A Soldier's Salvation (Highland Heartbeats Book 7)(10)

5





Caitlin wiped fresh tears from her cheeks. Just when she thought she’d cried every tear available.

“From what I heard, it was a brief illness,” Kent explained. He stood in the doorway to the bedroom he shared with his wife, drying his face and hands on a strip of linen after having washed both in the basin. “The fever flared up of a sudden, and it was all over within another two days.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. It was too painful to imagine poor, sweet Uncle Gavin succumbing to any such illness. To think, she would never see him again. Would never be able to thank him for treating her as though she were his own daughter.

Fiona patted her back. “He was a good man. I’m certain he’s gone on to his reward.”

“Aye, I’m certain he has,” Caitlin sighed, not wishing to upset either of her hosts by asking what good it was for him to be gone, reward or no reward. Surely, if what they’d all been taught as children was true and there really was an eternal reward waiting for all God-fearing, pious people, Gavin McMannis was in the Heavenly Kingdom at that very moment.

Little good it did her. A selfish thought, but her heart was far too pained for her mind to think unselfishly. She needed him. Aunt Sorcha needed him, too. They had never been blessed with children, and she would be all alone.

What difference did it make for a person to do good their entire life? To be good, to do right by others? Sorcha and Gavin had been the kindest, dearest people in the world and the only true family she’d known after her mother’s passing. If it hadn’t been for the certainty that their home would be the first place Alan would look for her, she would’ve fled to them after the wedding. Their modest home had been more of a home, more of a comfort, to her than her own had ever been.

And where did it get them? Uncle Gavin, dead after a sudden illness. Aunt Sorcha, alone and poor and childless, without the husband with whom she’d lived so happily in spite of their meager circumstances. They had always been loving and dear, and had always kept her best interests at heart.

They’d even gone so far as to stand up to her stepfather when he’d announced her betrothal. Not that he had listened. Not that she had expected him to.

“You say he only died early this morning?” Caitlin asked, looking at Kent.

“Aye, just this morning. I tried to call upon your aunt to express my condolences, but she was far too occupied with other callers and the arrangements which needed to be made.”

“Yes, it’s a difficult first few hours, just after someone dies.” Caitlin been but a child when her mother died after having given birth to her fourth dead son, but she remembered the great commotion just afterward. People coming and going, the village deacon hanging about, the weeping of women in nearly every room of the suddenly very crowded house.

Only Aunt Sorcha had thought of her that day, finding her in her bedchamber and ensuring she was cared for while everyone else mourned the double death.

Who would care for Sorcha now?

“I must go to her,” she decided, determination setting her jaw in a firm line.

“What?” Fiona leaped to her feet, hands on her hips. “You’ll do no such thing! What do you think? That we’ve taken the chance of allowing you to live here all this time so you could then be so foolhardy as to show yourself on McAllister lands?”

“Fiona…” Kent murmured, taking her arm.

Caitlin merely shook her head. “It’s all right, Kent. You needn’t behave as though you haven’t felt my presence just as keenly as my cousin has. I hold nothing against you—in fact, I owe you everything, and I’m well aware of it.”

“Even so,” he replied, not bothering to tell her she was wrong. “Even so, it seems a great risk, and an unnecessary one. What do you hope to accomplish?”

“I must at least let her know she isn’t alone.”

“She has the entire clan to look after her,” Fiona argued.

“Do you think any of them care? Truly? Connor cares nothing for my mother’s family, as they are not his blood relations. He’ll extend no courtesies to her; you can be sure.”

“You’ll still accomplish nothing by going. Nothing real, nothing lasting, as you cannot afford to be seen. You’d never be able to stay without someone spotting you and reporting back to Alan or Connor that you were seen.”

“I’ll simply have to be smart enough to avoid detection,” she reasoned.

Fiona shot Kent a look of exasperation, throwing her hands into the air. “There’s no reasoning with her! My mother was right when she told tales of her cousin Caitriona and how that hair of hers meant a stubborn temperament. She passed it on to her daughter.”

“You might not speak of me as though I’m not here,” Caitlin interjected, looking from one of them to the other and back again. “Also, once I’m gone, you won’t have to fret over my presence.”

Fiona’s cheeks flushed scarlet, matching the color of her hair. Clearly ashamed of her cousin knowing the truth of her feelings.

“It’s all right,” Caitlin assured her. “I forced myself on you, and you’ve been kind enough to keep me here all this time.”

“You’re welcome to return—would that you wouldn’t leave at all.” Fiona wrapped her in a tight hug.