Page 68 of The Scot

Chapter 28

Terric was dead.

He should have returned over a fortnight ago, but they’d heard nothing of or from him since James had returned to tell them he’d managed to burn the bridge—only Terric had been on the other side, facing an army. Each day was worse than the last. She knew she had little cause to grieve alongside his siblings. Or Lance, who had known him for over ten years. Or the people of Dromsley, who’d adored the son as much as they had the father.

She was no one, really.

But if she’d doubted her feelings before, she doubted them no longer.

When Langham had informed her of Walter’s death, she’d felt nothing. Regret for a failed marriage. Sadness at the loss of a life, even if he had wronged her. But certainly not this all-encompassing sense of despair she felt from the moment she woke until her eyes finally closed for the night.

“Cait is asking for you,” Idalia prodded, attempting to coax her out of bed.

How did she do it? Terric’s sister amazed her each day. She knew how much Cait was struggling as well. To get dressed. To eat. To prepare for the upcoming battle. And yet she did it, without complaint. While Roysa could not even lift her head from the pillow.

She knew what it meant—she was the worst sort of person, whereas Cait was strong. Capable. She knew that, and yet it was simply too much to abide.

“I cannot.”

“You must. She needs you, Roysa.”

“Needs me?” Her voice rose higher with each word. “She no more needs me than you do any longer. I am nothing to her. To him.”

Oh God, he was gone.

Roysa covered her face and willed her sister to leave. She simply wanted to go back to sleep. To forget.

“Aye, she needs you. How can you not see it?”

Roysa stared into the dark depths of her hands. Too much light streamed in from between her fingers, so she buried her face in the pillow.

“She’s not seen him for nearly a year. You are her closest tie to him right now. It comforts her to speak about Terric with you . . . Roysa? Roysa?”

She had not cried after her wedding night, when Walter had so cruelly taken her maidenhead. Some of the pain could have been avoided, she knew from servants’ gossip, if he had only given a damn. Roysa hadn’t cried after any of his casual dismissals, or his painful, unpleasurable visits to her bedchamber.

Nor had she cried upon learning of his death. Or his infidelity.

She had not cried after hearing James’s tale about the bridge, although the horror and grief had stricken her, changed her.

Suddenly, it felt like all those tears she hadn’t spilled had welled up inside her, stored in her chest. They gushed out of her with the force of a raging river, and she sobbed in her sister’s arms.

She’d tried so hard to make it right. For her sisters. For her parents. Her father. Even for Walter. But it did not matter. None of what she did mattered. Roysa was nothing but a widow who had fallen in love too soon and paid the price for her folly.

“He’s dead.”

Idalia said nothing. She may have rubbed her back, but Roysa couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t feel anything but pain.

Vaguely, she heard Idalia say, “We do not know . . .”

But they did, didn’t they? Where else could he be? What else could have become of him?

Roysa didn’t stop crying for a long, long time. She had never cried so hard, or for so long, in her life. When Idalia handed her a handkerchief, she took it. Tried to stop. To gain control over herself.

But she couldn’t even control herself. She’d been naïve to think she could control anything—all she’d ever achieved was the appearance of it. Terric had seen that. And instead of helping him realize he suffered from the same affliction, Roysa had let him go.

She should have at least tried to stop him, although she knew him better than to believe it would have worked.

For what had to be the hundredth time, or the thousandth, she imagined him attempting to delay hundreds of men. Sitting atop his horse, a proud and valiant warrior, the chief of an entire clan with an earldom under his command. Alone. Knowing he faced death but doing it to save his people.