The MacKinnon's Bride (33 page)

“
I would have liked that,
da,” Malcom exclaimed, and Iain could hear the smile in his son’s
voice. His jaw clenched, and he closed his eyes, swallowing the
curse that rose to his lips.

Damn Mairi’s soul to hell.

“
What about you? Did your
mammie e’er sing to you, da?”

Iain opened his eyes, watching the gathering
at the bonfire as he considered the question, uncertain as to why
he hesitated, for the answer could only be no. He closed his eyes
once more and contemplated the woman’s voice from his dream—the
song, the eyes—and was filled with keen frustration. “Nay,” he
answered, confused. He opened his eyes to stare at the bonfire,
frowning.

And it occurred to him suddenly that his own
mother’s death had gone undiscussed much too long. It was something
he and his son shared in common, the lack of a mother from birth,
and yet he’d grown so accustomed to it being an unspeakable matter
between himself and his own da that he’d never even thought to
broach it with his son.

As a boy, Iain had asked questions
interminably, only to be turned away at every occasion. And not
merely by his father, but by every last clansman who might have
known his ma. If your da wants ye to know, they had all
persistently told him, he’ll tell ye himself. Och, but his da had
never told him a damned thing, and after a while, Iain had quit
asking altogether. All he knew of his mother, he’d learned from his
aunt Glenna, and even that was precious little.

If Iain hadn’t known better, that his da had
loved his mother fiercely, that he’d mourned her death till the day
he’d died, he’d have thought her name a blasphemy in his house, for
it had surely been unspeakable within his presence... and
without.

“
Da?” Malcom ventured once
more, breaking into his gloom-filled thoughts.

“
Aye, Malcom?”

“
D’ ye think she would
mind if I called her mammy?”

“
Who, Malcom?”

“
Page.”

Iain went perfectly still at the
question.

“
I think ye would do
better to call her Suisan,” Page heard him tell his son.

She’d overheard enough of their conversation
to feel the sting of tears prick her eyes. She hadn’t meant to, but
had nevertheless, and now she didn’t know whether to make her
presence known, or to turn about and flee.

Drawn by the firelight and the melancholy
sound of the reed, she had come upon father and son standing there
together in the shadows of the night, speaking softly with each
other. A private conversation such as that Page might have longed
for as a child. Lord, but she might have... had she known it
possible to share such confidences. She stemmed the flood of envy
that rose to nag her.

Ahead of them, the fire’s glow was a beacon
in the dark of night.

A lone piper stood before it, playing his
instrument with such funereal intensity that it seduced her feet to
move forward. Curiosity along with the piper’s song drew her to
Iain’s side to watch the strange gathering.

It seemed every last clan member was present
for the occasion, their silhouettes congregated before the fire
like moths before torchlight.

Both father and son turned to peer down at
her.

For a long instant, Page couldn’t find her
voice to speak, so moved was she by Malcom’s sweet question. Still
they stared down at her.

“
He can call me anything
he likes,” she yielded softly. “Page is fine.”

A moment of silence passed between them
while Iain stared down at her with unblinking eyes. “I thought you
preferred Suisan,” he said at long last.

Page drew in a breath. “I thought I would,”
she replied, holding his gaze, unblinking, as well. “Till just this
instant I thought I would.” It occurred to her suddenly that her
name was simply that, a name. In a sense, it was a badge of honor
for all she’d suffered at her father’s hands. But no more did she
feel shamed by it. To the contrary, she felt pride—because she’d
endured. Because she was unbroken still. Jesu, but what greater
revenge could she have over her misbegotten father than to live,
and to live well, to walk with pride? Who could dare pity her when
her heart was filled with gladness?

“
I’ve decided,” she told
them both, a slight smile crooking her lips, “that I like my name,
after all.”

Iain’s beautiful lips curved at her
declaration. “D’ ye now?”

“
Aye,” Page answered
flippantly, lifting a brow. “I believe I rather do.” Her heart
swelled with a strange elation that she couldn’t quite fathom...
and yet it was there... a keen, overwhelming sense of joy that was
both unfamiliar and titillating.

Iain’s grin widened, and even in the
darkness, Page could see the glimmer of his smile and the amused
twinkle in his eyes.

She turned away, feeling strangely elated.
“What are they doing?” she asked father and son together.

She watched the clansmen from the corners of
her eyes.

“‘
Tis for Ranald,” Iain
told her, still scrutinizing her. Page turned to peer up at him.
Illuminated by the distant firelight, his face was startlingly
beautiful with its hard masculine lines. And his youthful features
were striking in contrast with the bold silver at his temples. Her
heart fluttered within her breast. “Our way of saying goodbye,” he
revealed.

Page turned to regard the bonfire with new
eyes, and at once focused upon the crudely constructed scaffold
near it. Understanding dawned, and her smile at once twisted into a
grimace. “Dear God! You plan to burn him!”

“
Aye, lass,” Iain
answered.

“
Sweet Heaven above! Why?
Jesu, but ‘tis barbaric!”

He merely chuckled. “Mayhap so.”

“
No mayhap about it! Poor
Ranald!”

“
It canna be helped,
Page.”

It was the first time he’d spoken her name,
and Page lifted her face to meet his gaze, her heart leaping at the
sound of it upon his lips.

“
Ye canna bury a man in
stone,” he yielded, his tone soft and matter-of-fact. The firelight
flickered within his eyes, and the glimmer was both sad and amused
at once. “Chreagach Mhor is built upon solid rock. No spade can
turn soil so unyielding as this.”

“
Oh,” Page replied. He
turned again to watch the mourners before the fire. So, too, did
Page.

“
The stone walls of my
home,” he revealed, “were carved from these cliffs so long ago that
not even my forefathers could recall whose hands first hewed them.
And still they stand.”

He turned to peer over his shoulder at the
strange tapered donjon that loomed behind them. Page followed his
gaze. “Every last stone remains in place.”

She thought of her father’s endless repairs,
and conceded, “’Tis remarkable.”

She was remarkable.

Iain found himself staring, admiring the
proud tilt of her head, the stubborn lift of her chin, and the soft
curve of her lips. He could scarce conceive that the woman he was
seeing was the same woman he had thought to pity. There was naught
about her bearing that elicited such a response from him this
moment. Naught at all. She seemed taller even—something he’d never
quite noticed about her—and he frowned, for she was perchance
taller than any woman he’d e’er known.

She found she liked the name, did she? The
vixen!

Och, but oddly enough, he found he suddenly
liked the name, too.

Her face, illumined by the distant
firelight, was aglow with something new... something he couldn’t
quite place. Something delightful and heartening.

And his heart... it, too, was filled with
something new... something deep and warm and yearning.

Something he dared not fully embrace lest he
wake one unspeakable morn to find her expression rife with
repulsion. He’d sworn to protect and care for her, aye, but love
was an entanglement best eschewed.

chapter 28

The funeral extended well into the
night.

In his own manner, every last kinsman
present paid last respects to poor Ranald, and then Iain lit a
torch from the bonfire and set the pyre to flame. Ranald’s mother
stood by, wailing. A few others wept softly. Most stood silent,
their faces somber and their eyes melancholy. Among them, a lone
piper played his reed, the melody both hypnotic and forlorn—and
still a few others danced curiously to his strangely buoyant
song.

Page watched in both revulsion and awe as
the fire licked its way up the scaffold toward the body wrapped in
new blankets. And even once the flames reached the platform she
couldn’t make herself look away.

As she watched the flames consume, she felt
curiously removed. For an instant, the piper’s sound drifted away,
and only the roar of the fire reached her ears. From the corners of
her eyes she saw the writhing dancers, and yet her focus remained
upon the ashes that rose from the pyre—feathery shadows that
floated up and disappeared beyond the rosy light of the bonfire
into freedom. Free to roam the earth and settle at will, or not at
all. Page imagined herself one of those floating ashes, and felt
her soul lift along with it, into the cool black night. She lifted
her gaze to peer into the moonless sky and found herself floating,
floating... free...

Freedom. It was what she’d always wanted...
what she’d sorely craved...

Or was it in truth?

Had she instead only longed that her father
would reach out and snatch her far-wandering soul, and hold her
fast against his heart?

Her gaze fastened upon a dark fluttering
ash... Were she free to go... free to fly... where would she
alight?

The soft sound of children’s voices drew her
out of her reverie, and she peered down to spy Malcom and his
friends working at catching ashes in their palms.

She watched them an eternity, feeling never
more the stranger in their midst.

As she watched them, they gathered what
remained of Ranald’s body into their tiny hands, along with those
charred wood flakes. They ran, scurrying to catch all that they
could, gathering black rain into their little fists. They blackened
their faces with the soot, blackened their eager little
fingers.

And then as Page watched, they brought the
fruits of their labors to Ranald’s mother... handed her the
smothered ashes. One by one, they turned over their hands and
sprinkled black dust into her cupped hands.

A smile touched her lips as Malcom turned
over his own and nothing came forth. He scrunched his little nose
as he peered down at his soot-blackened hand, and then he shrugged
and wiped his fingers across her upturned hand. She smiled, and
after speaking low to the lot of them, stood and lifted up her
palms to the sky and let the ashes fly once more. What soot
remained, she smeared across her breast—the part of him she would
keep—and once again began to weep.

Page’s eyes stung with tears, and the
thought struck her that true love was as ungrudging as a mother’s
simple but unselfish gesture of releasing her beloved son’s ashes
into the wind.

The kitchen reeked of lye soap.

Steam from boiling kettles curled upward to
mix with acid fumes, the combination of heat and lye strong enough
to burn the lungs from any breathing creature who should merely
think to pass by the small stone building. And yet they all
remained cheerful within, working diligently at her every command.
She didn’t fool herself for an instant; these people were clearly
desperate to rid themselves of their fleas and seemed eternally
grateful and even eager to comply in any manner conceivable.

Page had awakened to a dark, empty room—Iain
nowhere to be found—but she hadn’t been afforded time to lament the
fact. Glenna had entered almost at once, her voice a cheerful
admonition to be up and about.

God’s truth, Page might have loathed the
woman at once, save that she was much too agreeable to be despised.
Glenna had brought with her a tunic for Page to wear—one she’d
claimed had never belonged to Iain’s wife at all. Page had found
herself smiling as Glenna had assured her, blushing, that it was
one of her own—from her younger, thinner days, of course.

It was a grand gesture, Page thought. She
had never concerned herself overmuch with her manner of dress, and
was only mildly embarrassed that Glenna should think she needed a
new gown. She was entirely dismayed, however, to find that even the
tunic had fleas!

Page had, at once, taken it upon herself to
rid the MacKinnon clan of their fleas. Recalling how they’d managed
Balfour’s infestation a few years past, she set about the tasks
with zeal. With Glenna’s help, she managed to gather the infested
men and women together and was in the process of boiling garments
within the massive iron kettles.

The kitchen was pervaded with perspiring
bodies; some merely observing the strange ritual, others
participating. When she dared to bathe Broc’s dog, the
flea-breeding culprit, stunned murmurs accosted her ears. Some
whispered in Gaelic. Others in plain English.

“
Och, but I think she’s
gain’ to wash the bluidy dog!” exclaimed someone.

“
I’ll be damned, she is
gain’ to wash the bluidy dog!” said another.

“
Must be a Sassenach curse
to ward away fleas,” whispered another.

Page didn’t hesitate at her task, nor did
she linger to explain. She thought it rather an obvious solution,
and marveled that no one had ever thought of it before now.
Smiling, she cast the animal into a lye-soaped tub, and scrubbed
his matted fur until she thought he might go bald from the
scouring. The beast never protested, for all that, it merely arched
its back like a blessed cat, and luxuriated in the bath. Poor Merry
Bells. Likely the dog was so bitten and abused by the horrid little
creatures that even Page’s scrubbing was a favor.