“Damn ye, Duncan Ruadh Mòr!” Moira said under her breath as she stared out at the empty sea. “How could ye leave me?”
Duncan had brought her worse luck than a broken looking glass. Seven years of misery, with no end in sight.
Moira recalled the day of her wedding. Everyone was gathered in the hall waiting for the bride while she stood on the castle wall still watching for a sail in the distance. Up until the last moment, when her father came himself to fetch her, she was hoping and praying Duncan would return in time to save her. Even then, she would have sneaked down to the beach and—after giving him a tongue-lashing he would not soon forget—she would have climbed into his boat and gone anywhere with him.
She had been so certain he would come back for her. But it was five years before Duncan MacDonald returned to Skye. She would never forgive him.
Moira pushed away the old pain and watched Ragnall throwing a stick for his dog, Sàr, a giant wolfhound twice Ragnall’s weight and the size of a small pony. For a moment her son looked as if he were a carefree lad, and she felt guilty that he could not be. His sweet young face had an old man’s eyes.
Ragnall raised his arm to throw the stick again but stopped and stared up at the top of the bluff. “Father is here.”
Moira flinched as she always did when she heard Ragnall call that foul man his father. When she turned and saw Sean’s bearlike shape above them, she fought back the wave of nausea that rose in her throat. Even from this distance, she sensed trouble. She did not want Ragnall here.
“Ye know how he hates Sàr. Take him away,” she said. When Ragnall hesitated and gave her a worried look, she pushed him. “Quickly now!”
“Come,” Ragnall called, and Sàr loped beside him down the beach.
Moira forced her body to relax as Sean came down the cliff path toward her. Showing fear only emboldened him. Unfortunately, Sean could smell fear on you like the wild beast he was. When Sean reached her, he stood too close, towering over her with his hands on his hips and his legs apart in a wide stance. She smiled up at him.
“My dear wife,” Sean said, his eyes as cold as the icy wind coming off the winter sea, “have ye something to tell me?”
Fear closed her throat, so she brightened her smile until she could speak. “Just that I’m pleased ye could come out to take a stroll with me. I know what a busy man ye are.”
The smell of whiskey wafted off him, heightening her alarm. It was early in the day for strong drink, even for Sean.
“I saw the way my brother Colla was looking at ye in the hall at breakfast,” Sean said.
Not this again. There was a time when Sean liked that men looked at her, and even provoked it by making lewd remarks about her. Now it only made him angry.
Sean had always been difficult, but he had grown worse since the deaths of her father and brother Ragnall at the Battle of Flodden. As a result of their deaths, the fortunes of her clan fell, and with them, her own. Sean respected power, and she had lost hers.
Moira had heard rumors that her clan was slowly recovering its strength under her brother Connor. Yet Connor had not visited her once to demonstrate to Sean that he placed a high value on her welfare. She would have begged her brother to come if Sean had allowed her to send a message.
“I can’t help it if men look at me,” she said in what she hoped was a light voice.
Sean grabbed her arm in an iron grip, sending apprehension thrumming through her.
“Ye encourage them,” he said. “I see how ye flaunt yourself at them.”
“I don’t.” She should have kept silent, but she could not seem to help herself. She was tired of the false accusations, weary of pretending he was always right, and sick to death ofhim.
“Are ye calling your husband a liar now?”
She squeezed her eyes shut and steeled herself for the slap.
“Stop!” Ragnall shouted. “Let go of her!”
Moira snapped her eyes open when she heard her son’s voice. Ragnall stood with his feet apart and with the stick he had been tossing to his dog clenched in his fist, a small boy mimicking the battle stance of the warrior he would one day be.
Dread weighed down on Moira’s chest. “I’m all right,” she said, meeting Ragnall’s worried glance. “Put that down. Please.”
Fear turned Moira’s insides to liquid as she watched Sean’s face fill with impending violence. Her world hung suspended by the thin thread of her husband’s control.
When Sean threw his head back and barked out a laugh, Moira’s knees felt weak. For once, Sean’s unpredictability had worked in her favor.
“Ye will be a fierce warrior like your father,” Sean said.
Ragnall clenched his jaw as Sean roughed his hair.