Page 46 of Connal

The leine Connal was holding fell out of his hand onto the floor. “What shall you do there, my lady? You’ve no coin, kin or home. Do you ken what can be done to a female with no protection in this time? At best you’d become enslaved. At worst–”

“You’ll take me to the druids,” Valerie said before he could start in on the worst possibilities. “Preferably the tribe you sheltered here on the island, because they owe you.”

“’Twas nine centuries past, when the Romans came hunting them.” He glared at her. “They dinnae remember the debt.”

“I think they might, actually. Duncan mentioned the other night how their souls reincarnate over and over through time. He also said they know more about magic than any other tribe.” She went over to gather her clothes and start dressing. “If they don’t have a spell to return me to the twenty-first century, then I’ll stay with them until I learn a trade that I can use to support myself. I’ve always been interested in weaving and knitting–”

Suddenly she was on her back on the pallet, and Connal was on top of her.

“I’m still a little sore from last night.” She kissed the tip of his nose. “So be gentle, okay?”

“I dinnae wish fack you,” he said flatly. “Beat you, aye, and lock you in my chamber, most fervently, and keep you there until your senses return, without qualms. Why should you wish leave Caladh?”

Why do you want to leave me? was what he meant, Valerie thought. “Aside from the fact that you’re immortal, and I’m not, and we can never have a family, and I hardly know anything about you, I don’t want to marry you. I didn’t even know I was sharing my husband with another woman until after he died. I’m not going through that again.”

“Joana’s gone,” he said roughly, as if it hurt him to admit it. “She cannae trouble you.”

“She doesn’t. You do.” She sighed. “Take me to the mainland, and then you can come back here and mourn your wife the way you want to.”

Connal got up off the bed, finished dressing and walked out of the shelter, leaving Valerie to lay and wonder if she should have instead asked Fletcher or Shaw to get her off the island. The laird had lost his wife the last time he’d gone to the mainland, which she had forgotten until just now. She should have been more sensitive about the trauma he’d suffered, and yet as she thought that the old anger over Dale’s suicide began burning inside her again.

Here I go, blaming myself again for what my men do. Not that Connal is mine.

She got up and dressed, wondering if the laird had left her to make her way back on her own. She wrapped herself in his tartan before she stepped outside, and then saw Connal sitting on a rock a short distance away, his head bowed.

Valerie marched over to him, determined to have her way in this. Going to the mainland was the sensible solution. The druids would either help her get back to the future, or help her start a new life in this time. She didn’t belong on this island, or to Connal MacMar, and she had to make him understand that.

When she reached him she saw he had his hands covering his face, which startled her. “Goodness, you’re not crying, are you?”

“No, my lady,” he said, his voice sounding tight. “My head, ’tis spinning. If I look again at the hills I shall boak all over myself.”

Valerie mentally kicked herself for forgetting his mortal weakness as she crouched down beside him and put her hand on the back of his neck. “Try now.”

He peeked at her from between his fingers like a boy before he dropped his hands. “My thanks.”

She took hold of his hand and helped him to his feet, unsure of what to say next. He simply twined his fingers through hers and began walking down the slope, giving her no choice but to follow him.

The skies had never looked brighter, and the warmth of the sun on Valerie’s face made her regret her suggestion a little. She doubted life on the mainland would be as nice as staying on the island. The druids might be terrible people who would sell her into slavery the moment Connal left her with them. Maybe she was making the wrong choice.

“You’re wrong about me, my lady,” Connal said as they reached the little valley between the hills. “I dinnae wish go on mourning Joana. Naught I do can bring her back. Nor do I love a wife who preferred death to being mine.”

Now he was lying to himself as well as her. “Then I think you need to make some serious changes in how you’re living your life.”

“Joana wanted children.” He stopped and regarded her. “She loved them, even more than I ever suspected. In her wardrobe I found a box with little garments she’d made for a bairn I couldnae give her. Mayhap she meant to run away with one of my vassals, but in the end feared what I might do as revenge. Mayhap my love for her became a trap, and death the only escape. I cannae tell you. She never spoke of such, and left behind only the box.”

Valerie thought of Candace screaming at her at Dale’s funeral, and trying to kill her on the bridge, all for an affair she’d never known had happened. “Oh, Connal.”

“Never shall I ken her reasons, and ’tis maddening.” He moved his shoulders. “Just after Joana died I remained in my chamber so I shouldnae seize every mortal male in my household and shake them until one confessed. I thought through every day I spent with her, and the times I didnae. If she dallied with another behind my back, she never showed a single sign she’d betrayed me. I decided in the end ’twas from her discontent with me and the empty life she led.”

“That’s nonsense,” she told him. “She kept secrets from you when she could have talked to you about her problem. There are always kids in every time who need a home. Killing herself because you couldn’t get her pregnant was vicious and cruel and really, a little ridiculous.”

“Would you say the same of a man who ends himself because his loving and devoted wife willnae divorce him?” he asked softly.

Her anger subsided as she met his gaze. “Do you want me to let go of your hand?”

Connal smiled a little. “No, my lady.”

Chapter Fifteen