Lady Eilean

Chapter 49

I sat on a rock overlooking the valley. The summer sun was warm and comforting as it soaked into my skin. I loved this vantage point, for I could see everything. The town square, the patchwork fields; the forest, and the sparkling seas beyond. Stormway was at my back and ahead of me was land and sky and ocean. My land and sky and ocean. Mine, but not for much longer.

Ownership and pride consumed me, the push of expectation, the celebration of hard work. Somehow, I had done it. I had survived. Ellesmure was a thriving, productive island, again. The ring of hammers and the scrape of saws echoed in the air — a large addition to Innis' library being built in haste.

The heartbeat of the island thrummed alongside my own, a twin tucked in beside the organ in my chest. Its pulse sang to me of possibility and promise. Of a life fulfilled.

I watched the approaching caravan with uncomfortable resignation. The returning army lurching along the dusty road from the coast. Unforgivably winding their way up to the castle. I couldn't see individuals. They were still too far off, but I knew my father and brothers were at the front of the line.

Father. John. Ian. Rupert. Robert.

Timothy, Thomas, and Walther settling in their graves at last, no longer lonesome without their brothers.

What would they think of Stormway now? Would they notice or care that the world they left was not the one to which they were returning? Would everything go back to normal or would I have a presence, now, to manage affairs with them?

I couldn't imagine what they looked like. Portraits of my family hung around the castle, but they were commissioned in the glow of youth. The images preserved my brothers as children. John, the eldest, would be near forty; his most recent portrait was painted when he was sixteen. How was I to know the men they had become? How would they respond to the woman I now was? The fleeting moments of closeness we shared in the months before the war, was that enough to bond us as adults?

Father was another specter. A shadow I couldn't place. My memories of him were of frustrated gruffness or beleaguered tolerance. His impatience and confusion at having to raise a girl. I was less preoccupied with his response to my management of Ellesmure. I had, after all, kept it for him when the records showed he had been intent on losing it at any cost.

Without turning to look, I knew Mother hovered in a window in the castle behind me. No doubt frowning down on me as I sat brooding. Her stare was like a brand across my back.

In the months since her return, we had been at a near-constant clash between her desire to reinstate herself as Lady MacLeod and my unwillingness to allow her to do so. We had come to blows on a near-weekly basis over issues both trivial and profound. My resentment and her guilt were fiery arrows that found their sticking points in our most vulnerable weaknesses. Whatever familial bond had existed between us had been rent for good, the fabric disintegrating like dry-rotted silk. I knew she was biding her time until this moment; when, outnumbered, at last, I would be prey for her bidding. The rightful rulers returning to oust me.

I stood on gallows; the executioner poised with a ready foot on the stool. He only needed the drumming to stop.

Crunching footsteps behind me alerted me that my private rumination was over. Intent on prolonging my self-imposed suffering, I kept looking forward, staring at the slow advancement of all my worst nightmares.

I felt warm hands on my shoulders and the solid bulk of two people sitting on either side of me. Alex and Calum, refusing to let me suffer alone.

Calum had returned two days ago, eyes wild and full of frantic passion. He had paused the delegation, informing the other Lairds that he must observe the situation at Stormway before they could have further discussion. The Charter was very close to being complete, and they wanted to minimize potential threats to its signing.