Let Me Be Your Hero by Elaine Coffman Read Free Book Online

the manner in which they were taken from her.
    She would have chosen another way for it to happen—to die in your sleep seemed a peaceful way. It was not their way. Not one of them would have chosen it. They died defending themselves, against what, she knew not. The only thing she could do was to bear up under this in a manner befitting her family and her clan. Yet, she could not ignore the cold fingers of fear that skimmed lightly down her spine. What will happen now, she wondered, when her brother Kendrew inherited the title, too young and unprepared to bear being mantled under the weight of certain responsibility.
    She put her hand to her head. She felt faint. Nausea churned her stomach.
    Later, she would wish she had listened to Fraser, for if she had not seen the dreadful reality, perhaps she could have convinced herself that it was not true. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could have prepared her for the sight of her father, Alasdair, and her two eldest brothers, Breac and Ronaln, their bloody bodies laid out in the great hall, their beautiful eyes closed forever.
    “I would like to see them now,” she said softly.
    “Ye are certain?”
    “Aye, but will ye stay with me?”
    “Aye, I will stay with ye, Claire. For as long as ye wish.”
    She gazed upon the beloved face of her father, unable to believe the laughing giant of a man who rode off with her brothers two days ago had come home for the last time; his face a deathly pallor, the eyes that always looked at her with love, closed, and the lips that told her stories of the Scotland of old, silenced forever.
    She touched the deep slash across his forehead. The blood was cold and crusted. She did not try to staunch the flow of tears that gushed forth when she saw the deep gash in his shoulder and the badly mangled arm that was hardly connected to the rest of his body.
    She leaned forward and kissed his cold lips. She brushed the hair back from his face. “I am sorry, Father. Sorry that I was not born a boy, so that I might avenge yer deaths. Sorry that I didna wake in time to see ye off. Sorry I am a weakling now, who tries to pretend she is strong. Sorry that I not have the knowledge to give to Kendrew to help him to stand in yer shoes at his tender age. I take my only comfort in the knowledge that ye are with our mother and that she will be alone no more.”
    She started to move to her brothers when she thought she felt her father’s hand grip her arm. She saw the sadness and grief in his eyes, and when his lips moved, she heard naught, but the words formed in her mind.
    Be strong, Claire….
    She was frozen in a crystal of silence as anguishgripped her throat and tears fell from her face. She wanted to tear her clothing and take up arms against those who did this cowardly deed. She waited to hear more from him, but the hand released her and the crystal of silence shattered. She could hear the wails of her sisters coming from the solar above.
    She did not mention to Fraser what happened, or what she thought happened, for she knew it was only her distraught imagination doing its best to bolster her flagging courage, yet it was also the exact thing her father would have said to her: Be strong, Claire…. It did not matter if it was real, or not real, for it did not have to be one or the other, for her to find comfort in them.
    Ronaln’s handsome face was marred not. She found it odd that it disturbed her more than her father’s face, with the story of what he suffered written there. Ronaln’s face spoke naught, for he was only sleeping. It was not until she saw the circle of blood upon his chest that she realized he had been cowardly killed with a blade through his back. “A fhleasgaich oig is ceanalta,” she whispered in Gaelic. Oh, lad, so young and gentle…
    It was not until she stopped beside the cloth that covered Breac’s body that she doubted herself. Can I do this? Can I see the horror of that which my father fought to shield from his daughters? Will I