Page 70 of The Scot

Roysa wanted to cry for the boy Terric. And for the man who was missing. But she didn’t think she had any tears left. Her insides were simply . . . empty.

“He would never admit defeat,” Cait continued.

Roysa understood her meaning, but surely this was different. Whether one wished to admit defeat or not, sometimes defeat was inevitable. Inescapable.

“James said there were over a hundred men. Terric was . . .” She couldn’t say it. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Terric was alone.”

“My brother is alive.”

She said the words as if Cait knew something everyone else did not. Roysa could almost believe her. She wanted to believe her.

“You’ve endured much these past weeks. This past year. I think”—Cait leaned toward her—“having spoken to your sister . . . I believe you needed to allow your emotion to be released. When I returned home after the tournament that year, I carried on as if nothing had happened. Most of my friends and family back at Bradon Moor never knew about it. In fact, it was years before I confronted it. And maybe I never truly have.”

Roysa finished her pottage.

“My mother was married before she wed my father. For love,” she blurted out. Even as the words left her mouth, she was unsure why she was sharing them. Surely Cait did not care about her mother’s past. “Her father forbade it, but she married the man anyway, and broke her betrothal to my father to do so. Her husband died, and my father agreed to honor their previous agreement.”

Roysa pushed the tray from her lap.

“She cares for my father. But she does not love him the way she loved her first husband.”

Cait looked at her with the same intensity with which she’d regarded her the first night they met.

“Does she wish they had never met? Your mother and her first husband?”

“I do not know,” she said darkly, only then realizing why she’d spoken of the match. “But I wish it for her.”

“Roysa, Terric is alive.”

“If it’s so—”

“It is so.” Cait’s eyes burned with belief, so bright and strong it couldn’t help but be catching.

Roysa felt a weight lift off her. Although part of her still wished to stay in bed until they heard word of him, a larger part wished to take a bath. To dress. To wait for him to return.

If Cait, who knew him so well and had been through so much, could believe he’d survived, then so could she. Perhaps their mutual belief would have the strength to make it so—or so she imagined in that moment.

Anchoring herself to Cait’s strength, Roysa tossed the coverlet from her legs.

“’Tis time for me to get out of this bed.”

Cait’s chin lifted. “Aye, Roysa. It is.”