Twenty-Three
Near midmorning, they rode onto MacLean land. Bridgette had expected to feel a great sense of safety and urgency leaving her, but all she felt was empty and filthy in mind and body. She was aware that Marion kept eyeing her, and that fear that Marion could sense what had been done to Bridgette sprang up in her mind like a fast-growing weed and tangled around her heart, her throat, and her body until she felt the shame would kill her. She kicked her horse hard in the sides, leaving Marion behind and flying past Lachlan, noting his shocked, open-mouthed expression as she raced by. Ahead around the bend was a loch, and all she could think about was getting there and cleaning away the grime.
“Bridgette!” Lachlan called from behind her. But instead of making her want to stop and turn to him, it drove her to a panic that blanketed her.
She dismounted the horse with such haste she nearly fell, and then she ran, stumbling toward the water. At the edge, her legs gave and she dropped to her knees to wash her face, neck, hands, and arms. When she brought her hands to her face to splash the cold water on herself, she smelled Colin. She gagged, doubled over, and her stomach clenched and unclenched as it tried to rid itself of nothing. She hadn’t eaten in what felt like days.
She heard Lachlan approaching, knew it was him instinctively, but she did not turn around. She could feel his desire to touch her, soothe her, be with her, and it frightened her. How could she explain to him that she did not think she could ever let him touch her again? She stared down at the dark water as pain pulsed within her and threatened to consume her. How could she make him understand that the woman she had been was gone? She’d thought herself strong, but she’d been proven weak. She’d thought herself brave, but she knew now she was a coward because fear was all she now felt.
“Bridgette?” Lachlan’s voice was gentle, but instead of calming her it was like a dagger to her heart. She could no longer turn to the one man she loved, the man she had always wanted, because she was filthy. Perchance if she was not so filthy? She grasped at the hope, her mind swirling and careening with thoughts that did not make sense. She jerked to her feet, only just seeing that Marion and Neil had paused to wait for them. They had their backs to her, and Bridgette suddenly had the notion that they could not look upon her because of the wretched filth Colin had left.
“I must get clean,” she muttered, her heart seizing the truth even as her mind doubted. Yet she rose and divested herself of her tattered gown until she stood in only her léine, all the while ignoring Lachlan’s pleas to talk to her.
She entered the loch, and the icy water stole her breath and made her teeth immediately clank together. She welcomed the numbing cold and the inability to think that it provided. For a short spell, she stared at the gooseflesh on her arms, but the bumps faded and she saw Colin’s hands on her body. She started to scrub at her skin with desperation, half-aware that Lachlan had entered the loch, as well, and stood nearby watching her.
She could not look at him or acknowledge him until she was clean. The things Colin had done filled her mind and made her scrub harder. She looked down at her arms. Would she ever rid herself of the memories of his smell and touch? If she did, would she feel different then? Would she feel less cowardly? Less defeated? Would it enable her to allow Lachlan to touch her again?
She scrubbed until her skin burned, but every time she sniffed her arm or her hands, she still smelled him. She reached down into the water, brought up a handful of rocks and sand, and intended to use those to scrub herself, but Lachlan’s hands clamped around her wrist like a vise.
Bridgette glanced at Lachlan and blinked. She knew it was him she was looking at, but she saw Colin instead. She squeezed her eyes shut, shook her head, and opened them again, letting out a relieved cry when she saw Lachlan’s face and the concern in his eyes.
Lachlan had been uncertain if he should stop Bridgette, but he sensed she had to do this. Yet when she gathered the rocks to scrub at her already-raw skin, fear seized his heart. He grabbed her by the wrist, careful to avoid her wound, and shook the rocks out of her hands. When she struggled against him, he brought her flush against his chest, her freezing skin making him suck in a breath. He secured her hands behind her back where he held them firmly while trying not to hurt her.
“Ye must nae scrub anymore. Yer skin is raw.”
“Release me!” she howled, her terror-filled cry like a thousand fatal gashes to his heart.
Tears stung his eyes as he looked down at her fearful face. “I will,” he said in a gentle voice. “But ye must give me yer vow to come out of the loch and cease yer scrubbing.”
“I’m nae clean!” she wailed. “I’m nae clean! I kinnae get his smell off my skin!”
There were a hundred ways he was going to torture Colin. Lachlan inhaled a ragged breath. “Ye will scrape off yer skin. Do ye wish for that?”
For a long moment, she said nothing, and then a sob escaped her lips and she crumpled into him, all her weight coming into his hands as her head fell against his chest. Her hot tears wet his skin and made the tears in his own eyes roll down his face. He released her arms and gathered her up as he lifted her out of the water and carried her to the embankment.
When he set her on her feet, she stood there looking through him, teeth chattering, skin prickled with gooseflesh. He wanted to put a soothing hand to her, but he feared he would make things worse. Finally, her eyes locked with his and the complete desolation in them seared his heart.
“I have been shattered into a thousand pieces,” she said in a choked voice. “I dunnae ken that I can find them all to make myself whole again.”
“I will find them for ye,” he vowed. “I will help ye become yerself once more. Together we will make ye whole.”
“I dunnae think I can let ye.”
He took great comfort in the fact that she had not simply refused him. “In time ye will. And I will wait. I will wait as long as it takes.”
She looked at him with those bleak eyes that nearly sent him to his knees. “What choices could I have made differently? I tried to stop the seer’s prophecy, but it all came true anyway.”
He wanted to howl his agony and anger. “Be damned the seer,” he hissed. He would never heed a seer again as long as he lived. The seer could only see the future in the moment she touched a person, and their future had changed in a way the seer had never predicted. Damn her to Hell. And damn him for not demanding Bridgette marry him as he had wanted. He had let her convince him to wait out of guilt over Graham. But they loved each other. They had not done wrong by loving each other. What they had done wrong was trying to deny a thing so true and so pure.
Bridgette’s eyes widened and her mouth parted. Slowly, she leaned down, grasped her gown, and tugged it on. When she was dressed, she faced him. She was so near, yet she could have been a thousand miles gone for how far away she seemed. He didn’t want to leave her, but he had to go now and try to save Graham and Lena.
“Now that we are on MacLean land, I must away to rescue Graham and Lena.” He tried to swallow the fear that clenched his gut. “If they still live…”
She nodded. “As ye should.”
He sighed at the lack of emotion in her tone. It worried him more than the outburst. “Neil will take ye to yer brother’s home”—he was careful not to call it hers, as he wanted to let her know in a gentle way that he still intended for his home to be hers—“at Duart Castle, and I’ll come for ye after I have Graham and Lena, and then we will go together to Dunvegan…back toour home.”
When she opened her mouth, he prepared himself for her to refute his words, but instead, she quickly told him where Colin’s bedchamber was—as best she could remember—and where Lena’s bedchamber was, too. Then she told him that his uncle Jamie and the Campbell had left for a meeting directly after Colin had married her. That explained why the castle had not been heavily guarded.
