A Soldier's Salvation (Highland Heartbeats Book 7)(6)

She wished the whisper would tell her what it wanted from her, why it perturbed her so. Why it made her heart ache.

A lock of hair fell in front of her eyes. Hair blond as her mother’s. She smoothed it into place even though the breeze was bound to tease it free again. Mother had always fretted so over Caitlin inheriting that hair. In a world where it seemed brown or red or brownish-red hair was the norm, to be born with hair as light as theirs was surely a sign.

Of what? Mother would never say—or, if she did, Caitlin had been too young to remember now. There were so few memories which had stayed with her. Would that Mother had lived a bit longer.

Would that Caitlin had died with her.

She dragged her knuckles over her cheeks to dispense with the tears which had begun to fall. She wouldn’t allow herself to give in to emotion—she’d done enough of that already. Over the last month, she’d cried enough to fill a lake.

But you got away. You ran away.

Yes, she had, and she’d barely made it through the journey. By the time she’d reached Fiona and Kent’s farm, a day’s ride from Anderson lands, she’d been half-dead from exhaustion and starvation.

It had been days since she’d last eaten, since long before the wedding ceremony had taken place. The thought of marrying Alan Anderson had robbed her of an appetite, and she’d been far too panicked to take time to secure food for the journey.

There had been no time, as it was. Her new husband had been heavily into his third or perhaps even fourth pitcher of wine by then, laughing and jesting with fellow clansmen, paying her little attention. But that would change. He wouldn’t ignore her for long.

There would’ve been the bedding, for one. He would’ve sought her out soon enough in order to climb on top of her and sweat out what he’d drank. To officially make her his property until the end of her life.

Even now, weeks later, seated on a hill a day’s ride from her husband, the idea turned Caitlin’s stomach.

She’d left Alan’s home with nothing but the clothing on her back and the horse which she’d raised since the day it was foaled. She didn’t want to owe him anything, didn’t want him to be able to claim she’d stolen anything from him, other than herself.

Naturally, he’d think of it that way. She was his wife. She belonged to him, as she had always belonged to one man or another. She’d never been her own person before she’d slipped out of Alan’s home—she refused to think of it as her own—and taken off into the night without even knowing whether or not her cousin would take her in.

Fiona had, thank the heavens.

A chill ran through her, making her hug her legs tighter in spite of the very warm evening. What if she were found? What if Fiona and Kent suffered for the charity they’d extended?

She had already been with them for far too long, a fact which she was certain Kent was also aware of. The first fortnight, he’d been genial and almost overly solicitous toward her. She’d been ill-used, for certain, and as her cousin’s husband he’d offered to take her under his protection in spite of the fact that she was wed to another man.

“After all,” he’d reasoned at the time, “the marriage was never…”

He had blushed and stammered after that—a gentle man, a kind one, as befitting her gentle and kind cousin—but Caitlin was old enough to understand what he’d tried to express. The marriage was never consummated. If she wished to have it dissolved in the eyes of the Church, she had the ability to do so.

Except she had no power. And no money with which to secure such a decree. Her powerlessness was the entire reason she’d been forced into marriage at all. Now, she was powerless to escape it except by running away and staying away. Far away.

What if it meant running for the rest of her life?

Her eyes fixed on the mountains, which were turning deep purple now that the sun was all but a memory. Could she truly live out the remainder of her days without a home of her own? Always moving, hiding, pretending to be someone she wasn’t in order to avoid being tied down to a brute?

He’d always been a bully. Her first memories of him were of being teased and taunted—not the way Rodric had teased her, the way boys and girls sometimes teased for lack of the ability to share what they truly felt for one another.

Alan had taken pleasure in being mean. He’d laughed loudest whenever he’d made her cry, such as the time when he’d pretended to drown her favorite doll.

She’d been old enough by then to know her doll wasn’t alive, didn’t breathe or think. But that doll had been with her as long as she could remember. The doll had been a gift from her father, the only thing he’d given her aside from his blue eyes. He’d died long before she was old enough to remember him.

Had Alan known this? Had he understood the hidden significance a simple rag doll had held for her? Caitlin didn’t know. She only knew that he’d noticed the way she’d carried it everywhere, and he’d waited for just the right moment to snatch it from under her arm and thrust it into a bucket of water.

“Don’t!” she’d screamed, pleaded, wailed, tugging at his sleeves in a frantic attempt to save her beloved friend. “Don’t, Alan, you’ll kill her!”

“She’s not real, you baby,” he’d laughed—still, he’d held the doll beneath the surface of the water, squeezing it and laughing louder the harder Caitlin had fought him. She’d nearly had a fit, she was so thoroughly beside herself.