By the time Alasdair rode into the outskirts of a village he knew—about two hours’ ride from his home—he already had a taste of his new future.

The horrified looks, the screams of children who saw him, the blatant stares, all reminding him—as if he needed to be reminded—that he was forever scarred, forever damaged. He kept all expression from his face, having somewhat prepared himself, but he hadn’t expected it to be this bad. Did he truly look so horrible? Was he a monster? Over the past days, his frustration and bitterness had grown, but not just against the English, not just against Bonnie Prince Charlie and his stupidity, but against himself.

He should’ve known better than to join the Jacobites, should’ve known that it was a potentially useless endeavor. Hindsight. But no, he had left, if not believing in grandiose righteousness and loyalty to the Bonnie Prince, at least with the sense of doing his part, and wasn’t it better to try and fail than never try?

But now, riding through the village he had grown up in, seeing the faces staring at him with pity, with looks of disgust, he wondered if he’d made another mistake in coming home at all. Where were his friends? Where were Kyle or Lachlan? He saw several familiar faces, middle-aged women, a couple of younger ones with children hanging on to their skirts, a few older men, but where were the younger men? The men he had grown up with? He instinctively knew. They, like so many of his soldier comrades, were likely dead, either on the battlefield or having been hunted down by the Sassenachs. Or hiding out in the recesses and mountains of the Highlands.

He received no greetings and didn’t offer any. Silent and morose, he rode through the middle of the village and then out the other end, spying the small thatched roof of Elspeth Warren’s cottage on the left-hand side of the road leaving town.

The path that wound beyond her small cottage would eventually take him past the land of Bruce Boyd and his blind daughter, then up to the top of the hill, down into another low valley, and another hour’s ride farther to his home. He saw no one during his ride and focused on the reunion with his father. While his father had tried to discourage him from joining the Jacobites and running off to fight with them, he knew that his father would be glad to see him.

Yet when he rode into the yard, he heard no call of greeting and saw no movement in the small barn, nor from the garden plot beside the house nor in the fields beyond. He frowned as he spied the chickens plucking at the ground near a small shed. It was just past noon. His father should have been out in those fields, preparing the ground for planting.

“Father?” he called out, voice raised, head turning this way and that, looking for any sign of his father.

Had he missed him in town? Someone surely would’ve stopped him, told him his father was there, perhaps at the pub, or perhaps buying supplies from the local merchant. He dismounted, ground tying his horse, still limping, but not quite as badly as he had weeks earlier, as he unlatched the wooden door to their small home. He stepped inside, looked to the left and saw that the kitchen area was clean, the main room also tidied up.

“Father?”

A cough from his father’s bedroom beyond the main room met his ears, and he smiled, his healing face still resisting expressions, the left side of his mouth turning upward while the right remained stiff. He stepped to the door of his father’s room, knocked once and opened it, eyes wide with surprise when he saw his father lying in bed, his gray hair mussed and spread out on the pillow around his head. The sallow tint to his skin, his rheumy eyes, and the harsh rattling breath from his chest prompted alarm.

“Father?” he said, moving quickly to his father’s bedside, going down on one knee beside it, ignoring the pain in his leg as he did so.

His father blinked and turned toward him, no recognition for several moments until he blinked again, then once more, his eyes now watery with tears.

“Alasdair,” he whispered, a wan smile on his lips. “Och, my boy… ye’ve made it home.”

“Aye,” Alasdair replied, confusion, fear, and anxiety racing through him. “What has happened?”

“I’m dying, lad,” Sean Macintyre said simply. “I’ve just been waiting… for ye to come home.”

Stunned, Alasdair had no words. He had sent his father a message by courier the week after the battle, told him he’d been wounded but was making his way home. “But… ye are ill? Why didn’t ye send me word?”

“Ye have yer own life to live, Alasdair. I’ve lived mine.”

“Who’s been caring for ye?”

“Elspeth Warren,” Sean said, and then offered a small shrug. “Allison Hegarty and Kathleen Kilkenny… they’ve both helped as well.” With a sigh, Sean lifted a hand, placed it over his son’s, now resting on his chest. “I haven’t long to go, Alasdair. I’ve just been waiting, holding on…”

His heart thudding with dread, Alasdair stared at his father with dismay, a myriad of emotions rushing through him. He gently shook his head. “Nay, Father, I won’t let ye die. I’m home now. I can take care of ye.”

Sean blinked, then lifted a trembling hand to gently cradle his son’s face. “It is I who should care for ye, for yer wounds—”

“Ye’ve cared for me all my life, Father,” Alasdair muttered, swallowing the growing lump in his throat and the pain he felt at seeing his father so humbled, so weakened. “I will care for ye.”

“I have something to tell ye, Alasdair.”

Alasdair passed a gaze over his father’s features—the sunken cheeks, the thin, papery skin, the tremors in the older man’s blue-veined hand, riddled now with age spots. Had those spots been there when he left? Why hadn’t he noticed? He had never even considered that something this terrible could happen while he was away. Why, when he left, his last sight of his father had been in the fields, the older man working to bring in his small crop of wheat. He looked healthy, strong, and able.

“What is this sickness?” he asked, voice soft with dismay.

Sean tried to smile. “It doesn’t matter, son. I’m not long for this world, but before I go, there’s something ye need to know.”

“What is it?” Alasdair asked, his heart beating faster, his mind trying to take it all in, his own pain and bitterness forgotten, for the moment.

“Ye rode through the village?”

Bitterness that he’d swallowed surged again, and the returning anger prompted him to frown. “Aye. My countenance frightened them and caused the children to hide behind their mother’s skirts—a nice welcome home, is it not?”

His father squeezed his hand. “When I learned I had not long to live, I made some arrangements.”

Every few words, his father paused to take a deep rattling breath. Alasdair frowned again. “What arrangements?”

“Yer betrothed in marriage.”

For several moments, Alasdair didn’t understand. “What?”

“It is already done, the dowry received. Ye will marry, as ye should have done years ago.”

What? His father had contracted a marriage agreement? Why? Why would his father do this?

“Why?” he blurted. “To which unlucky lass have ye made this contract?”

His father avoided the first question but answered the second.

“Beitris Boyd.”

Beitris— “The blind lass?” he asked in disbelief, his one eye widened, the other only halfway there. Disbelief and shock surged through him. “Why?” he repeated.

“What’s done is done. By now, the entire town knows ye have returned. Bruce Boyd will surely come by in the next day or two with Beitris. She’s a good lass, Alasdair, a kind and gentle soul. She will make ye a good wife.”

Alasdair felt a surge of frustrated anger. “But father, she’s blind!” Why had his father done this to him? What possibly could have prompted him to tether him to a blind woman for the rest of his life? He wanted to be angry, to argue with his father, but that deep rattling breath in Sean’s chest, the bloodshot eyes, the purple bags, and the sunken cheeks prevented him from doing so.

“Father,” he whispered, resting his forehead on his father’s arm. “What have ye done?”

Sean Macintyre placed his hand on his son’s head, like a blessing. Alasdair lifted his head, tears burning in his eyes. He would honor his father’s wishes. Of course he would, even if he didn’t like it. He didn’t want him to die. Didn’t want to lose the only—

He nodded.

His father offered a weak smile, squeezed his son’s hand, and spoke. “I dinna want ye to be alone, son. I want ye to promise me that ye will try, in spite of her blindness, despite yer own injuries, yer own obvious bitterness against what life has dealt yer way, that ye will try.” A pause during which his father gasped for breath, his lungs sounding filled with fluid. “I pray ye will find that ye have room in yer heart for love, Alasdair. I loved yer mother and long to see her again in the afterlife… God willing, ye will eventually feel the same way about the lass.”

Then, to Alasdair’s horror, his father was racked with a fit of coughing, gurgling, deep in his throat, then gasped, eyes wide. Alasdair quickly reached his arms around his father’s frail shoulders and lifted him up from the bed, trying to help him breathe better, his father’s head resting against his shoulder like a small, vulnerable child. He blinked back the tears in his eyes, pushed his anger and dismay deep down as he held his father, his strong arms wrapped around the slender frame, so frail now that Alasdair easily felt his ribs protruding from the thin skin, hanging loosely over his bones as he took his last breath and died in his arms.