THE HOVEL FELT empty and silent after Tad left. Erea went back to her old routine—an endless stream of chores necessary for survival—but she felt oddly distracted and unsettled.
Her thoughts kept returning to that kiss. She had wanted more, but Tad had ended it, mounted his pony and ridden away.
It’s just as well, Erea reminded herself as she scooped up a bucket of fresh water from the stream that trickled through the valley, around twenty yards from her hovel. You’re happier on your own anyway.
A strange sensation settled over her with that last thought. Am I?
Erea straightened up and waded back to the bank. She felt an aching hollowness within her and recognized the sensation as loneliness.
She had felt it often when her mother had first died. With the passing moons the ache had dulled, yet now she felt her solitude here keenly once more.
Damn him, this is Tad’s fault.
Carrying the pail of water back to her home, Erea set it down beside the hearth. Then she went back outside, squelching across the slushy melting snow, to the stone cairn that sat under the shadow of the trees behind her hovel.
She had built that cairn herself—stone by stone—carrying up rocks from the stream and piling them over her mother’s corpse. It had taken her nearly three days to complete it.
Stopping before the stone mound, Erea’s chest constricted. Six moons had passed since her mother had come down with a deathly fever that had claimed her life. In the matter of a day, Erea’s existence had changed forever. Her mother had been her strength, her purpose. Her loss felt like having a limb removed.
“You warned me about men, didn’t you, ma?” Erea murmured, bowing her head before the cairn. “Now I see why.”
Part of her wished she had heeded her mother’s advice and driven Tad away, yet another part of her felt strangely alive after the warrior’s stay at her home. His laugh, the timbre of his voice, the mischievous glint in those blue eyes, and his virile masculine presence—she missed it all.
Erea let out a sigh. “Enough. He’s gone, and he’s not coming back.”
With a heavy heart, and even heavier steps, she turned from her mother’s cairn and trudged back to the hovel. The light was starting to fade, and she still had half a dozen chores to do.
“We had visitors while you were away.” Fortrenn mac Nyle took a bite of roast boar and cast a glance in his son’s direction. “Aonghus mac Gille came to Dun Grianan yet again, to ask when you will wed his daughter.”
Tad glanced up from where he had been carving himself some meat. “He doesn’t give up easily, does he? I thought both Isla and I made our wishes clear at The Gathering. There will be no wedding.”
His father’s gaze narrowed. “You and Isla would make a good match.”
Tad snorted. “If we liked each other, aye. But she thinks I’ve the manners of a goat, and I think she looks like one.”
His comment brought guffaws from Bevan and Ailig, although his mother went still, and his father’s mouth thinned; a sure sign Tad had angered him.
“She’s not wrong about you,” Fortrenn growled. “However, Isla is a comely lass and ripe for marriage. Her father is one of my most loyal warriors.”
Tad shrugged. He knew where this was heading. His father was desperate for Tad to wed and start fathering children. Being an only child came with a great weight of responsibility. One that Tad did not want.
“Isla will refuse,” he said lightly, raising his cup to his lips and taking a sip of mead.
“She will do as she’s told.”
“My answer’s still ‘no’. Aonghus had a wasted trip.”
“No, he didn’t.”
Tad went still.
Silence fell at the table, and Tad noted that both Bevan and Ailig were looking sheepish. His mother would not meet his eye.
“You weren’t here,” Fortrenn continued. “So I informed Aonghus that you and Isla will wed in the spring.”
Tad stared at him. He was not usually at a loss for words, but his father’s admission stunned him.
“That’s not your decision to make,” he growled. “It’s my life. I’ll choose my own bride.”
His father leaned toward him, his blue eyes narrowing. “You forget who you are. As my son, you must sire an heir.”
“And I will,” Tad countered, his own anger rising now. “But let me choose my own woman.”
“I gave you that chance—years of chances—but you’ve wasted them. It’s time I made the decision for you … and I have.”
His father’s words—blunt and humiliating—hit Tad across the face with physical force. He was twenty three, a man, and yet his father had just spoken to him as if he had yet to grow his first beard.
The whole broch had gone silent now. The men and women seated at the tables below their platform were all watching him.
For once, Tadhg mac Fortrenn had no ready answer.
Bastard.
Tad slammed his fist into the rough stone wall inside his alcove, welcoming the pain that shot up his arm as he did so.
His father had always been heavy-handed with him, ever since Tad had been a lad. He had been Fortrenn’s great hope, a role he had never quite been able to fill. Early on he had realized nothing he ever did was good enough—and so he had given up trying.
This is his revenge.
Nursing his bruised knuckles, Tad sat down on the pile of furs against the far wall of his alcove and looked around. It was a tiny space, one he did not spend a lot of time in, for he preferred to be outdoors.
Suddenly it felt like a cage, as if the walls were closing in on him.
Muttering a curse, he flopped back on the furs and stared up at the curved stone roof above.
He remembered the awkwardness of last summer’s Gathering. It had been the first his people had hosted in many years. Aonghus mac Gille, a warrior from a tiny village far to the north of their territory, had pushed his daughter in Tad’s face from the moment he arrived at the gathering.
Isla, proud and stern-faced, had not responded to Tad’s teasing humor. His father had pressured him to show her some attention, but she had sneered when he asked her to dance and answered Tad’s questions with three-word sentences during the feasting. He had attempted to impress her during the games, but she ignored him.
Mercifully, after the eve of Mid-Summer Fire, Isla had made her lack of interest plain: “You’re wasting your time, Tadhg. I’ll not wed a man with the manners of a goat.”
Not remotely offended, Tad had been grateful to her. He had no interest in Isla either. They had both told their respective fathers of their decision and had thought the matter had ended.
Yet clearly it had not.
Tad closed his eyes, blocking out his surroundings. He ran a hand over his face and cursed his father.
Why did I bother to come home?