
The monk was surprisingly motherly for an athletic young man. He would have made a good father.
Valc had forced Cadha to leave for her own good. Auden would see that. Cadha would see it someday, as well. There was a special kind of bond you formed with someone who helped you escape death. It mirrored love, but it wasn’t.
If he gave her time, she would want him for himself. Or she wouldn’t, and he could move on with life. Perhaps Valc could speak with Auden about this monk business. It seemed more peaceful than pirating.
They had hired a ship in the small, bustling village of Wick. The ship’s owner, a man everyone seemed to call Old Yaris, had been familiar with Calum Acheson and knew where he made port.
Valc had been avoiding the Sinclairs ever since they all crowded onto the ship. He had climbed up the mainsail to sit on the top of the foremast. The Scots unnerved him, mostly because only Malcolm spoke a language Valc could understand, and they all watched him with such wariness, it was a discomfort to be surrounded by their presence.
Auden seemed content to sit among them in silence. The monk was an enigma. So easily enflamed by injustice, but outwardly so peaceful. Valc wished for some of that absolute tranquility.
The sea would have to do, for the time being.
The little ship began to wrestle back and forth and Valc looked down to see Erlan shimmying up the mast. Good heaven above. Was nowhere safe?
Valc slid over to balance out Erlan’s weight and the two men sat on opposite sides of the main. The young redhead smiled at him and Valc offered a tight-lipped perfunctory return.
“Are you planning plans up here?” Erlan asked as he settled into his seat opposite Valc.
“I’m happy to be back out on the ocean.”
Erlan nodded, gazing out to the horizon. “Cadha’s father is like that. Brecht always says he feels the most at peace when he can see open water in all directions.”
Valc couldn’t help smiling. “A man after my own heart.”
“I wanted to thank you for what you’ve done for Cadha.”
The ship bobbed as Erlan moved. Someone called up and the two men both looked down. Old Yaris was shouting something and pointing. Erlan shielded his eyes with his hand and nodded, then shouted something back to the captain.
“What did he want to know?” Valc asked.
“If I can see land.”
“Can you?” Valc put a hand on his brow and looked. Sure enough, in the distance, Valc saw the shadow of something that promised to be land.
“The captain said we’ll come up on Balfour from the southern side and anchor off-shore.”
Valc nodded. “You said yesterday, the bay is hidden.”
“Old Yaris says that Acheson keeps his plunder out of port, usually up-river, or to one of the outlying islands. But sometimes, he leaves the ships in the bay.”
Valc watched the coast appear in front of them and his heart leapt a bit when he thought about having his own ship beneath him once more.
Erlan pointed toward the horizon. “It’s more likely he would bring it here, something of that size that would be noticeable if a docking agent were to start asking questions in Berwick.”
“If we approach from far enough south, I might be able to sneak aboard and free her without a fight.”
Erlan’s brow rounded. “And we would have brought our swords and come all this way for nothing.”
“I would prefer it that way,” Valc said. “I don’t want anyone to die for me, or for the charge I have been given.”
The wind whipped around behind them and Erlan was unseated for a short moment. He righted himself and smiled. “You are an honorable man, Valcymer Vanhorn.”
Valc tightened his lips. “I am a lot of things. Honorable is not among them.”
“Yet when my betrothed came to you in the night trying to seduce you, you sent her away.” Erlan’s tone was thick. “Even though you love her.”
The vise grip on Valc’s heart compressed until he couldn’t speak. He tried to make some sound, but it wouldn’t come.
“You do love her,” Erlan repeated. “And I think she feels something for you, although I am not certain what that something is.”
“It is not love.” Valc dipped his head. “It is camaraderie. Gratitude.”
“It may very well be. Or it may be love.”
“You seem to be taking this news well.” Valc attempted an easy smile, but everything seemed pained and forced. His most fervent hope was that Erlan would not throw him off the mast to his death.
“I will admit, I suspected it when you first arrived. She seems… changed.” Erlan’s blue eyes glinted in the sun and he put up his hand to cover them with shadow. “I cannot explain it, but her difference, coupled with the way she looked at you. I see affection there.”
“She has experienced much in a short time.”
“She hasn’t told me the particulars, only the vague generalities. She tries to abate my jealousy, I think.”
“There is no reason to be jealous of the dangers we have faced these last days. Much of it I would have protected her from, if I could.”
“But you sent her away.” Erlan fixed his gaze somewhere on the water in the distance. Valc followed his line of sight, but nothing bobbed there. His companion’s voice was hollow, sad. “Cadha does not know how her voice carries, and I knew she would try to speak with you in private. I am not proud of the fact that I listened to your conversation, but I did. You acted honorably.”
“She is young. She does not realize what fleeting things emotions can be. And given everything we’d been through to get her to you, I was not surprised she felt some impetuous passion. Escaping death is a beautiful thing, but perspective often doesn’t come until you’ve really lived once more.”
“Wise man.”
“I was in her shoes once.” Valc swallowed. He didn’t like to tell this story, and he tried to avoid talking about Greta as much as he could, but Erlan deserved to know the depth of his convictions.
“I was saved from death by a woman several years ago. I was to be executed, you see, and she paid for me to escape the axe.” The raw emotion climbed up his throat and lodged there. “She had lost her son and needed a replacement. Had she been in the square the following day, I would already be dead and she would have picked another. I didn’t know that for years. I thought there was something special about me, some reason only she knew, as to why I’d survived when my friends had died.”
Erlan inhaled slowly. “Anyone would have thought the same in your place.”
Valc slid his hands along his thighs. The sun had warmed them already and it beat down on his face.
“When Greta died and she gave me a charge to finish her work, I asked her what it was that made her pick me.” Valc bit the edge of his tongue as the memory overwhelmed him. This woman he’d loved in place of a mother, coughing and gasping on her death-bed, calling out for the son she’d lost, professing eternal love to the ghost in the middle distance. He would never forget that moment as long as he lived.
“What was it?” Erlan asked.
“Convenience.” Valc laughed. “I should have had no illusions from the start. She never called me by my name. She never embraced me. Never said she loved me. I should have known. But when someone saves you from death… you spend your life trying to recapture that moment when they pulled you from the depths.”
Valc found himself reaching down toward some imaginary hell and pulling his young self from the clutches of an evil, black demon, as he’d always imagined
Greta had done. Instead, she had simply put down some money for whatever boy happened to be of a laborable age on a day when she needed a back to carry cargo.
“I don’t want Cadha to spend her life chasing that feeling with me. I can never give it to her again.”
Erlan wetted his lips and looked away, shifting on the mast. “But you do love her.”
“I do. But she doesn’t love me.”
“I don’t know if that’s true.”
There was a commotion below them and someone shouted. The men pointed off to the west. A ship. Very far off, but visible like a speck in one’s vision. They would easily reach the island before that ship came upon them, and no knowing for certain if it was Acheson or some trader headed for Scandinavia, or someone else.
“Is that the pirate’s ship?” Erlan asked, leaning forward.
“I can’t tell.”
“If you do love her, how can you let her go?” The young Scot’s voice was so earnest, so keen, Valc had a hard time remembering this was his rival.
“I want her to have a fulfilled life.” He stretched his back. “If she lives that life with you, so be it.”
“And if she lives it with you?”
“I wouldn’t be happy to have her unless I knew it was what she really wanted.”
The wind picked up behind them again and Erlan was caught off-guard by the gust. He launched forward and his backside came off the mast. Valc lunged for him, keeping one hand on the main, and caught his arm. He dragged the Scot back to the mast, and Erlan’s arms closed around the hefty beam.
Below them, an uproar began. Malcolm called out in English. “Stay there. One of us will come up to you.”
Valc waved him off. “I’ll bring him down.”
“I’ll go down on my own.” Erlan’s breathing was erratic and his eyes closed, but his voice was sure. Malcolm backed off and Valc released him.
“The winds up here are unpredictable. I’ve never seen their like,” Valc said. He tried not to offer any more assistance to the young man as he climbed down the mast. Valc shimmied down after him.
When they both landed square on their feet on the deck, the big Sinclairs all punched Erlan’s shoulders and laughed. Valc would have joined in, except he was still reeling a little from hearing Erlan’s words. He’d heard Cadha express her love, and he wasn’t trying to cut out Valc’s entrails.
He was a better man than Valc would ever be.
For a moment, all Valc could see was the wrinkled, sweating face of his former guardian, white in death, wishing for the presence of her son by her side, when Valc sat there, holding her hand until it went cold. That invisibility in the face of his own grief had been worse than a thousand deaths. He wouldn’t put himself through that with Cadha.
She would be over her temporary insanity as quickly as Erlan had gotten over nearly sailing off the mast to his death. They were young and resilient, and they would forget their fleeting feelings.
But if she shackled herself to him, she would someday look out into the empty room on her deathbed and wish Erlan were there instead. Better to endure a quick pain today than live with regret forever.
The Scots spoke among themselves and the coast grew larger with each passing moment. Brother Auden left his perch near the ship’s boat and came to stand beside Valc.
“What are they planning?” Valc asked.
“They’re looking for a place to anchor that will be close enough to the shore to allow for a quick ascent.”
“If that’s the Bastard of Balfour over there,” Valc pointed to the boat that was still a long way off their starboard bow, “then it might be best for us to head for the port.”
“Can you tell if it’s the same ship that set upon you?” Auden asked.
Valc narrowed his vision and tried to see as much detail as he could manage. He shook his head.
“It looks about the same size and heft, but it could as easily be another trader, and if we try to make port at Balfour and Acheson is there, someone is going to die.”
“But if that is him, then we would lose our best shot if we don’t make for port,” Erlan said in Dutch and Valc nodded his agreement.
“If we wait for him to be close enough to identify, he has an archer with a range you wouldn’t believe.” Valc crossed his arms.
The Sinclair brothers traded words between them and they all looked to him. Malcolm said, “You should make the decision.”
Valc’s blood throbbed. He wanted his ship back, and double-quick. He wanted to be away from Cadha and all the heartbreak she promised.
“To the port.”
Chapter Seventeen
Cadha had never been much for needlepoint, so she was grateful for Lilian’s company as she walked along the ridge by the sea. The men had gone before she was awake, and she wished she’d been able to convince Maas to take her with him.
They had tried needlepoint, they had tried playing with the children, they had tried all manner of things to distract, but nothing had worked. Cadha finally took to the hillsides around the castle, and Maas’s sister had come along for company.
They clasped arms as they walked. The air whistled around them and cooled Cadha’s skin. She leaned against Lilian’s shoulder. “How do you bear this?”
“The waiting?”
Cadha stifled a laugh. “Waiting I can handle. How do you bear not being able to fight by his side?”
Lilian continued walking until they came to the edge of one of the cliffs. “If I did not have a baby in my belly, I would be with him.”
“Malcolm doesn’t treat you like a fragile flame that might be blown out at any moment?”
The corner of Lilian’s mouth turned up. “Malcolm treats me like a person he loves. He would never put me in harm’s way. But he’s not going to prevent me from fighting if that’s what I choose to do.”
“He would let you fight at his side?”
“The world is different, here in the Highlands.” Lilian gazed out over the sea and smiled. “Men and women work side by side to raise children and to work land.”
“And to fight battles?”
“If that’s what we choose.”
“I want to be fighting with them. I am good with a bow.”
Lilian cupped Cadha’s face and kissed her forehead. “You are so much like me, my dear. And I do not know my brother well, yet, but I know he is a man who prizes what he loves. He only wants you to be safe.”
“I will certainly be safe.” Cadha couldn’t help recalling the echoes of Valc’s conversation from the previous night. “I am grateful that he values my life.”
“Tell me, Cadha, how long have you been in love with my brother?”
Cadha tried to remember the moment she’d first known she loved Maas. “Since I was a child,” she said. “My father brought him to our home after his cousin died aboard ship. He didn’t have any family, or so we thought, and he was so young. Papa didn’t want him to grow up on a ship.”
“Erlan told me your father sent him to school. Helped him learn a trade.”
Cadha passed Lilian a rueful smile. “Well, he was learning the medical arts. I think Papa hoped to employ him as a ship’s doctor someday.”
“Erlan? A doctor?” Lilian scrunched up her face. The wind blew her hair across her brow and she settled it behind her ear. Cadha loved that the women here in the Highlands always let their hair fly free. It spoke of a wildness she craved.
“He trained with the Benedictines.” Cadha bent to pick a spotted flower that crept between the rocks. “He was quite good. Is quite good.”
Lilian shook her head, almost rejecting the memory that she seemed to be holding of her brother. “Erlan was always getting me into trouble when we were children. I relied on him, and I loved him, but I never expected the man he’s become.”
Cadha slid the flower into Lilian’s hair, alongside where she’d tucked it to keep it from the wind. “He spent many formative years apart from you, but you will come to know him better.”
&n
bsp; With downcast eyes, Lilian sniffed. “It saddens me to know so little of my own family. I haven’t had enough time with him yet.”
The words landed right in the middle of Cadha’s chest. A protective sister didn’t want to lose the brother she’d just found. Cadha could understand the feeling.
“You will have all the time I can give you.”
Lilian shook her head as though trying to clear the webs of the past. “I’m sorry we could not continue along the sea, but the rocks are so dangerous past here. It’s beautiful this time of day, if you’d like to stay and wait.”
“Here?” Cadha wondered, looking around.
“Erlan told me you like to wait on the docks, to see the sails, and this is the best place to see them, until dark.”
Cadha pulled away from Lillian and they both came to an abrupt halt on the rocky ground. “I’d rather be with them.”
“Next time, my dear, when you are stronger. You have been through an ordeal these last days in order to find us.” Lilian offered a smile and touched Cadha’s cheek. The cold skin shocked her, but Lilian’s gaze was so warm, Cadha simply smiled back.
A sheen covered Lilian’s eyes. “You have been a good sister to Erlan, while I could not be. I pray that your love will grow and change for him, all the days of your lives.” Lilian picked up her skirts and hurried away, wiping at her tears.
Cadha sat on one of the high rocks and looked out over the sea. Lilian was so well-meaning, and loved her brother so much. Cadha knew what it meant to love Maas like that.
Maas had been in Scotland only a month, but Cadha could already see how much this was his home. He was such an expansive man. Mama had often said he was made for the mountains, not the narrow causeways of Hoorn.
These were his mountains. They may not be the place he was raised, but they suited him. Cadha tried to imagine herself here.
She could almost do it, until she thought of Valc. The depth of his gaze when he looked at her, the strength of his arms, his insufferable humor. Cadha had loved Maas for most of the years she remembered, but she would love Valc for the rest of her life.
