“And now he’s better?” Mairi asked. “Now the love that cut him for a quarter of a century…is healed?” She pressed her hands to her temple. “I cannot conceive it.”
Connall frowned, feeling completely at sea. “That’s not a bad thing, is it? That a new woman has eased his loneliness?”
“Of course, it’s a good thing! I want him happy!” She was all but shouting, and he could not reconcile the pain in her tone with what she actually said.
“Damn it, woman. Make sense!”
“I can’t!” she cried back, clearly miserable.
He took a moment to study her. She stood there with her head bowed and her shoulders compressed against her neck. She looked like a person tensed for a blow. He might not understand the things that drove her, but he knew what she needed. So he enfolded her in his arms, wrapped her in his protection, and used his own body to keep her safe until she sorted through whatever it was that gripped her.
He didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. She fell against him and cried silently. Tears wet his tartan and his chest while he held her tight.
In time, the storm passed. She cleaned her face and pulled back. And when she spoke, he held her tenderly as the knot of pain in his own chest eased.
“I have lived all my life with his grief, Connall. I watched true love tear him apart.” She looked up at him. “That is all I knew of love,” she said. “The devastating grief when it ends.”
She stared at him a long time. There was a message there for him, but he didn’t dare guess at it. She had to come to the statement herself, and so he held silent.
“How can such pain be healed so quickly? I’ve only been gone a few weeks.”
“It’s been twenty-five years, Mairi. How long did you want him to grieve?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t want him to grieve,” she huffed. “It’s just…”
“It’s what you thought love was? Decades of loneliness and pain—”
“When it’s gone. Yes.”
He was beginning to understand. “And now you wonder if it were a true love?”
“It was,” she said firmly, as if trying to convince herself.
“Aye,” he agreed. “There have been willing lasses aplenty for your father. I’ve seen them make advances to him. You have, too.”
“I have.”
“He didn’t take up with a single one—”
“Not until now. Until Miss English Bluestocking Teacher.”
He chuckled at her description of Miss Allen. Then he pressed a kiss to her forehead and turned them away from the light. This was a conversation to be had in shadows as they walked apart from gossipy ears.
“She must be very special woman, mustn’t she?” he offered.
Mairi shrugged. “Maybe.” Then she huffed out a breath. “I thought her a very nice woman when we met. Independent and smart.”
He smiled. “Sounds like someone else I know.”
“Who?”
He snorted. “You, you bloody fool. She’s as fiercely herself as you are, or so Finn said.” He pulled her tight. “Can you not wish them happy?”
“Of course, I can. I do! It just surprised me, is all.”
And now came the sticking part. He tugged her into the shadows as he turned her to face him. “And what does this mean about us, Mairi? What does it make you think about our love?” He felt her stiffen beneath him, but he would not let her run from this now. “I know you love me, Mairi MacAdaidh. You have since we were children running wild through the moors.”
She frowned at him, shoving him back with a pointed finger. Or she tried. This time, he refused to budge no matter how hard she poked. “A child’s love and a woman’s are different things.”