Ian heard his father’s raised voice as he opened the front door to the house.
“Look at what ye done to me!” Payton was shouting at Niall, who was trying to help him across the room. “Ye should have let me die like a man.”
Sìleas stood on his father’s other side, coaxing him forward. “It will be lovely to have ye take your meals with the family again.”
“Will ye no come sit at the table, da?” Niall said.
The instant his father began to raise his cane to strike Niall, Ian started across the room, but Sìleas was closer. His heart stopped when she stepped between the two men.
“Don’t ye dare touch him!” Sìleas shouted.
When his father checked the blow in time, Ian breathed again. His father still had the arms and shoulders of a powerful man. God in Heaven, he could have killed her.
Niall walked past Ian and out the front door without even seeing him. Sìleas locked gazes with his father, going nose to nose with him—or she would have, if she were taller. Neither appeared to take any notice of Ian’s presence or the slamming door.
“If ye speak that way to Niall again, I swear I’ll not forgive ye,” Sìleas said. Her chest rose and fell in deep breaths as she and his father glared at each other.
“He should have let me die on the battlefield,” his father said. “He took away my manhood, bringing me home like this.”
She spoke in a slow, deliberate voice, and there was steel in her eyes. “Ye ought to be grateful to have such a son, after what he did for ye.”
“Grateful? Look at me!” his father shouted, pointing at his missing leg.
“Shame on ye, Payton MacDonald, for wishing you could desert your family,” she said. “ ’Tis long past time ye stopped feeling sorry for yourself.”
She turned on her heel, her hair swinging out like a shooting flame, and stormed out of the house.
His father hobbled to the nearest chair, dropped onto it with a thump, and rubbed his hands over his face. Ian got the whiskey down from the cupboard and filled a cup.
“Here ye go, da,” he said, as he set the cup on the table next to his father. He started to put the bottle back, then set it on the table as well.
His father clenched the cup as if holding a lifeline and stared at the wall.
“I’d best see to Niall,” Ian said.
His father nodded without turning to look at him. “Do that, son.”
It was raining buckets, so Ian hoped Niall hadn’t gone far. He tried the old cottage first—and found Alex and Dina in the midst of enjoying the ways of the flesh. They didn’t notice him. From there, he splashed through puddles to the byre.
The smell of cows and damp straw filled his nostrils as he peered into the dim, musty interior. He paused and listened. Behind the sound of the pounding rain, he heard the murmur of voices and followed it to the back of the byre, where he found Niall and Sìleas sitting side by side on a pile of straw between two cows. They didn’t hear him approach.
“It’s your father’s pain speaking,” Sìleas said. “He doesn’t mean it like it sounds.”
“He means precisely what he says.” Niall slammed the side of his fist against the byre wall beside him. “He couldn’t be plainer.”
“Well, I am proud of ye, if that matters at all to ye.” Sìleas put her hand to Niall’s cheek. “I am so proud of what ye did that my chest fairly bursts with it every time I think of it.”
“Ye mean it, Sìl?” Neill said, blushing bright red.
“Ach, of course I do!” she said with a wave of her hand. “I’ve watched you grow into a man we can all rely on. To tell the truth, I’m sick with jealousy over the woman who is going to have ye, because you’re going to make the finest husband in all of Scotland.”
Ian felt the bite of criticism in her words. A man we can all rely on. The finest husband in all of Scotland. He felt his shortcomings on both counts.
“But don’t forget that it was your father who taught ye to be the man ye are,” she added in a softer voice. “I’m spitting mad at Payton just now, but I’m also praying he’ll get back to himself again. When he does, I know he’ll regret every word he said to ye.”
“So here ye are,” Ian said, pretending he had just come into the byre.
They both turned as he stepped into view.
“I’m sorry da was so harsh with ye,” Ian said.
“Do ye think I did the right thing, bringing da back?” Niall was looking up at him with earnest eyes, seeking his approval as he used to years ago.
Ian suspected he would feel the same way his father did. A man who couldn’t fight was not really a man anymore. Still, in Niall’s place, he would have done the same.
“I don’t know if it was the right thing,” Ian said. “But ye had no choice.”
When Sìleas started to follow Niall out of the byre, Ian held her arm. He felt guilty when she turned to face him and he saw wariness replace the kindness that had been in her eyes when she spoke with his brother.
“Thank ye for speaking to Niall as ye did,” he said. “Ye restored his pride.”
Her expression softened at the praise, and he felt another wave of guilt. If paying her a well-deserved compliment was all it took to please her, he should have managed it before.
“The weather should clear soon,” he said. “Will ye take a stroll with me later?”
“I’ve too much work to—”
“Ye have time to go with Gòrdan and Alex, but not with me?” he said, failing to keep the sharpness from his tone.
“I have a pleasant time with them,” she said, her eyes snapping. “I see no cause to get behind with my chores to have an argument with you.”
She tried to pull away, but he held her arm fast. “Ach, I don’t mean to argue with ye,” he said. “Will ye go with me to Teàrlag’s cottage? Ye could take her a basket.”
He knew from his mother that Sìleas and Duncan’s sister took turns bringing the old seer food. Without it, Teàrlag wouldn’t make it through the winter.
“I do need to visit her.” Sìleas pressed her lips together, considering.
“So come along and keep me company,” Ian said.
“I will,” she said. “But what is taking ye to Teàrlag’s cottage?”
“I’m meeting Connor and Duncan there,” Ian said. “Can ye be ready in an hour or two? I have something to do first.”
Sìleas bit back her irritation as she showed Dina where things were kept in the kitchen. In truth, irritation was far too mild a word for what she felt.
It wasn’t that Dina was doing anything in particular to aggravate her—at the moment. Every time she looked at Dina, however, she saw her with her legs wrapped around Ian’s bare backside as the pair rocked against the shepherd’s hut.
Sìleas banged a pot onto the worktable—and then was doubly annoyed when she could not recall what she meant to do with it.
The fornicating pair had been too absorbed in what they were doing to notice the nine-year-old girl who was watching from a few yards away. At first, Sìleas had been too stunned to cover her eyes—which probably explained why her memory of it was crystal clear. Even when she finally covered them, she could hear Dina’s odd gasps and her shouts of Aye! Aye!
“Aye?”
The sound of Dina’s voice right next to her made Sìleas jump a foot.
Dina gave her a puzzled look. “Is this where Beitris hides the salt?”
Sìleas nodded without looking to see where Dina was pointing. She hated having this woman in the house. How dare Ian bring his former lover into their home? But then, this wasn’t truly her home, was it?
And perhaps Dina wasn’t Ian’s former lover, either.
Sìleas started chopping turnips with a large knife. Whack, whack, whack.
She was angry with Ian for giving her that ugly memory of him and Dina. Ach, it was annoying that it upset her as much now as it had when she was a child. But everything changed between her and Ian after that. She paused in her chopping. No, the change had begun earlier.
As Ian left boyhood behind, he came to Knock Castle less and less often to take her for a ride on his horse or out in his boat. Then he was away at the university in the Lowlands for months at a time. And when he was home, he seemed to spend all his time practicing his battle skills with the men—or flirting with the lasses old enough to have breasts.
Or more than flirting.
“You’re not getting much chopping done,” Dina said, drawing her attention to the single chopped turnip on the table.
“Do ye think ye can get supper on alone?” Sìleas said, as she lifted her apron over her head. “I have an errand to run.”
She fled the kitchen without waiting for Dina to answer and went looking for Ian, intent on telling him she had changed her mind about going to Teàrlag’s with him. She stopped in her tracks when she found him behind the byre with his father.
Her throat felt tight and tears stung the back of her eyes as she took in the scene. Damn Ian. Just when she was ready to accept that he had nothing left in him of the lad she had loved, he would go and do something like this.
Ian had carved a piece of wood and fitted it with leather straps to his father’s half-missing leg. With one arm over Ian’s shoulder, Payton was learning to walk with it.
The rest of them had treated Payton like the invalid they saw him to be. They fetched and carried for him and—until today—put up with his rage at finding himself less than the man he used to be. Ian was a warrior and understood his father better than they had.
She felt guilty as she realized this was the first Payton had been outside the house since Niall carried him home—and this was a man who was used to spending most of his waking hours outdoors.
She watched as Ian walked with his father at an excruciatingly slow pace, up and down the length of the byre, and then up and down again.
“Ye got it, da,” Ian said.
Payton snorted. “Soon I will be dancing, aye?”
“Ye were always a terrible dancer, da.”
At the sound of Payton’s laugh, she felt her determination to resist Ian weaken another notch. This was so like the Ian she remembered. He had seen just the right thing to do to help his father and done it.
“Ye will be walking on your own in no time,” Ian said. “As soon as ye do, we’ll get a sword in your hand.”
“Good. I’m a much better fighter than dancer,” Payton said.
Ian was still laughing when he looked up and saw her. She managed to wipe her tears away before Payton noticed her as well.
“Ah, Sìleas,” Payton said, with a smile that shone in his eyes. “ ’Tis a fine day to be out, is it not?”
It was bone-cold and damp.
“A very fine day, indeed, Payton,” she said, her eyes blurring. “The best in a long, long while.”