A Soldier's Salvation (Highland Heartbeats Book 7)(47)

He cut his eyes in the direction of his friend, whose straight back gave no indication of his even hearing their discussion. “Why, I don’t know. Perhaps you’d better have that out with someone who knows better than I do.”

For the first time since they’d begun speaking, Rodric reacted. He turned his head just enough to meet Brice’s gaze—and a stormy expression twisted his handsome features into a mask of fury. “Perhaps ye should mind matters which apply to you and allow others to take care of the rest,” he suggested in a cold voice.

“This was your idea?” Caitlin asked, genuinely surprised. “No one alerted you to my peril? No one offered a reward for your claiming me?”

“Who would have, lass?”

It came out as a snarl, like that of an angry dog, and she recoiled from the power of it. She hadn’t intended to bruise his pride, but the damage had already been done.

He snapped the reins, turning his attention to the road ahead as the horse carried him in a fast trot far from them.

Her heart sank. More than anything, she wished to ride ahead and apologize for having hurt his pride. Perhaps it was indelicate of her, asking such questions in front of the others, but she truly hadn’t counted on Rodric convincing his friends to go to this trouble without any other motivation other than her welfare.

She chewed her lip, lost in thought. It all became murkier with each passing day, the tenuous relationship they shared. As though she walked in a loch with a muddy bottom, her feet kicking up the silt until what had been clear before her entrance was now hopelessly clouded.

Brice clicked his tongue sorrowfully. “Och, lass, it’s sorry I am for pushing your lad too hard. Sometimes I do that, jesting when the time for jests has passed. It’s difficult, ye see, because I don’t know the time has passed until it’s already passed.”

“You don’t know you’ve gone too far until it’s too late.”

“That’s the truth of it,” he agreed.

He’s not my lad, she wished to protest, but that would have made her appear childish. There was no reason to argue the point, especially when Brice had just made it clear that everything they did, they did because Rodric had decided they would.

They rode on in silence. It seemed the safest course.

Rodric continued to ride far in the lead, his straight posture and refusal to so much as turn his head to the side making his feelings a mystery to her.





23





There had only come a few times over the course of their friendship when Rodric had sincerely wished to kill Brice—or at least to maim him in some lasting way. The scars, he reasoned, would serve as a future reminder that he was not a man to be trifled with.

As he rode ahead of the group, he thought this might be the time to make good on that which he’d only imagined up to then.

It was a hot morning, which meant the day would likely be just as hot. Dark clouds were building on the horizon and slowly making their way east, telling him a storm would hit before the day was out. There would likely be a great roar in the sky. Even now, long before the clouds reached him, he felt a surge all around him. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, the horse beneath him behaving skittishly.

“Whoa, there,” he murmured, patting its neck.

His attitude could have been what bothered the animal so, he reasoned. Animals were able to get the sense of a situation even if they didn’t understand the subtleties. The tan gelding between his thighs couldn’t have offered an opinion on the situation, but he knew Rodric was in no good mood as a result of it.

The road was blessedly empty that morning, winding as it did through a mostly uninhabited stretch of land. They were coming up on the Highlands soon, the peaks of the Grampians closer with every minute.

As far as he was concerned, they couldn’t reach Ben Nevis quickly enough. Would that he could take wing like one of the birds which flew overhead. Would that he could be rid of that which weighed so heavily on him.

Why was it so difficult to imagine admitting his love for her?

It wasn’t his place to do so, for one. While no one could have hated the fact that she was married to his brother more than he did, the marriage was a fact. They’d been wed in the eyes of God and the law. He no longer had claim to her affections.

A very pretty excuse, one which absolved him from the acknowledgment of his shortcomings. He ought to have ensured they had more than just an understanding when he left for training. He ought to have announced his intentions to her stepfather, to his father, with witnesses present to bear testimony if the time came.

He’d thought himself such a man, too. Such a wise, clever, worldly man. He’d known nothing of what the world could do, of how quickly a dream or a love could be struck down.

Yet even after he’d learned so much, after he’d witnessed the terrible suddenness and finality of death and the grave unfairness life could sometimes offer, he’d still expected her to be there, waiting for him. Untouched, unblemished, as though she’d frozen like the river in the deepest part of winter. Merely waiting for him to return and allow her to thaw.

Because Caitlin had always been and would always be the one good, pure, true thing in his life. The only thing. That which gave him hope. Even when she drove him to the brink of raving lunacy, she was the only woman he’d ever love. The only woman he’d ever allow to drive him to that point.