Farah seized upon the sunlight with a mad desperation, and pulled the heavy doors of the keep open. The two footmen stood as sentries on either side, and they moved to stop her, but paused as though someone had given them a staying command.
Farah launched herself past them, running blindly for a gazebo perched on the edge of the tallest rocks, and shaded by a copse of trees. From the vista, she could stare across the channel and see the black rock and green mosses of Scotland’s Highland shores. She watched the churning waves break upon the cliffs with power enough to crush the mightiest of ships. The shards of her churning emotions were tossed about thusly inside of her. And, for the first time since those months after Dougan Mackenzie had died, she cried with all the strength her broken heart could muster.
* * *
Dorian stood in the archway of his castle and watched the woman flee as if for her life. “Let her go, Walters,” he ordered, stopping his cook from going after her and hauling her back.
“Name’s Frank,” Walters insisted, though he obediently returned to Dorian’s side.
It took a moment for the words to penetrate Dorian’s concentration, so focused as it was on the retreating form running with desperate abandon toward the pavilion, her skirts the color of sea foam billowing out behind her.
Finally, he glanced over at his biggest and most pliable employee. “Frank?”
Walters inclined his head toward the pavilion. “She named me this morning.”
“Of course she did,” Dorian muttered.
Walters looked after her, as well, his doe-brown eyes becoming very troubled. “What’s wrong with your Fairy, Dougan?”
Dorian sighed, running into this problem more often than he cared to. “It’s me, Walters. It’s Dorian. Dougan is dead, remember?”
“Oh.” Confused, the giant man took a long moment to study his features, his brows drawn together. “I forgot. I’m no good at remembering things.”
“It’s all right,” Dorian soothed.
“She misses Dougan,” the big man said, sniffing down at his muffins.
“Yes. Yes, she does.”
“I do, too, Dorian.”
Dorian could feel a familiar darkness surge in his veins. These days, it was tinged red, for blood, with a greater frequency. It no longer disturbed him, he told himself as he retreated to his study. “We all do, Frank,” he said before he closed himself in. “We all do.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was Murdoch who nudged her limp, despondent form from the planks of the pavilion and tutted over her until she allowed him to guide her back inside. The arm that kept her upright was solid beneath his suit coat, and he all but carried her up the steps.
“I’ve drawn ye a warm bath, lass, and found ye something suitable to wear whilst I launder yer dress.” Absurdly, he reminded her of a clucking mother hen, hovering nervously over her chick.
Farah nodded her thanks, her throat still too raw to say much of anything.
He went on, deciding to ignore or forgive her escape attempt, solicitous as ever. More so, now that tears streaked her cheeks and reddened her eyes. Once ensconced back in the bedroom, Murdoch relieved her of her shawl and purse, setting them on the jewel-blue chair.
“Did Blackwell frighten ye?” he queried with a false brightness. “Because although he’s a dangerous-looking bastar—er—villain, he’s really not so—”
“You were in Newgate with Dougan Mackenzie.” She didn’t pose it as a question, more of a soft declaration, one he couldn’t deny without perjuring himself.
Murdoch froze. His stout form working through a shiver as he found something arresting about her shawl draped across the chair. “Aye,” he gruffly confirmed. “For five long years.”
“What was your crime?”
He turned to her slowly, his face a mask of shame and pain. “My only crime, dear girl, was love.” He must have read the lack of comprehension on her face, because he continued. “I had a prolonged affair with the son of an earl from Surrey. When his father found out, charges were brought against me, and the man I loved turned on me in court, branding me a … predator.”
Farah’s already bruised heart jolted as another pang pierced it through, this one for the torment mirrored at her in the features of the wide Scotsman. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, surprised by how much she meant it.
“It’s ancient history, now.” He shrugged, summoning a wan smile for her.
“The past can long stay with us, Murdoch,” she murmured.
“Right ye are, lass.”
“Were you and Dougan … friends?” Farah ventured, knowing his rendering of the past would be kinder than Dorian Blackwell’s.
Murdoch shifted, retreating to the washroom door. “I owe him my life, many times over. And, as such, I owe my life for yers, as well.”
“How is that?” she whispered, uncomfortable with the veneration on his gentle face.
“Well, ye’re his Fairy, of course, his lady wife for all intents and purposes. We promised Dougan Mackenzie that we’d find ye. That we’d protect ye. That, if we could, we’d give ye back the life that ye’re owed, the life he would have wanted for ye.”
Tears threatened again and Farah fiercely blinked them away. “He told you about our handfasting when we were young?”
“Aye, it was one of our favorite stories.”
“Truly?” A soft wonder began to expand through her chest and she seized upon it. “Are you saying Dougan told you stories about me? That must have been incredibly tedious and uninteresting.”