Page 75 of Promised to the Forbidden Laird

Emotion tightened unexpectedly in her throat.

“Thank ye,” she said.

Roy inclined his head, but Donaldina saw that the words affected him. He shifted his attention toward the hives, where a few bees moved lazily through the cold sunlight. She might have allowed the moment to remain gentle. She might have spoken of honey stores, winter coverings, or the carpenter’s questionable thistle.

Instead, she asked the question that had stood between them since his arrival. “Why would ye never tell me what happened tae Lachlan?”

Roy became still. The warmth left the garden without the sun altering at all. Donaldina kept her hand upon the new hive.

“The messenger’s report says ye didnae abandon him. It says the retreat was ordered by the Crown. But every time I asked ye, ye gave me scarcely more than silence.”

His gaze moved toward the sea beyond the low wall. “Because reports make war appear orderly.”

“And it wasnae?”

A bitter breath escaped him. “Nae.”

He stood with his shoulders rigid and his hands at his sides, as though he had returned to some field where movement itself might summon death.

“We fought together from the beginning,” he said. “Lachlan commanded the left company. I held the center. When the Crown ordered retreat, the lines had already broken. Smoke covered the slope. Men couldnae hear the horns, and those who did heard different commands.”

Donaldina’s fingers tightened against the wood.

“Lachlan came tae me before we withdrew. He had blood upon his face, though none of it was his. He laughed because me horse had thrown a shoe and said I would have tae learn tae run like an honest man.”

A sound escaped her, half sob and half laugh. That was Lachlan. Even amid blood and ruin, he would have found time to insult another man’s horsemanship.

Roy closed his eyes briefly. “The Crown cavalry moved too soon. They cut between our companies. Lachlan was driven north with the MacNicol men. I was forced west toward the river.”

“Ye lost sight of him.”

“Aye.” The word seemed torn from him. “I turned back when darkness came. Hamish came with me. We searched the slope, the woods and the ground near the old chapel. We found MacNicol colors among the dead.” His voice roughened. “We found men I kent. We didnae find Lachlan alive.”

Donaldina’s eyes burned. Roy looked at her then.

“I searched until the Crown patrols threatened tae arrest us for desertion. I returned the following morning and searched again. I sent men for three days after the army moved south.”

“Cormac said ye left him.”

“Cormac wasnae there.”

The simple truth struck harder than any accusation. Cormac had shaped her grief, reiterating the story until suspicion turned into certainty. She was too wounded to doubt anything that acknowledged her anger, so she accepted it as truth.

Roy’s face held no triumph. He did not demand that she acknowledge how cruelly she misjudged him.

“I should have brought Lachlan home,” he spoke in a voice that was down to a whisper.

“Ye couldnae.”

“I survived.” The words contained an entire battlefield. Roy looked down at his scarred hands. “Better men didnae. Men with wives, children, brothers waiting for them. I have asked every day why I walked from that field when they didnae.”

Donaldina’s tears spilled at last. “Roy.”

“I never abandoned him, Donaldina.” His voice broke upon the final word, though his expression remained rigid. “Whatever else ye believe of me, believe that.”

Donaldina crossed the space between them. She did not consider the act before placing her arms around him. Thought would only have delayed what her heart already understood.

Roy stood unmoving for one startled breath, then his arms closed around her. He held her with a strength that did not imprison, with one hand settled between her shoulders, and the other at the back of her head, drawing her against the warmth of his chest. Donaldina pressed her face into his coat and breathed leather, pine smoke and the cold salt of the morning.