Memories of a Highlander

by Susan Bella Ikin

  When I returned to the keep, I soon discovered that Eleanor was avoiding me. She did not come down to the evening meal, and for the next few days, no matter where I looked, I could not find her. Finally my persistence won out. I found her in the stables, leaning against that strangely familiar black horse, speaking softly into his ear as she fed him some fruit.

  “Eleanor”, I called softly, not wanting to startle her, but failing. She jumped, and then turned slowly to face me. For just a moment, a memory teased at the edge of my mind, but it didn’t make any sense. I imagined Eleanor, standing here in boy’s clothes, but dismissed that thought from my mind. I stepped forward slowly, reasoning that I had frightened her the other day when I had been so angry.

  “Eleanor, don’t run. I’m sorry about the other day, when I yelled. I should not frighten ye, not in yer condition, but I was so angry. I cannot bear to think of some man throwing away something so precious”.

  Eleanor looked at me, and I realised there was a tear slowly tracking down her cheek. I made to move towards her, but she stepped back, so I stayed where I was, and kept talking.

  “Can ye tell me who he is? He should not be allowed to just cast ye aside like this. If he is any sort of man, he should step up and take responsibility for ye. Is there a reason ye aren’t with him anymore, was he cruel? Did he beat ye?”

  “No, Donald. He is the most wonderful man I’ve ever known, and I love him. But it obviously wasn’t meant to be, and I must think of my future, and the future of the bairn. We cannot be together, and so I must try to put the past behind me, and move ahead with my life”.

  “If ye love him so much, and he isn’t cruel, how is it that ye are not together?” All of a sudden I realised what the problem was. “Is he married? Is that why ye can’t marry him?”

  Eleanor closed her eyes and nodded.

  “Donald, I don’t know what ye think of me, but it’s important that ye don’t think too ill of me. I - “

  I stepped up to Eleanor then. While she had her eyes closed I stepped quietly, and I was next to her before she sensed me.

  “Eleanor. Since ye can’t marry the man ye love, the man whose babe ye carry, would ye consider marrying me? I don’t care why ye did what ye did, I’m sure ye didn’t mean to hurt anyone, but ye have created a child, and it will need a father. I know ye don’t love me now, but maybe in time ye will. I will look after the babe as if it was my own, and if ye want people to think it is mine, I will tell people that I have loved ye for a long time, I don’t think anyone will disbelieve me”.

  Eleanor opened her eyes then, and as I gazed into them I could have sworn I saw love in their depths, but then all I could see was great sorrow. The tears tracked slowly down her face as she refused me.

  “Donald, ye are a good man, but do ye really want to tie yerself to someone who loves someone else? Ye deserve better than me, and ye obviously know it, or ye wouldn’t be standing here in front of me like this now. Please leave me, I need to be alone for a while”.

  Eleanor

  I don’t know how long I stood there, stroking Midnight’s long nose as I cried. I wanted Donald’s love, not his pity. I thought back over our time together, and couldn’t bring myself to marry him again, not when he was offering out of some sort of self-sacrifice, not desire. He had originally married me because he thought I had nowhere to go, and felt responsible for my situation. He had since been prepared to sacrifice his life to save his people, and now here he was, offering to marry me again, not because he wanted to, but because he thought I was pregnant and alone. He was right about that, I was alone. My position here was getting more and more uncomfortable by the day. Mary had told me that Liam now knew, and I had intercepted some querying looks from Patrice and some of the other women of the keep. How would everyone deal with my pregnancy, knowing that it was Donald’s child, yet unable to acknowledge the fact? How could Patrice act as if it was not her grandchild that I carried? I knew what I had to do, and I had to do it before the weather got any worse. I had to leave. I knew that my family would take me in until I worked out what to do about my future. Now all I had to do was to convince Donald’s family to let me go.

  “No. Ye cannot leave. Donald will remember who ye are and then he will worry about why ye left. Can ye not give him any longer?”

  I stared at Donald’s father, unsure what to say. Liam had been standing behind him with his arms folded across his broad chest, staring at me. I wondered what he would say. I knew he could not bear to be parted from Mary, or their child, but also knew that he knew what difficulties lay ahead of me if I stayed.

  “Da, perhaps we should agree to Eleanor returning to her family for a while, just for a short time ye understand. It has been a very difficult few months for her, and maybe she just needs to rest and regain her strength. I don’t know if ye have noticed, but she has been looking very pale of late”.

  Bless him, Liam was keeping my secret a little longer.

  “But Eleanor, ye and Donald have been getting close, do ye really want to leave now?”

  “I need to, just for a short while. I cannot stay here any longer, pretending that Donald means nothing to me. Ye cannot know how cruel it is, to see him every day, and know that he does not remember anything about me, nothing at all”.

  Liam senior said nothing for a while, just poured himself a cup of whiskey and downed it in one gulp. Then he looked at me again.

  “Patrice will give me hell for this. Ye two might think I am addled, but I know ye are with child. If ye go now, will ye come back before the babe is born? I am afraid that if ye do not, ye might never come back”.

  I looked at my father by law, astounded that he had known of my condition, but hadn’t said anything. I looked at Liam, who was also looking at his father with admiration.

  “I will escort her home to make sure she is safe. I agree with ye though Da, I think she should come back before the babe is born, while she can still travel. I think this might be the best thing for both Eleanor and Donald. Everything we have done so far has not worked. Maybe he needs Eleanor to not be here for a while, so that he has time to miss her, maybe that will help him remember”.

  We organised my departure for only a couple of days away. I did not want to stay once I had made up my mind, and was afraid that if I stayed too long, I would never have the strength to leave. Unlike Liam and his father, I did not think that Donald would miss me once I was gone. Maybe he would for a little while, but eventually he would forget me - again.

  Two days later, we said our goodbyes to everyone. I had managed to avoid Donald, but Ian had met me as I was supervising my belongings being loaded onto a pack horse. He was leading Midnight.

  “Don’t forget yer horse”, he said as he handed the reins to me.

  “But Ian, Midnight is yer horse. I appreciated ye letting me ride him while I was here, but I cannot take him away”.

  Ian laughed, and I saw traces of Donald in him, and had to fight the tears that tried to fall.

  “He is yer horse, and always has been. After I saw ye ride him that day, I realised I would never have the rapport with him that ye do. But if it makes ye feel better, consider it a loan. Ye will be back, I’m sure of that, and ye can be sure to bring him back with ye”.

  I fell on Ian, hugging him tightly, embarrassing him I was sure. I mounted up slowly, and even more slowly our small party rode out of the gates. I hadn’t seen Donald, and refused to look back for him. It was time.

  Donald

  I had raged when I had heard of Eleanor’s plans to leave. How could she go? Did she not feel what was between us? Whatever she had felt for the man who fathered her child, I was sure she could not love him more than I loved her. How could she return to her family, who I had heard nothing of before her plans to leave? Would they protect her reputation by spinning a tale of a dead husband, to account for the fact that their daughter was returning to them carrying a child? Would they treat her well, or ill? I had vague misgivings about her family. I had never m
et them, I was sure, but if they were good to her, why had she never spoken of them before now?

  I took to my room with a bottle of Da’s best whiskey, and drank until I could not stand. On the morning I had dreaded, I waited until I heard the sound of hooves leaving the grounds, then on an impulse ran out to the wall, scaling the stairs and launching myself onto the wall. I stared at the group of riders, and could easily spot Eleanor, riding on that black horse. I rubbed at my skull as my head hurt. Every time I looked at Eleanor on that horse, something seemed wrong. I was sure that horse belonged to Ian, why was Eleanor riding it? Rubbing my skull again, I remembered why Ian owned the horse, it had been given to him by Duncan, after Duncan had injured Ian. So why was he letting Eleanor take it?

  I stopped rubbing my head as I gazed at the back of the woman I loved. Why was she leaving me? More to the point, why was I letting her leave? Turning and leaping down the stairs, I ran to the stables, saddling my horse and riding out. I had to talk to her to find out why she was leaving. I just knew that I couldn’t watch her leave again.

  Jerking as I realised what that thought meant, and my horse faltered. Crooning to Shadow and urging him to gallop faster, my head began to pound as memories returned. I remembered now why I had that vision of Eleanor in boy’s clothes in the stables. I remembered my obsessive rides to the border of her family lands in the vain hope of seeing her. As flash after flash of memory, and vision of Eleanor’s face in various situations, some smiling, some crying, some in the throes of passion, bore down on me, I urged Shadow to even greater speed. They weren’t that far ahead of me, and before long I caught them.

  Liam had turned as he heard me thundering along behind them, and Eleanor had turned also. Liam gestured to the men to ride a distance ahead of us, and as I reined in, I was breathing heavily, beyond angry at Liam, and not knowing how to deal with what had driven Eleanor away.

  “How could ye, Liam?” I raged, “How could ye take her away from me, again?”

  “Again?” Breathed Eleanor, riding closer to me. I turned my gaze to her, not noticing that Liam had ridden away from us. I turned to her.

  “Yes, Eleanor, again. I couldn’t let ye leave, and then when I was riding, I remembered everything. I let ye leave once and that was a mistake. I could not make the same mistake again. Eleanor, I am so sorry, I can’t imagine what ye have been going through these last months, please let me make it up to ye, please don’t go”.

  Eleanor looked at me for a while before nudging Midnight up to stand next to Shadow, nose to tail, so that we were facing each other.

  “Do ye really remember, or did someone tell ye, just so ye would fetch me back?”

  “Ask me anything, Eleanor, something I could only know if I remembered ye”.

  Eleanor stared at me for a while, obviously trying to think of something that no-one else would know. Then she spoke, and I closed my eyes as I realised why I had blocked my memories of her.

  “What did I say to ye, after we made love for the first time?”

  “Do ye mean, on the night of yer birthday?”

  Eleanor nodded, her lips opening a little as she sucked in a breath.

  “Ye told me off for letting ye go and wasting a year”.

  “Oh, Liam, ye do remember”, Eleanor cried as she launched herself onto my lap, as I sat atop Shadow.

  “I do. Do ye know what I was thinking as I walked towards Lachlan’s father that morning, thinking I was going to die, and never see ye again?”

  Eleanor shook her head, holding her breath.

  “I was wishing that I had my time over, to stop ye leaving the first time, and that if I had the good sense to court ye properly when we first met, things could have worked out differently. I don’t know if that’s why I didn’t remember ye when I woke up, but I knew that I wanted to get to know ye. I knew that I wanted to court ye and to ask ye to marry me. But I wish I had remembered ye, I caused ye so much pain, and right now when ye are with child ye don’t need the worry”. I realised then what I had said, and looked down at Eleanor’s stomach, placing a hand over where our child now nestled.

  “I can’t believe it, this is my child, we made a babe, Eleanor”.

  Eleanor laughed and nodded. I laughed with her and hugged, then I remembered our conversation about the father of her child.

  “So ye were talking about me, when ye said ye loved the father of yer babe?”

  Eleanor slapped my arm gently.

  “Who else would I be talking about, Donald?”

  “So why wouldn’t ye marry me? When I said I would marry ye and raise the babe as my own, why did ye send me away?”

  “Because, ye great oaf, I wanted ye to love me, that’s all, not make some silly sacrifice and marry me to provide a name for my child”.

  I rested my forehead on hers. Maybe I could have asked her differently, but I did love her then, and I loved her now. Maybe it was time to stop talking, and time to start showing her.

  “Come on, let’s get ye back on yer horse”. As Eleanor grumbled, I insisted.

  “I rode Shadow hard to catch up with ye. We can’t ask him to carry double, especially when Midnight is still fresh”. As Eleanor slid back over to her horse, I handed her back her reins, gathered up Shadow’s and turned him to face back in the direction from which we had just come.

  “Let’s go home”.

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