A Soldier's Salvation (Highland Heartbeats Book 7)(37)

“It was a message to her, if nothing else,” Brice growled. “He wanted her to know that he knew she’d been there.”

“You believe so?”

“Why go to such lengths otherwise?”

Rodric couldn’t answer this, because he couldn’t imagine a situation in which going to such lengths would have even crossed his mind. To kill an innocent couple, neither of whom had ever harmed anyone?

“And the man told you nothing?” he asked, as though repeating the question would bring a different answer.

“Nay, though I would very much have rather taken the time to question him on why such a dreadful thing was done. When he lunged forward with the dirk…”

“Of course, you did what anyone would have done,” Rodric assured him. From the way Fergus had told it, Connor’s lookout had fought like a wild animal to escape once he’d been cornered against the boulder behind which he’d been watching the scene below. Evidently, the sight of Caitlin’s grief had distracted him from the sound of approaching horses.

“Not much good it did the poor lass, though.” Brice looked down into the grave, now all but filled with earth. “Nor this lass, here. God rest them both.”

Rodric had never heard his friend so much as speak the name. It seemed the horror they’d witnessed had brought out a depth of feeling unseen before.

“I’ll finish this, if you wish to speak with her,” Brice offered, nodding in Caitlin’s direction.

She hadn’t moved since the last time he’d looked in her direction.

He wasn’t entirely certain he wished to speak with her just then. He didn’t know what to say. What words were there which could possibly soothe her? Nothing could take it back, just as nothing could convince her of her own innocence.

If he’d ever met a truly innocent person in his life, it was Caitlin.

Still, his friend had a point. He needed to check on her, to at least remind her she was safe with them. Let Connor McAllister and any number of his brutes so much as try to lay a hand on her. They’d soon find out how mistaken they were.

When he reached her side, the look of peace on her face was a surprise to him. Not even blank staring would’ve surprised him so. If anything, that was what he’d expected to see, that she had simply stepped away from herself and gone elsewhere, to that land beyond the self into which he’d witnessed so many others retreat when the horrors before them were too much to bear.

She even turned her face toward his, and her brow lined with a concerned frown. “You’re in pain,” she murmured, her voice low and flat.

“Not too much to be borne,” he assured her.

“Do not lie to me, Rodric Anderson,” she warned. “I see it in your eyes. What pains you?”

It was better than discussing what they’d seen, what he had just buried.

“My shoulder,” he admitted, wincing as he moved his arm in a slow circle he couldn’t complete. The arm dropped to his side. “I injured it quite badly at the Battle of Largs, you see, and it never healed properly.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Eh, it could’ve been much worse.” He wouldn’t tell her how much. She didn’t need to hear how close he’d come to death, not after having witnessed so much death only hours earlier.

“Even so, to live with pain such as that. Every day, to bear up under it. I’m not surprised,” she observed with a slight smile.

“How is that?”

“You were always the type to ignore pain, or at least to pretend it didn’t exist. Do you recall your broken fingers?”

If anyone had told him he’d laugh so soon after performing such a grim task, he’d have thought them the worst sort of ghoul—but there he was. “Aye,” he chuckled. “I was a hardheaded sort, wasn’t I?”

“Aunt Sorcha warned you against jumping from the roof of the barn,” she reminded him. “As did I, though you never would’ve listened to a girl—a younger one, at that.”

“I wanted to prove that I was a man.”

“And you broke two fingers doing so. A wonder you didn’t break your neck.”

“A wonder my father didn’t break it for me when he found out what I’d done.”

“It wasn’t what you did,” she pointed out with a smile. “It was the way you kept it secret from him for three days, until the joints became inflamed and then infected.”

“You needn’t remind me,” he scowled.

“You’ve always been difficult in your fashion,” she murmured, shaking her head. “I suppose you do everything in your power to conceal your pain from others.”

“This is what men do,” he shrugged, wincing again when he did.

“What about admitting you’re in pain and allowing someone to take care of you?”

“It’s a lovely world you live in.” He smirked.

“Yes, I know. That would be too much to ask of you.” Her spirits seemed to sag before she turned her face back toward the Grampian Mountains, out in the distance. They were just as glorious a sight from far off as they’d been when he’d visited the Duncans.

The Duncans.

The seed of an idea began to take root in his mind. Why it hadn’t occurred to him before then, he couldn’t say. Perhaps the need to take immediate action on behalf of Caitlin’s cousin had left him unable to see the clearest solution.