Chapter Ten
Though she had not been to the cottage in many months, she could find the way with her eyes closed. Even the horse beneath her seemed to remember it, for it had carried her many times. The blacksmith let her borrow his horse when she had the need of it and never asked why. Other than Lachlan, his friend and Davina, no one knew where they met.
This morn, as she crossed the miles south towards the coast, she ached. Her body ached in places she’d forgotten could feel such a thing. Her head throbbed from so little sleep these last days. And her heart hurt for what she must do now.
This stranger, this man called Iain, had been some kind of catalyst for her since his arrival. She’d been mired in pain and grief. Her whole life had spun down around that. Ailis knew she shouldn’t treat her father and friend as she had, but it seemed out of her control. For all his real or imagined similarities to Lachlan, something about Iain had given her true comfort, providing a chance to break with the grief and the past. She could move forward, to be the woman she was meant to be. The woman Lachlan would have expected of her, a woman of honor, a woman who didn’t waste love when it came to her.
And now she was ready for the next step.
After more than an hour of riding, she turned down a path. It led to the place that held both happiness and complete sorrow for her. The cottage hadn’t been much, just a place where drovers would shelter as they took their herd to the south for the winter. Over the years, it had been built up from a simple shelter to more of a cabin with a real roof and walls and a door. Ailis tugged the reins and slid off the horse’s back.
Now, only a blackened area of destruction and death with some strewn remnants of the wood that had not been burned to ashes sat where the cottage used to be. It had been a fast fire. She saw the first flicker of it and then the whole cottage was engulfed in flames before she could reach it. . . reach him.
She’d tried to get to the door, to get to him, but her sleeves had caught fire and the pain had driven her back. What must he have suffered within this place when it became Hell on earth?
Ailis didn’t try to stop the tears. She walked around the perimeter of the clearing and sat on a large rock under the trees.
“I have come to beg yer forgiveness, Lachlan,” she said aloud. “If it werena for me, ye would be alive now.”
There. The truth of what lay at the bottom of her soul. If not for her, Lachlan would be alive this very day. That truth and her own guilt in his death had kept her from being able to let it go and live the life she had. Mayhap if she confessed to him, to his eternal soul as the priests taught, she could begin to live once more.
Oh, she would never, could never, forget him or their love. But if she accepted her part in bringing him here to his death, could she forgive herself someday?
“I admit it to ye and confess my guilt, Lachlan. If I hadna pressed the matter, if I hadna lied about my father’s knowledge about us, ye would be alive today.”
She let the words out and the wind carried them away. Ailis had thought it time to announce their intentions to their families. Lachlan thought it best to wait until the matter of his brother’s marriage and the rising conflicts between their clans had been settled. Then, when word came of his brother’s and mother’s deaths, she’d sent word for him to come. She’d lied in her note to him that her father knew.
“I beg yer forgiveness, Lachlan. For lying to ye. For bringing ye here when it was not safe. For. . . all of it.”
Ailis closed her eyes and waited. She was not certain that she expected a reply or a sign he’d heard her words. Truly, just speaking them had lightened her soul. There was more within her, but the only thing she could do was go on without him. She must move on from the stubborn daughter she had been to a more mature woman who thought on the cost of her actions before she acted.
She wiped the tears away from her eyes and took a breath before standing. Walking towards the horse, Ailis understood she’d never return here. Lachlan was gone and nothing could bring him back. She managed to mount using the rock. As she rode down the path, she turned back for one last look. And one last moment of regret.
If only. . . .
The storm clouds gathered ahead of her as she made her way back to Dun Ara. She still had to speak to Davina before this was all settled. Then it would be done.
He was Lachlan MacLean.
Not Iain the Unknown.
Lachlan MacLean, the second son of Dougal MacLean, chieftain here on Mull.
He knew it now. He knew it even if his memory hadn’t returned. He was Lachlan MacLean and he had died on this spot almost nine months ago.
He was the man Ailis claimed to have loved and lost.
He was the same man she had just confessed to having a part in his death.
Lachlan walked from the shadows of the forest that surrounded the burnt cottage and pulled his hood back. Removing the mask, he let the cool breeze soothe his skin. He glanced around this clearing, studying the landscape and recognizing it.
It would take him almost two hours of hard riding to get here from. . . Aros Castle down the coast. He stared off in that direction trying to will more memories to come. Only the simplest ones did. Nothing that would explain her confession or her role in killing him.
Or how he’d survived the inferno that had destroyed the cottage. He walked to the edge of the ashes and moved some of them with his foot, hoping it would make something happen within his mind. Surely, facing the place where he’d nearly died would elicit some strong reaction?
Something, a trick of the light mayhap, caught his gaze. He made his way through the ashes and lumps of wood to the very center. He waited to relive the fire that destroyed this place and him, but it didn’t happen. No flash of memory. No feelings.
Then his foot snagged on something under the ashes.
Lachlan knelt and pushed aside the layers of wood, ash and dirt that had been matted down by rain since the fire and found what had tripped him. An unburned panel of wood. Cleaning the debris from it, he discovered the entrance to a root cellar dug into the ground. He pulled on the edge and it came free, sending him careening off balance. He regained his stance and stared into a hole of darkness.
If he could get to the cellar, he thought he might survive.
When he regained consciousness, he lay on the floor of the blazing cottage. The flames crept up all the walls. The rough sod roof would do nothing to stop them. The door was blocked and he could not push his way out.
Somehow, he managed to find the opening in the smoke that burned his eyes and throat. Pieces of wood dropped like flaming ingots on him as he tugged open the wooden panel, jumping into the space. But the smoke followed and filled the cellar around him. Coughing and gasping, he waited as long as he could before trying one last escape. Hoping that the less-than-sturdy cottage walls were gone now, he pushed up, intending to rush through the remaining flames.
He felt the ungodly heat around him as he climbed out, trying to avoid the worst of it. The flimsy walls still burned but Lachlan saw a path to the window. He crouched low, trying to see his way when an ominous crack sounded above him. With no more warning than that, the roof came down on him, trapping him there.
He screamed. . . .
Lachlan’s throat convulsed against the terror and the scream that would not come now. He fell to his knees as his stomach heaved and he vomited up the meager meal he’d eaten.
He remembered nothing before waking there and nothing after the roof caved in on him. Somehow, though in God’s Holy Name he could not figure how, he’d survived and made it out. The brothers hadn’t given him a specific location where he’d been found, but Lachlan knew it had to be close to here.
As he stood, he realized something else. He didn’t know himself when he’d woken up amidst the fire. His identity was gone from him already, taken by. . . . Reaching up, he felt the back of his head. A deep gash had been there. The brothers said his skull had been damaged by a blow. They suspected that had been the cause of his memory loss.
He’d been struck from behind before the fire began. Whoever set the fire, did it knowing he was inside and unconscious. Knowing he would perish.
Lachlan felt the change in the winds. The threatening storms were closer. A surreal sense of control filled him as the information he’d discovered took hold. The memories began to return. He had kith and kin. He had a place he belonged.
He had someone who’d wanted him dead.
Ailis’ words of confession echoed in his head now.
I admit it to ye and confess my guilt, Lachlan, she’d said. I beg yer forgiveness, Lachlan. For lying to ye. For bringing ye here when it was not safe. For. . . all of it.
It made no sense. Whenever she’d mentioned or thought on him, he’d seen only grief and loss. Considering her words now, had he misinterpreted her expression?
He kicked the dirt and headed back into the forest where he’d left his horse. Mounting, he headed north, back to Dun Ara, back to Ailis.
Lachlan would discover the truth before he let her go. If he let her go. . . . For now that he knew who he was and that the visions of her, of them, were memories and not the imaginings of a pain-crippled mind, Lachlan wouldn’t give her up easily, if at all. He didn’t doubt the rest of his life would return to him.
Virtue. Mine. Honor.
The words of the MacLean motto seemed appropriate as he rode to take back what, who, was his.