by Fiona Faris
Up until the days that she had gone on without seeing him, she had not realized how used to the large man she had become. She hated it as much as she realized it was a thing that she could not fight.
“He wanted to come to see ye. He was on his way here when he fell off his horse and hit his head-”
“He hit his head? I hope he is alright.”
“Aye, yer mother tended to him,” Kyla replied her.
“I would have come to check on him had I kent.” Kyla knew she spoke the truth.
“He is sorry for what he did. He had dropped the wager with Glenn long before ye found out about it. He never meant to hurt ye and he has missed ye ever since. He would have wanted to be here to tell ye these words but me mother would never let him leave the estate.”
Lorraine smiled knowingly. She knew how stubborn and restless Daividh would have been to both women.
“I see ye ken me brother,” Kyla said.
“Aye, he is a stubborn man,” Lorraine replied.
“Please come to the castle and see him. He misses ye and he has a lot to tell ye. They are nae me words to tell to ye. I believe if ye speak to him, ye would come to ken his truth and then, ye might decide if he deserves yer forgiveness or nay.”
“I like ye,” Lorraine said to Kyla, and both women smiled with respect at the other. “I shall think on it,” she promised Kyla.
The daughter of the Laird MacDougall thanked the simple girl and headed back to her coach. There wasn’t much she could see. She could only hope that Lorraine cared enough about him to forgive his mistake. She rode back for the castle to give her brother the news.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Knock, knock, knock; Lorraine heard on her door but she gave no answer. It did not matter that the person who knocked on the door knew that she was awake. She was always awake at that time of the day, but Lorraine was not in the mood for conversation. She had not been for the past few days and was slowly becoming a hermit. Her mother did not want that and neither did her brother.
Both had jobs at the castle and did not have the luxury of waiting on her to come out and tend to the horse in her care. For all Lorraine’s anger towards Daividh, they knew she would not neglect the horse.
“I ken ye are awake in there, Lorraine,” Mairi called out to her daughter, but Lorraine gave no reply.
“Lorraine, answer yer mother,” Mairi tried to be sterner, but Lorraine gave no answer.
She could hear her mother’s silence behind the door, waiting on her to get out of bed and open the door, but Lorraine lay unclad beneath her blanket with her eyes open.
“I have to go to the castle now. If I return and ye are still this way, I shall have yer brother break down the door to yer room. I cannae have ye ignorin’ me in me own house,” Mairi threatened before she left the door.
Lorraine wrapped herself in her blanket and moved towards the door to listen to her mother leaving.
“Go and speak to yer sister. I do nae ken what to say again,” she heard her mother say to her brother before she left the house.
Maxwell came next to the door. He was quiet and she knew he listened also to her as she listened to him.
“Ye cannae be mad forever, Lorraine. I do nae ken what he did to ye but I ken that ye want to see him. Go to the castle and talk to him. It would make ye feel better.”
She did not reply.
“He still asked after ye yesterday. He wants to see ye but his stepmother would nae let him. She gave all the guards of the castle strict orders to strike him down and bind him if he tries to leave the castle to come find ye,” Maxwell continued.
If he was so apologetic or sorry for what he did to me, then he would find a way to come see me and tell it to me face, Lorraine argued. Besides, she knew how stubborn he was and knew that he would do whatever it took for him to get to see her if it was that important to him.
Maxwell waited a few minutes at the door waiting for an answer from his sister but none came. Reluctantly, he left also as his mother had before him. In the evening, he was going to break down her door.
Kyla could not hold back the laughter that erupted from her lungs when she saw a red faced Daividh led back to her by two guards. Apparently, he had tried to bribe them with liquor to allow him out of the castle walls but they had turned him back.
“Ye are relentless in yer pursuit,” she remarked.
“I am nae wounded anymore. I can move about the grounds. Why can I nae mount a horse and ride?”
“Ye could do that if ye wish to kill our mother with a heart ache. She is wary of horses now and would not ride out of the castle even. And ye cannae speak to Father because he would always support her. They are a couple together that way.”
Daividh sighed and let his angry shoulders fall. It had only been a few days, fewer even since Kyla had gone to see Lorraine but still, Lorraine had not come by the castle. He had seen her mother and had asked her about Lorraine, but her mother had lied that Lorraine had come down with a fever.
She does nae wish to see me, he knew still.
“She would come. I saw it in her eyes,” Kyla assured him, but it was not enough.
Walking across the castle grounds, he felt the familiar breeze of the grounds that he had known and had run across all his life. He would have wanted to have Lorraine by his side then, enjoying the atmosphere and the morning breeze as he did, but that was not to be his fate.
They walked across the grounds, greeting everyone that was in their path. It was a routine that Kyla was more accustomed to than he was. He never truly spoke to any of the staff at the castle, preferring to talk, drink, and fight with the men instead.
They all greeted the heirs as they walked past and Daividh felt that they mocked him the moment they were past them. He was the man who had fallen off a horse and had been tasked to be reported if he had tried to flee the castle as though he was a child. His stepmother had spared no one and so everyone in the castle had suddenly become his enemy.
The men who trained smiled with glee when they saw him pass. They missed him and would have loved for him to come and join them but he could not. His bones were strong and there wasn’t a time when he thought they weren’t but there were rules that he had no choice but to adhere to.
“I shall head to the market today and soon, I shall return to keep yer company,” Kyla told him to spite him.
Daividh was dismissive about it. At every turn and every brick they walked, he only wished he could turn around and Lorraine would be there.
“Daividh,” he suddenly heard a familiar female voice call to him.
Kyla wore shock on her face as did he as they both turned to see the person who had called his name.
A woman was just a few metres away from them and ran towards them with a smile on her face. She held up the helm of her gown so it would not sweep up the dust on the ground as she made her way to them. In a time not so long ago, Daividh would have been blown away by her smile, but now, he did not trust it.
Alison, he gritted under his breath.
“What does she want?”
“I ken nae,” Daividh replied. He had not seen her since she had caused a ruckus at Glenn’s feast. Since she had walked out on him and called off their engagement to one another, he had been turned into the butt of jokes in his own family and had been the source of whispers from those he knew not even because of her, but her departure had been the beginning of newer things for him.
Up until that moment, he had not had the reason to compare her to Lorraine. Alison was from a family of affluence and it was obvious in her countenance and her way of dressing. There was a coach behind her from whence she had come.
What is she doin’ here? He wondered as she came to their side.
“Good day to ye, Kyla. Ye look exceptionally beautiful this early morn,” Alison said.
Her words did nothing to make either of them at ease with her. It was unusual for her to speak in such a manner or flatter others.
“Thank ye,” Kyla m
umbled.
“What brings ye here?” Daividh asked her with folded arms. He did not understand her reason for coming to the castle, unless her father had sent her to deliver a message to the laird on his behalf. Certainly, she had not come to see him, he thought.
“I came to see ye,” she replied.
“What for? We are nae friends to one another. Ye made that very clear the last time that we spoke.”
Alison looked to Kyla. “Please, would ye give yer brother and I a little time to speak. There is bad blood between us that should be spent.”
The arrogance in her tone was more obvious at that point.
Reluctantly, Kyla shrugged and left. She left only because she could not stand Alison. They had never gotten along, even in the past when she had been engaged to Daividh.
Once Kyla was out of ear shot, Alison spoke. “I was mad at the time. I could never hate ye. Ye were the love of me life.”
Daividh scoffed and started walking off. She grabbed her helms and followed after him.
“Do nae walk away from me. Ye ken that I speak the truth. Me love for ye was obvious to all at that time, which was the reason I was so vexed, for people mocked me for being the lass that loved too much. And ye did nae act as though ye loved me as I loved ye. Some thought it was because ye were heir to the laird, but ye ken that I loved ye only for who ye are on the inside,” she said.
“We are over now, Alison. We have been over for a long time. I have moved on with me life and I would suggest that ye do the same.” His words were harsher than he had intended them to be but he was greatly uncomfortable by her presence and her words.
“But I ken ye still love me.”
“Nay, I do nae love ye,” he told her. But his words seemed to matter little to her.
“Ye have changed,” Alison went on. It was the reason she was there. She had seen him; seen him with the peasant girl Lorraine and had seen him with other people. He was changed and was different. It was almost like he had become another man. Her heart had tugged painfully at the sight of him with another woman and especially when he had turned a new leaf. She was not comfortable being the one to get the short end of any deal.
“Alison,” he called her name frankly so that she would stop to listen to him, “We are nae gettin’ back together. We have had our time and-”
In a leap that belied her petite height and stature, she wrapped her arms around his neck and seized his lips in hers.
Lorraine’s eyes were blinded by the sunlight. It was a harsh torture for the day itself was mad at her for having stayed in so long. She had not been certain that she would ever have ventured out that morning or afternoon but ceaseless thoughts and worry of Daividh had finally forced her to have a bath and change her clothes.
She got onto her horse and rode for the castle. Riding through people and places that she had ridden several times, a lot of eyes seemed to fall on her.
“Hope ye are feelin’ better,” most of them said when she greeted them.
She soon realized that it had been the lie her mother had told to explain to the people why she had been indoors for the past week. It was the better option lest they thought she was pregnant.
She tried to find the smile that crossed her face as she had ridden through the green path up to the castle. The puff of her shirt and the glue of her trousers to her skin made her sad at the little luxuries she had missed in her spent anger. Forgiveness was truly as blissful as her family made it out to be. She was unburdened enough to go and see him but not to give herself to him as she had days before.
Shyness became of her when she had come to the castle walls. The guards greeted her as they always did. Maxwell had said that Daividh was held up in his chambers, so she rode for the castle.
“Lorraine.” She heard her name called from behind her. It was the friendly Kyla.
“Ye came. He is by the arena,” she shouted to Lorraine.
Heart skipping, she had reacted immediately. Kyla had called her a second time but she had not heard her call.
Kyla had remembered all too late that Daividh was in the company of Alison, his past lover.
Lorraine had ridden quickly across the ground, fighting the smile on her face so that Daividh would not have thought himself already forgiven when he came to see her.
Alas! She saw him in the embrace of another woman, kissing him. Lorraine did not stop. She could not stop because her chest clenched in its hurt and her vision blurred from the tears that threatened to be loose.
She reined her horse and rode away, out the castle from whence she had come, regretting the hope and push everyone else had given her to see Daividh MacDougall.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Get away from me,” Daividh yelled as he pushed Alison off him.
She almost fell when he pushed her but he did not care for he was vexed with her.
“What is wrong with ye?”
“I am nae in love with ye. I love another.”
“That girl that-”
“Her name-” Daividh closed the distance between the two of them, frightening her, “-is Lorraine and aye, I am in love with her. I have never loved anyone as I have loved her. So, please, leave the castle now.”
Alison was so shaken that she could not move, so Daividh did. He did not look back until he could see her no more. The longer he walked, the clearer his mind became.
I said I loved Lorraine, he realized. It was the first time that he had admitted it to anyone, even himself.
Lorraine arrived at home with withheld tears in her eyes. She did not want to cry. She had promised herself that she would not cry but it looked every step of the way as a losing battle.
I have to do somethin’. She knew it was the only way she could get through the day without breaking down. There were so many things to feel and still so little. The chief of it was the sadness in her chest. She looked at her bed and decided against seeking its comfort.
Getting back on her horse, she rode for Anton’s. His horse still needed her attention and at that moment, she knew she needed the animal even more than it needed her.
Anton was happy to see her as he always was whenever she came around. He was a busy man and he rarely had time to indulge her in pleasantries whenever she came to his home.
“Good mornin’,” she bid him. He nodded back to her with a polite smile. She pointed to the stable and he nodded also. The horse was there. Lorraine headed for the stable and found the horse lying in the hay, as though in wait for her. Its big brown eyes regarded her with so much need and love that she just fell into the hay next to it and it put its head on her lap.
Lorraine lay there, at peace for the first time since she had seen the woman kiss Daividh. She could not tell for long it had been or what the expression on his face had been for she did not remember any of those things. All she remembered was the kiss of another woman on his lips. The woman she did not fault, for Daividh was a handsome man. He was the one that she hated for causing her hurt repeatedly.
It took a few minutes before she fell asleep with the horse by her side. When she came back to consciousness, Anton was there, smiling at her. She quickly checked to see if she was indecent but it seemed that Anton had just entered the stables not long before she had woken.
“I would have given ye me horse but I am too selfish,” he teased Lorraine. The horse slept so peacefully next to her.
“And-” he rose back up to his feet “-he is important to me,” he said to her.
She rose up from the hay. “I will nae take yer horse from ye. I was tired and slept it off,” she lied, but he was never one to ask her questions. He only wanted her to treat his horse as the same was all she wanted. He was a nice man but not her friend and as such, she could not pour out her grievances to him.
“I shall return to me house to finish me work. Yell me name if ye need anythin’,” he told her.
Lorraine nodded and pulled out the herbs in her bag to begin her treatment of the horse. She spoke to the beast as she te
nded to it and its eyes regarded her as though it understood her words.
“Do ye think he loves her?” she asked the beast, and it neighed, “I do nae ken if ye mean aye or nay.”
A heartbeat passed before she asked the horse her second question; “Do ye think he touched her like he touched me?”
The horse gave no reply and that dampened her mood even more. She could not help but imagine his hands on the body of the other woman, his lips loving her body just as he had done to her before.
