“Ye say he hates ye,” Maggie continued, her voice kind and yet insistent, “that he nothing but glares at ye.”
Emma nodded, wondering what her friend was trying to tell her.
A soft smile came to Maggie’s lips. “Has there never been a moment−a single moment−when he didna glare at ye? When there was something else in his eyes?”
Emma was about to shake her head when a distant memory surfaced. A memory that always brought pain and joy as though one could not exist without the other.
After Emma’s mother had died giving birth to her, she had been the light of her father’s life…and he had been hers. Although she had always longed for the mother she had never known, her father had been all any child could ever have hoped for. He had been an enthusiastic playmate, a passionate storyteller and a devoted protector. He had been everything to her, the sun that warmed her face and the air she breathed.
Until the day he had passed on.
Suddenly and unexpectedly.
Without warning.
One moment they had shared the midday meal, and the next he had dropped to the ground.
Emma dimly remembered the haze that had claimed her the moment she had understood that her father was lost to her. For days, she had walked the castle grounds like a ghost haunting the living. Neither tear nor smile had come to her face until the day they had buried him.
Stone-faced, she had stood by his grave, unaware of the world around her as her heart had slowly reawakened and the pain had claimed her whole. Turning away, Emma had walked and walked, leaving Seann Dachaigh Tower and its people behind her. Tears had streamed down her face, and yet, she had walked on until she had come upon a small loch.
At its banks, Emma had sunk down into the lush grass, her legs no longer able to carry her. There, she had finally succumbed to her tears, weeping for the only parent she had ever known. Painful sobs had wracked her body, shaking her limbs and breaking her into a thousand small pieces…never to be whole again.
And then all of a sudden, as though he had appeared out of thin air, Finn had been there.
Emma hadn’t even known that he had returned from his latest stay with Clan MacKinnear. She had not seen him in a long time, and yet, when she had needed him…he had been there. As though the Fates had returned him to her.
Quietly, Finn had sat down beside her and pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly and letting her cry. She had buried her face in his shoulder, clinging to him like someone drowning.
As though nothing had happened, as though this had been a day like any other, the sun had commenced on its daily journey across the sky, and all the while, they had sat on the bank of the loch, his arms wrapped around her.
Not a single word had passed Finn’s lips that day.
Not one.
And yet, he had sat in the grass for hours, holding her in his arms, his fingers gentle as they brushed damp curls from her temple and behind her ear. The hint of a warm smile had been on his lips that day, kind and comforting, and the green in his eyes had held nothing but compassion and understanding and perhaps−perhaps−the promise that one day the pain would not be as crushing as it had been in that moment.
When her sobs had lessened, Finn had helped her to her feet and walked her home, his arm tightly around her and her head still resting against his shoulder. He had taken her to the small cottage she had shared with her father, assisting her inside until she had dropped into her bed, exhausted in heart and body. Dimly, she remembered him draping a blanket over her. Then he had sat down on a chair in the corner, watching over her as she had drifted off to sleep.
In the morning, Finn had been gone, and Maggie had sat at her bed, her gentle ways urging Emma to hold on to her father’s memory but to return to the living and reclaim her smile.
A part of Emma still wondered if the day by the loch had been a dream and nothing more. For when she next saw Finn, the look in his eyes once again held the same disappointment and anger she had glimpsed there every day since the morning in the glen when she had stolen a kiss.
And then he had left yet again.
Chapter Two
A Clan's Tradition
Walking beside the cart, Finn almost bumped into Ian’s back when he suddenly drew to a halt.
“What’s the matter?” Ian asked as he turned to frown at his friend. “Are ye asleep on yer feet? ‘Tis not a good day to be absent-minded. There’s work to be done.”
Mumbling an apology, Finn did his best to ignore the way Ian shook his head at him or Cormag watched him out of the corner of his eye as though he were a rare specimen of some kind that ought to be studied. Only Garrett seemed as absent-minded as Finn himself. Their eyes distant, they each reached for one of the logs piled high on the horse-drawn cart. Then they walked up to the small cottages lining the road through the little village just outside the walls of Seann Dachaigh Tower and handed them to the families living there as a yuletide offering. For as long as Finn could remember, it had been a tradition for the young men of Clan MacDrummond to cut logs prior to the festivities and then offer them to the families of their clan, a promise that they were not alone, that they all stood as one and would forever look out for each other.
Always had this tradition had a
