Hard-Hearted Highlander--A Historical Romance Novel by Julia London

Author:Julia London
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HQN Books
Published: 2017-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE WINDS ARE against them, and it seems to take a day instead of a few hours before Aulay can change tack, sail the ship into the cove and anchor there. Rabbie lowers the rowboat and jumps into it like a man fleeing a walk on the plank. He has been gone from home for almost two years, living in the bleak cold of Bergen, rising every day with the hope that word would come from his father that it was safe to return home.

Rabbie brings two seamen with him, commands them to row. As he nears shore, he sees his father standing in the company of his oldest brother, Cailean. He is too eager, and before the boat can reach the shore, he leaps out of it and wades in, uncaring of the cold water in his boots. Madainn mhath! He calls, waving his arm. He is grinning. His happiness has buoyed him—he feels no heavier than a feather. At long last, he is home. At long last, everything will be put to rights.

But when he sees the look his father and brother exchange, sees how they come forward, walking like a pair of undertakers, his gut sinks. His first thought is his mother. Diah, not his mother! He is so convinced something has befallen her that at first he can hardly absorb what they say...but then the words begin to sink into his heart. It can’t possibly be Seona, and yet, they cruelly insist all the MacBees are gone. He doesn’t believe them—if this is so, why did they not send word to him months ago when they disappeared? “So you’d no’ come home, lad,” his brother says. “So you’d no’ risk your life for a lost cause.”

Rabbie shoves Cailean’s hand from him and strides away, his homecoming ruined by their false news. He believes they haven’t looked hard enough. He believes she has left him some clue, that she would know he would move heaven and earth to find her. When he reaches the top of the cliff, he begins to run. It is roughly two miles to her home, and he runs, his sea legs causing him to stumble at first, then finding their strength and pumping, carrying him faster. When he reaches the house, he draws up with air burning in his lungs and stares at the half-gone roof, the broken windows, the door standing open.

He runs again, bursting into that house, calling for Seona, even though somewhere inside him he knows the truth. If he had any more doubt of it, the evidence of carnage erases it. He collapses in grief onto the floor and rails against God, against the Sassenach, but mostly, against himself for ever having left her.

No one comes for him, no one tries to draw him away. It is dusk by the time he picks himself up and begins the long walk to Balhaire. He sees nothing as he walks, his head full of the images of what must have happened there.

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