His Heart's Home (4 page)

“To hunt for-?” Ciaran began, but her voice trailed off before ending in horror. “
Gracious
!” She shook her head in exasperation. “What a horrid game!”

“But they wouldn’t let me!” Liam persisted, insisting they return to the point. He turned to plead his case to their visitor, under the impression that he’d gain more sympathy there. “You saw them!” he said to Mr. MacRae. “I told you they ran away! I’m telling the truth.”

“Aye, it’s true,” Duncan confirmed to Ciaran, but then returned his attention to the boy, affectionately ruffling his hair. “Give it a year, lad,” he told him. “They’ll come around. Trust me, I was a wee brother myself.”

“You were?” Liam asked, wide-eyed. Ciaran tried not to be
too
obvious she was listening as closely as her son, soaking up every detail about the strange man.

“It
’s true,” Duncan told him. “So you can trust me there.”

Liam still didn’t look convinced.  Ciaran opened her mouth to scold him for being impolite
, but MacRae started speaking again.

“I’ll do you one better,” he said, his rich brogue light and playful. “If your older brother’s won’t play with you
- well then, you can come and play with me!”

Ciaran and Liam both stared in disbelief.

“Grownups don’t
play
!” Liam blurted.

Duncan made a dismissive sound. “I’ll have you know that I’m the
best
hide and seeker in all of Kintail!”

“
Really
?” Liam answered, squinting up at the man uncertainly. He looked like he was weighing the credibility of the statement in his mind, but he must have found in Duncan’s favor at the end because his face burst into a radiant smile. “That’s
GREAT!
” he announced as he started bouncing from foot to foot, hampering his mother’s attempts to wipe his cut with a freshly-laundered cloth.

Duncan chuckled and mussed the child’s hair again. “I’m glad you think so.”

“Just wait until I tell Ryan and Avery! Then they’ll be sorry! Mama, can I go and tell them?
MAY I? PLEASE???”

Ciaran managed a tired smile, bemused by the change in her young son’s humor. “Aye, I reckon so,” she told him. “Run along now, Liam
, and don’t be bothering Mr. MacRae any more today.”

“He wasn’t any bother,”
Duncan said as the little boy scurried away.

“Well, I’m glad to hear it.” Ciaran said, and then tossed the rag that she’d been using to clean the cut back into the dirty pile and doggedly returned to her task.

She expected the Scotsman to leave as soon as he’d made his delivery, so she was startled when his shadow fell across her, and his voice drifted into her ears again. “That looks like tedious work.”

“What work isn’t?” she answered, rather sharply, unnerved that he had chosen to linger.  What did the man want with her?

She knew what Sean would say…

Ciaran stiffened as she replayed the memory of
Duncan’s smile in her mind. Had it
really
been warm and friendly, or was it more like a leer? Mr. MacRae seemed like a nice enough man, but she didn’t trust her own judgment of character. Her marriage was proof enough that she was hardly skilled in that.

Unsettled, she focused her energy on the washing
and hoped he would go away. Her plan backfired however, when she started scrubbing so hard that the soap slipped out of her hand and fell into the stream.

“Oh, bother!” Ciaran exclaimed in annoyance and bent over, trying to work out where it had gone.

“I’ll get it!”

Ciaran didn’t have time to react before Duncan swooped forward, fished it out of the water, and placed it carefully back into her hand.

Their fingers touched for the barest fraction of a second, but long enough to deliver a jolt. Ciaran didn’t understand the sharp sizzle that started in the place where their bodies met, and she didn’t like the prickling aftershocks that roamed underneath her skin.

She jerked her hand away as if he’d burned it, but Duncan didn’t speak. She could
feel
him watching her. His gaze was as heavy and disconcerting as the physical contact, perhaps more so when she realized she’d felt his eyes before.

The quick movement had startled Mary, who began to kick and fu
ss. Ciaran made a few soothing sounds in an attempt to quiet the baby, but they didn’t work. Sighing, she began the awkward process of unstrapping the child from her back. Once again, Duncan stepped forward to help.

“I’ll get her,” he said, and didn’t wait for an answer. He plucked Mary out of the jumbl
e of rope and blankets that she had fashioned into a swing. “There ye are now, lass.” Duncan said, bouncing the baby into the air, shocking Ciaran when she actually settled down.

“You’re very good at that,” Ciaran blurted to fill the silence, to reestablish the formal boundaries of the conversation
, perhaps to push him away? “And with Liam, you must have a great pack of children of your own?”

Abruptly, the Scotsman’s easy smile failed and his blue eyes seemed to darken.

“No,” he said baldly, “I don’t….only nieces and nephews.”

“Oh.”
Of course
! Ciaran wished that she could kick herself for the cruel mistake! Hadn’t she overheard some of the women saying he’d just lost his wife? Of course, if he had any children they would have come along. “I’m sorry,” she apologized awkwardly.

Duncan shrugged, “It’s nothing for you to be sorry about.”

“Yes, but-!” Ciaran floundered for a moment, but couldn’t think of any way to explain or excuse the error without making it worse. In the end, she settled for steering back to a safer topic. “Well, you were good with Liam all the same. Thank you for bringing him back to me. Ryan and Avery can be darlings or monsters as they choose.”

“I know the type.”

“Do you?” Ciaran managed a tiny smile at his cheeky tone.

“I think I
was
‘the type’ when I was little,” Duncan confessed, flushing lightly. “At least, that’s what people back in Scotland used to say.”

“Scotland,” Ciaran echoed sadly, her own mind filling with memories of home. “Have you been away long, then?”

“Just for the better bit of two years. Aileen and I…” Duncan’s eyes clouded again. Ciaran watched the change with confusion, but it was gone before she could work the puzzle out. “I came with a lot of my clansmen. The lands were declared forfeit to the crown.”

“How horrible!” Ciaran exclaimed, feeling an honest sympathy for the man. Her famil
y’s own English landlord had run their rents so high that they couldn’t fill all the mouths they had to feed.

“Well, it’s
done
,” Duncan said, the resolution in his voice implying he had already shed those tears, and was determined to look forward instead of back. “How long have
you
been in the Colonies?” he asked.

Ciaran shrugged. “
Six, going on seven years, I suppose.”

“Did you come with your family?”

“Only my sister, Caitorina,” she admitted before adding in an embarrassed whisper. “We were indentured.”

“
Indentured?”
Duncan said.  He repeated the word with such strong distaste that Ciaran felt her flushed skin grow even hotter than it had been before.  A strong sense of shame pressed down on her from above, weighing down her heart. It hadn’t been her
fault
that her family had chosen to send her down that path and, in theory at least, it wasn’t such a
terrible
practice. 

Ciaran squared her shoulders, pleased with her own courage.  “The
Connellys paid for my passage.  In return I had to work for them for two years.  It was the only way my sister and I could come across from Ireland,” she said defensively. 

“And that was
what you wanted?” Duncan asked more softly, worried he had let her see how shocked and angry he was on her behalf for what her past had been. 

His gentle question took the wind out of Ciaran’s sails.  “I- I suppose,” she said quietly, turning back to her work, not wanting to let him see her so disconcerted.

Duncan didn’t press her for anything more.  He was puzzling over something she had mentioned. She said that she had been in America for almost seven years. For the first two of those years she had been little more than a slave as far as Duncan understood it, but her oldest boy was already six.

Maybe Liam was a stepson as well. Duncan
sighed with relief when that scenario presented itself. The two older boys definitely weren’t Ciaran’s, so maybe Liam wasn’t either.  Even if not, she might have married before her two years of servitude were finished, or even before she left Ireland, he supposed.  Duncan couldn’t imagine why his mind had leapt to the worst case scenario: a young, a
very
young, Ciaran being brutally taken advantage of by someone she should have been able to trust.

“Do you hear from your sister often?” Duncan asked, wanting to repair any damage that he had unwittingly caused.  This didn’t seem to be the right way to do it though, because Ciaran looked pained and shook her head.  “Sorry,” Duncan apologized, at a los
s to explain why his legendary charm had deserted him.  “I know it’s hard being separated from family,” he said seriously.

“You- you left all of your family in Scotland?” Ciaran asked.  Duncan
thought
he detected a note of curiosity in her voice, which made him smile.

“Aye
- well, and England,” he snorted, rolling his eyes and looking disgusted.  “My siblings have a revolting habit of marrying the-” he stopped himself before he cursed in front of the lady.  “Of marrying our fine neighbors,” he said dryly.  Ciaran giggled, and Duncan’s confidence was restored.

“How many of you are there?” she asked.

“Six,” Duncan said automatically, and he then caught himself in the mistake.  “Well… five of us now.”  He forced himself not to succumb to sadness by turning all of his attention to Ciaran.  “How about you?  Just you and your sister?”

“Oh lord no!” Ciaran laughed.  “There were fifteen of us when I left home, but I’m sure a few more have come along since then.”

“Fifteen!” Duncan choked.  “And I thought I came from a big family,” he grinned.

“
Not even close.”

Duncan beamed at her, enchanted by the revelation that she was even
more
beautiful when she was smiling, an expression he’d never seen on her face before this moment.

Unfortunately, the look was short-lived.

“Ciaran!”

Duncan watched the light in the woman’s face die out like a candle being snuffed at the sound of a male voice calling her name
,
Sean’s voice
.

Ciaran
dropped to her knees, redoubling her efforts with the washing, and making a painfully obvious effort to sound casual when she answered back, “Well, hello there, Sean!!” His only reply was a coarse grunt. Duncan saw Ciaran shrink back a little as her husband’s gaze shifted suspiciously between the Scotsman and herself. Still, she managed a bright, unaffected tone as she announced, “Here’s Mister MacRae. He brought Liam up from the riverbank - those boys are always getting into such-!”

“Liam isn’t here
now
,” Sean interrupted, “He’s the one who came and told me you were entertaining our good laird here,” he informed her, the words all dripping with contempt.

“Yes…well…” Ciaran floundered.

Duncan jumped in to try and save her. Sean obviously had the wrong (or
right
) idea.

“I was just admiring your wee lassie here,” he said, jostling Mary on his hip.

Sean’s glower deepened. “I know what you were admiring, MacRae,” he growled.

Duncan’s face flushed with anger. It didn’t matter if Sean
had
hit precisely on the mark, what man
wouldn’t
admire the way Ciaran’s damp clothes clung to her figure, it was a reckless and insulting accusation to make. “I’m sure you
don’t
,” he retorted, hotly, but didn’t have a chance to say more. Sean had already caught his wife’s arm and hauled her roughly to her feet.

“I’ll have a word, Ciaran,” he said in a low, cold voice that made Duncan’s stomach twist in foreboding. His sense of unease was enhanced by the blatant panic on Ciaran’s face, and the way she started clutching for her babe.

“I’ll mind her,” Duncan said, in what he hoped was a soothing tone. He nodded over at little Aidan, still splashing in the water, blissfully unaware of the tension between his parents. “And look after your laddie too!” He didn’t understand why the look on Ciaran’s face grew more desperate, and didn’t have an opportunity to ask any questions. Sean shifted his grip, cruelly pinching the soft flesh under Ciaran’s arm and dragging her into the woods while Duncan helplessly looked on.

Mary had been content to be held in Duncan’s arms, but began to fuss when her mother was out of sight. He bounced the baby again and peppered a kiss on the top of her head.