Page 73 of Surrendering to her Highland Captor
“Ye ken,” Rowena said, ignoring Taryn’s not so subtle request entirely. “The last time I ventured down to the dungeons, I was here to see a friend of yers. What was her name again? That ungrateful daughter of the dressmaker’s?”
Taryn clenched her jaw, fighting the urge to scream back at her mother.
“Lily? Lauren? Och, I ken,” she clapped with a facade of pleasure. “Laura.”
Rowena’s eyes leveled with Taryn, narrowed and harsh and black.
“Aye,” Taryn ground out.
“It did nae take long after ye vanished that we were able to track her down and discover just how ye had managed to get away. Of course, the Laird was furious and threw her in here until we could decide what to do with ye. I was too distraught to come see her the first week she was here. My maids hardly kent what to do with me.”
Distraught that all yer scheming was for naught.
“But I rallied my strength and forced myself to come and get answers for myself. She looked much as ye do now—disheveled and begging for food.”
Taryn slammed her eyes shut against the image of her best friend, shivering and starving in a cell while she had been exploring all the beauty the Highlands had to offer.
“It was a simple enough question,” Rowena pressed on, either not seeing or not caring about her daughter’s distress. “‘Why did ye help her?’ I asked. I could nae understand it.”
Rowena let out a deep sigh, her hands clutched at her waist, the picture of a serene Highland lady—everything Taryn had been raised and molded to become but had never wanted.
“Do ye ken what she told me?”
Taryn offered no response. She kept her eyes on the floor in front of her, letting her gaze trace the jagged outlines of the stones.
“She told me that she was happy for ye, glad that ye were finally free of the Keep.” Rowena scoffed in disbelief. “I thought that a week in this cell would be long enough to make the lass see reason, to make her regret what she had done. But the chithad nay remorse. She just sat there, right where ye are now, and smiled.”
With her hands gripped on the edge of the cot, Taryn tried to envision it. She tried to grasp onto any last piece that Laura might have left of herself in this cell. She wished that she had the same proud stance, one untainted by regret or remorse.
“What a fool she was.”
Drawing on strength from the memory of her friend, Taryn pushed herself off the cot and spun to face her mother. She realized then, for the first time in her life, that Taryn was several inches taller than her mother. No longer was she cowering, making herself smaller so she could disappear into the background, unnoticed. Between all of her time making it on her own, the sword fighting lessons, and the steadfast belief James now had in her, Taryn felt invincible.
“If that kind of love and selflessness that Laura displayed to free me from yer grips makes her foolish, then I pray to God that one day, I will be as foolish as she is. I hope that I am able to love someone just as unconditionally, unselfishly as she has. That I would be willing to give up everything for another is the kind of fool I wish to be.”
Rowena scoffed again, indignant at Taryn’s newfound confidence.
“Need I remind ye that ye have a duty to this clan, to me? It is the same duty that every woman before ye has fulfilled and every woman after ye will carry out; marry for an alliance. Why do ye think that ye are so special as to get out of yer duty, to escape the life that yer father and I have so meticulously cultivated for us? All of these fanciful ideas ye have of a life outside of that duty are a folly. I have always told ye so. I warned ye that nae taking yer responsibility seriously would one day be the death of ye, and here we are.”
The pure disdain, the unfeeling sharpness of Rowena’s lecture was the final nail in the coffin for any love or respect that Taryn might have once had for her parents. She couldn’t imagine Aila or Sorcha ever uttering such cruel things. There was no world in which James would be so hateful. It was a startling realization to discover that her friends, her makeshift family, had shown her more love and acceptance in their short three years together than either of her parents had ever shown.
“Need I remind ye,” Taryn retorted, turning her mother’s words back against her, “that ye also have a duty as mother? One that requires ye protect yer children.”
“What do ye think I was trying to do in setting up an alliance with the Baron? Yer marriage to him would have protected us all from his wrath.”
“Ye are the fool if ye believe that,” Taryn hissed. “My marriage to him would only have guaranteed a sooner death for me. He had his sights set on our clan, our lands, our people and was going to do whatever it took to get to them no matter what. I had a right to run, to flee, to try and save my own life since my parents failed me.”
Rowena, for the first time, was silent. She glowered at Taryn, the bars and a lifetime of unkindness separating them.
“I suppose it is a family trait,” Taryn added bitterly, “nae fulfilling yer duties.”
With a huff, Rowena turned and left the dungeon, her skirts swishing behind her as she went. When the door to the upper level slammed shut, Taryn collapsed onto the cot, all of her fighting energy completely drained.
She wasn’t sure how long she laid there. The only indication of the hours passing was the gnawing feeling in her stomach getting harder to ignore and the shadows on the walls shifting with the sun. She did her best to put her mother’s words out of her mind. They served her no purpose. Nor did anything heruncle had to say. Instead, she focused on James and only on James.
The memory of their kiss fueled her, keeping her from the edge of utter despair time and time again. It had been a moment that passed entirely too quickly yet seemed to span a lifetime in her mind. She had admired James from afar when they had been kids. And after seeing Aila and Lachlan so happy together, she had wondered if she would ever know a love like that. It filled her with such peace to know that she had, even if it had only lasted a few days before the past caught up with them. James’ love, knowing that he believed her to be innocent and undeserving in all of this, was a lifeline in the dark. It gave her strength when her heart threatened to give out.
“Up wit’ ye. Get up. Dinnae make me come in there and fetch ye myself. I promise, ye will nae like it.”
