Page 70 of Highlander’s Bride

And so was his heart. He loved her. If anything happened to her, the pain would crush him. He wouldn’t be able to survive it.

When they reached the parapet, he turned to her, lit by the golden-orange sunset, the stone rough against his hip. Her dear, bonnie face was worried. “What is it, Raghnall?”

“Love… Ye’re well, aye?”

“Yes.”

He kept silent, not knowing how to say this. “Then my mission here is finished.”

She blinked, her eyes watering. “What?”

“I brought ye here so that ye’d live. But I never intended to live in the future.”

Her head shot back as though he’d slapped her. She turned her face away and stepped back.

“Love…” He stepped towards her.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said, her voice hoarse. “But it feels like you just kicked all the air out of me.”

“I never promised ye I’d stay.”

“I know you didn’t. And I’d never ask you to. But I was hoping you’d want to stay with me. That you’d see I’m not broken and that you don’t need to protect me here, that I can manage fine by myself. That you’d want me more than your life back there.”

Her words lashed him like a whip. He reached out his hand to her, the need to soothe her made his fingers hurt. “Lass, ’tisna fair.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Mom’s right, I am selfish. You have your family there. You have Seoc.”

“But I dinna have ye.”

She nodded, her eyes watering, and watched him without saying anything.

“I only have one more chance to go through the stone, ’tis what Sìneag said. And now I must make a choice whether I spend the rest of my life with the woman I love as a selfish man with no honor. Or do my duty, keep my word to a dying mother, and give Seoc the best life he can have.”

Bryanna’s eyebrows drew together, her lips pursed in a pained grimace. “And the woman you love might die, even with modern medicine, even with careful insulin management…because diabetics always have complications.”

This hit him like a war hammer. The image of the two women he’d loved in his life invaded his mind. Mòrag and Bryanna, both on the verge of death.

She was right, he knew. He was terrified to give his all to her, to be with her, body and soul, only for her to be taken away from him by some illness.

And so, it was better to keep being the lone wolf he’d always envisioned himself to be. Even if his heart would never heal or love again.

Seagulls soared over their heads in the dying light, their cries mournful. A young couple with a child five or six years old passed them by, the wee lass with two dark ponytails playfully skipping across the concrete in her pink shoes, squealing in delight when her father picked her up and whirled her from time to time.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” she whispered. “It’s my diabetes. Even with you here, where I have the best chance to live, it’s still keeping me away from living a great life, the full life of a healthy person.”

“I’m sorry, lass. Like I told ye, I’ve never wanted a life with someone. I love ye and always will. Time with ye is the most precious gift this life has given me. But ye were right from the start. Our story would always have an end. We were always meant to love each other, but never to be together forever. And this is where we part.”

Chapter 33

The night before Raghnall left Edinburgh, Bryanna had made sure his clothes were cleaned in one of those incredible washing machines and then stitched the rips herself. She drove him to Eilean Donan in the morning, and the whole way there, his hand was on her knee or wrapped around her small hand.

They barely talked, but he tried to stretch every moment in her company into a lifetime. A hundred times he asked himself if he was really doing the right thing or if he was committing another irreversible mistake and losing his only chance at happiness.

Since Bryanna, the last missing person, had been found, there was no official case anymore, and a healthy crowd of people stood before the ticket queue. Bryanna had been worried they might be forbidden from entering, but no one stopped them. In their modern clothes, it was possible no one even recognized them.

Unfortunately, a museum employee guarded the door to the underground. For a moment there, relief settled in Raghnall’s stomach—that his difficult choice had been taken for him. That he had to stay with Bryanna and tell himself for the rest of his life that this was why he’d had to break his word to Mòrag and to Seoc.

He saw the same glitter of hope in Bryanna’s eyes, only it lasted a mere moment. “Do you want me to help you to get rid of the guard?”