The Saint (Highland Guard #5)(117)

Kenneth let out an expletive and would have gone at Magnus again, but she held him back by hanging on his arm.

“Stop!” she yelled. “I won’t let you kill him no matter what he’s done.” She looked at Magnus again, knowing there was more. “Why? Why would you do such a thing?”

William was his friend. There had to be a reason.

“Because he wanted you,” Kenneth said. “He’s always wanted you.”

Helen spun on Kenneth in anger. “You know that’s not true. William was just as much his friend as he was yours. I want you to leave, Kenneth. You’ve done enough damage for the day.”

“I haven’t done nearly enough damage. He’s still standing. I won’t leave until I hear an explanation.”

“Go to hell, Sutherland. I don’t owe you a goddamned thing.”

Kenneth lunged, prepared to go at Magnus again, but she stopped him. “Please. Please just go. Let me talk to him.”

Her brother met her gaze. His mouth fell in a hard line, but he heeded her plea. “If you marry him, Helen, you are dead to me.” He threw Magus one more angry glare. “This isn’t over, MacKay. I told my brother this would never work. I’ll not spend one more day under the same roof with you.”

With one more warning look at Helen, Kenneth stormed off the beach.

She looked at Magnus’s bruised and battered face and said, “Come. I’d better tend to your face.”

His expression was terrifyingly blank. “Helen—”

She cut him off. “Your face first, then we talk.”

She needed to give herself a moment to calm down. But part of her feared that if they talked now, fixing the cuts on his face would be the last thing either of them wanted to do.

He followed her to the kitchens. A small storage room at the back housed the castle’s apothecary. She washed the blood from his face with a cloth she dipped in a bucket of water one of the kitchen maids had fetched from the well, and then began to spread a salve over the cuts and abrasions. He didn’t flinch or move a muscle the entire time, even when she touched the worst, a wide gash on his cheek, but he had deep cuts and bruises along his jaw as well. It was as if he were numb.

“If it doesn’t stop bleeding I will need to stitch it closed.”

He nodded indifferently.

Finally, Helen wiped her hands on the linen apron she’d donned and turned to face him. She could put it off no longer.

“Why, Magnus? You must have had a reason.”

Her unwavering faith in him, however, only seemed to make him angrier. Guilt, she realized, was twisting inside him. That was the darkness.

“I had no choice.” In a cold, emotionless voice, he explained what had happened. How William had been pinned by the rocks. How the English were swarming them. How he’d tried to get him free but couldn’t. How William had been dying, but he’d been forced to take his life to prevent him from being captured or identified, and how it hadn’t mattered in the end because of the birthmark.

It wasn’t what Magnus said that filled her with horror, but what he didn’t say. He’d done it to protect the identity of William’s brethren, but he’d also done it to protect her.

She staggered, finally understanding the gravity of what stood between them. It wasn’t just her family. It wasn’t just that she’d married William and his loyalty to his friend. It was so much worse. He’d been forced to do the unthinkable in part to protect her. And part of him blamed her for it.

She’d thought love was all that mattered. In her naïveté, she thought nothing was insurmountable if they loved each other. But she was wrong. Even if he loved her, guilt, blame, and the ghost of William would always be between them. He would never forgive himself, and he would never forgive her.

But even as her heart was breaking, she sought to ease the burden that he’d obviously been carrying for a long time. “You had no choice,” she said, putting her hand on his arm. “You did what you had to do. Blood in the lungs like that …” She shook her head. “There was nothing anyone could have done. He was as good as dead.”

He jerked away from her touch. “I know that, Helen. I don’t need absolution from you.”

She knew he was only lashing out in pain, but the words stung nonetheless. “What is it that you need from me then, Magnus? Because it seems whatever I do, it will never be enough.”

Their eyes met, and for a moment she thought her words might have penetrated through the guilt and anger, and that maybe they had a chance.

But she was only seeing what she wanted to see. In the cold echo of his silence, she knew what he’d known all those months ago, but which she’d refused to understand. William Gordon’s death would always be between them. Magnus might love her, but the guilt would prevent them from ever finding true happiness. Could she marry him knowing that?

Her chest squeezed with the answer.

But she was saved from telling him so when a deafening clap of thunder followed by a loud boom tore through the air. Without thinking, she hurled herself against his chest, trying to block out the terrifying sound.

Thunder? It couldn’t be thunder, she realized. The sun had been shining outside.

“What was that?” she said, gazing up at Magnus. It was a sound unlike anything she’d ever heard before.