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“Are ye thinking of nae going?” he asked.
She wrapped her arms over her chest, her eyes filling with tears. “I want to go, Angus. ’Tis my calling. ’Tis what God wants. I just… I dinna ken if I can be a good servant to the Lord if I already broke his commandment.”
Rogene rubbed her shoulder. “Maybe you should talk to Father Nicholas about that?”
Catrìona nodded. “Ye’re right. I will. I need to finish tending to the wounded. I just saw ye two from the window and had to come see ye and make sure ye’re both unharmed.”
“Aye, dinna fash, sister. We’re both well.”
“Good, I’m so glad.”
With that, they walked towards the keep. Catrìona climbed up the stairs to where the wounded were. Rogene went up to get her purse with the magical object she called a phone.
While she was gone, he went into his bedchamber and found the leather roll with the letter from the Bruce and put it behind the belt of his breeches, under his tunic.
When they both returned to the ground floor, they stared at the stairs leading down.
Angus looked at her. “Do ye still want to go?”
She sighed. “I have to, Angus.”
His heart was tearing apart as she turned and walked down the stairs. The lower they descended, the faster his mind was spinning. Every step brought her closer to the rock.
Brought the end of their brief but wonderous relationship closer.
He’d never see her again. He’d never talk to her, never touch her, never say how much he loved her.
Never touch that possibility of happiness again.
They were now at the long hall of the basement. Angus took a torch from the sconce on the wall and they walked down the hall towards the door at the end. Time crawled, but he wanted it to stop altogether. That damned Highland faerie. Where was she? If she commanded time, mayhap he could persuade her, bribe her, convince her nae to do it…
But Rogene had already opened the heavy door and stepped inside the cave-like room. It smelled like mold and water and wet stone.
The light of the torch fell on the floor and the wall to his right. There it was, the rock, surrounded by the chests and casks and sacks. Where he’d lost the ring he’d meant to give to Euphemia and met the woman who’d changed his life forever.
He set the torch in a sconce above the rock. The flame threw dancing shadows around them, and darkness surrounded the spot of warm orange light in the middle of which Rogene stood.
Once she left, all light would be gone from his life, too. He stared at the rock with its curvy patterns and the handprint, and he hated it with all his might. He wished he could smash it into dust with his own hands and trap Rogene with him here forever.
“So, I guess this is it,” she said.
She looked pale, and her eyes were big on him.
Only moments were left till they’d be separated forever. Nae, he couldna have it.
“I canna let ye go,” he said and took her by the hand.
“But Angus—”
That familiar, sweet tingling went through him like every time they touched. “Nae. Listen to me. Ye can still stay. I ken ’tis nae what ye deserve, but listen. What if I marry Euphemia—and God kens how much I dinna want to do it—but what if I do, and ye will be my mistress?”
She frowned, angry. “Your mistress?”
“Aye. I hate myself for suggesting this, but ’tis how we can be together. I can give ye a house—a small estate, men to protect ye, and I would come and visit ye every moon. Euphemia would never ken of ye, and my men would die protecting ye. Ye’ll have everything ye want—”
“Except you,” she said coldly. “And except my brother.”
“Ye have me already, Rogene. Ye have me always. Always. I dinna want to marry her, and ’tis ye who tells me I must. For that child who’d save the Stuart kings.”
