When the Laird Returns by Karen Ranney Read Free Book Online Page A

nodded, unable to speak.
    “You are bound for a new life, Iseabal,” her mother said, her smile oddly luminous. “Why do you look so miserable?”
    Because I do not want your life. I don’t want to be afraid all the time. Words she would never speak, because uttering them would wound the one person she loved.
    “I am not miserable,” she replied, forcing a smile to her face. “Just thinking that my prayers should have been more fully formed. I wished to be free of Fernleigh and now I find myself about to be wed. I wanted a man younger than mysuitors and more handsome, but I never thought he would buy me in order to keep his land.”
    Her mother placed both palms on either side of Iseabal’s face. “Love comes to most of us at one time or another, my dearest daughter. But you must watch for it, lest it slips past you unaware.”
    Pulling away, Iseabal stared at her mother. “You can say that, Mother, when he uses you so?”
    “Your father has provided well for us, Iseabal,” she said gently. “We live in luxury compared to so many others.”
    “Is it worth his cruelty?” Iseabal asked.
    Leah gazed at her. “Your father does not think himself brutal, Iseabal, only strong. He does not see his cruelty, only his determination.”
    “Evil that does not recognize itself?”
    “Is any man truly evil?” her mother countered, her eyes kind. “Or does each person hold within themselves a kernel of goodness? A seed that either grows or withers.
    “It is enough, perhaps, to feel joy in your children such as you have given me,” Leah said, placing her hand gently on Iseabal’s cheek. “That brings a contentment all its own.”
    If her mother was content, why were there dark circles beneath her eyes? Or why was there panic on her face when her husband entered a room, sour-tempered and angry?
    “Mother,” Iseabal said gently. “You want to see goodness in him, and so you do. But have you never wished for more?”
    “I had love once,” Leah said unexpectedly, sitting on the bench. “A man I loved with all my heart,” she added, staring down at her hands. She examined the backs of them, then turned them over, studying her fingers as if she’d never before seen them. “He was a MacRae,” she said. “Fergus MacRae, of Gilmuir.”
    Shocked, Iseabal sat down beside Leah, stretched out her hand to touch her mother’s wrist, a wordless comfort to counteract the sudden sad look on the other woman’s face.
    Glancing at Iseabal, Leah continued. “He was the most wonderful man I’d ever known. We planned to wed when the rebellion was over, when he came home.”
    “What happened?” Iseabal asked.
    “A story repeated a thousand times. He never returned. I married your father only because it didn’t matter. After Fergus died, I lived in a cloud. Nothing had the power to move me from my grief. Except you,” she said, reaching up and brushing Iseabal’s hair over her shoulder in a tidying gesture. “You have been my greatest joy.”
    “I thought you cried at night because of him,” Iseabal said slowly.
    “Your father?” Leah shook her head. “I never knew you heard,” she said, standing and turning to the window. She gripped the sill as if to steady herself.
    “He was a giant of a man,” Leah said, staring through the window as if she could see him now. “Him, with his red beard and his way of walking as if he owned the earth below his feet. Sometimes I used to think that God Himself would look like Fergus, both fierce and kind.”
    “You love him still?” she asked.
    “Love doesn’t vanish when death appears, Iseabal. In my mind, I’m still that young girl who met him in the glens between my home and his. In my heart, I’m still his.” Leah’s words were laden with both love and sorrow.
    “Is that why you welcome this marriage?”
    Her mother glanced at her, smiling. “My one true regretwas that I never bore his child. Sometimes I pretended that you were his, instead of Drummond’s. But my