“What?” He turned toward her, astonishment on his face. “No. I—” He stopped talking, and his face went white. “Christ,” he said, his distraught tone making her ache for him. “Maybe. I don’t know? I—” His gaze bore into her, almost pleading, but for what she didn’t know. “My dad and I have a rocky relationship,” he said, barely above a whisper. “And when I met Amanda things were especially strained between us. He’d made me feel bad about my job, but mainly because he was right and I didn’t want to admit it. I’d taken a job with some unscrupulous people, but I hadn’t known they were unscrupulous at the time. I’d just known they were successful and that I had a good chance at being successful with them, without relying on my name or my dad. I wanted that very much. But when the truth about the firm came out, my dad swooped in and demanded I quit and take a job at the family company. At the time, I felt manipulated. Though looking back, I can see now he was trying to help in the only way he knew how. By taking control. And when I met Amanda, I… Well, I—”
“You wanted to be in control, to be free,” she finished for him, hoping it didn’t anger him.
“Yeah,” he said, peering at her with an intensity that gave her chills. “I did. And she gave me control. Completely. But eventually it irritated me, and we’d fight about it. The night of the accident, I think…well, I think she purposely didn’t put on her seat belt—that’s a strap that keeps you in your seat, and it might have saved her—because I’d told her to. She was trying to take back some control, take back her own freedom.”
Deirdre sucked in a slow breath, then released it, thinking about what to say. “Would you have given it to her?”
“Yeah,” he said, sorrow in his voice. “I would have welcomed the change, but neither of us got the chance because of me. I can’t forgive myself. Do you see?”
She thought perhaps she might, and it was heartbreaking. She’d lost three people she’d loved, her brother most recently, and each time she’d felt a little to blame, though not on the level that Reikart did. She also had battled the fear that she’d forget them, but what time and loss had taught her was that you never forgot someone you loved.
She stepped to him and took his hand in hers—as a friend. She wrapped her fingers around his much bigger hand, and for a moment, she thought he might not reciprocate, but slowly, his fingers curled around hers, one by one. “Ye are afraid ye will forget her.”
He frowned but neither agreed nor disagreed, so she continued, imagining that his mind likely tortured him daily with memories of the things he could have done different. Her mind had done that to her. She’d had to accept, with her dad especially, that she’d done the best she could. “Ye will nae forget her, Reikart. She’s here.” Deirdre touched his head and his heart. He flinched at her touch, but she continued. “Living yer life again, even loving again, will nae lessen her memory. Yer time with her helped make ye the man ye are today.”
And he was a good man, it seemed. An honest man to have told her all of that. A man who felt deeply. She could see it now, and it made her like him just a bit more. A dangerous thing, because she now understood what she hadn’t before their talk: Reikart may never love another woman as he had Amanda, even though he hadn’t loved her quite the same in the end. Not because he wasn’t capable of deep feelings but because he was. And his greatest feeling now was guilt, and he was afraid to let that guilt go because he thought he’d forget Amanda if he did.
Chapter Sixteen
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Voices of the Night: A Psalm of Life”
Reikart made his way out of the castle and toward the river that ran through the grounds to the east side of the castle. It was a cowardly move to avoid supper in the great hall, he acknowledged that, but he wasn’t ready to see Deirdre again. They’d parted ways soon after their talk and dagger lessons on the cliff, without ever having the lessons on Court etiquette, and he’d done more training with his brother for the rest of the afternoon. Then he sent word through Dermot to Deirdre that he preferred they work on Court etiquette tomorrow instead of at supper, as they had decided they would when they’d parted at the cliff.
He needed to be alone and think about everything that had happened, that had been said. It was too bad he hadn’t met Deirdre in his time; he could have saved a boatload of money on his ineffective shrink. In a few short hours, Deirdre had helped him realize what he hadn’t before: Amanda had wanted someone to control her life. And he’d been happy to do it because his own life had felt so out of control at the time.
He stopped, tilted back his head, and stared up at the stars that were just starting to appear. He took a long, cleansing breath, letting the frigid air burn his lungs. There was a question at the back of his mind he’d been avoiding since the day Amanda had died, and it demanded attention now. It screamed at him, and no matter how he tried to ignore it, he couldn’t shut it up.
Would they still be together if she were alive?
He wasn’t sure, and it ripped him up inside, shredded him. But he just wasn’t. He’d loved her, completely, but had they been good for each other? He thought back to the night of the accident. Yeah, he’d gotten in a fight with his dad, but before the fight with his dad, he’d also gotten in a fight with Amanda. He’d started to feel almost suffocated by the way she needed him, and he hated himself for it. It was exactly what he’d needed from her, what had attracted him to her in the beginning. To feel someone thought he was capable enough to lead them, that he didn’t come up short.
He’d snapped at her in the restaurant that night. The words came to him suddenly:Make a decision for yourself. Just one.He’d said them too loud and in too much of an exasperated voice, and all because she had ordered the exact same thing as he had, saying she liked what he liked. He’d simply wanted her to have her own opinion, her own taste, for once. And that need for freedom that had burned within him previously but had been desire to be free of his dad’s judgement, free of his own feelings of never measuring up, had turned in that moment to a wish to be free of her. He clenched his jaw at the memory.
They’d left the restaurant to pick up Rhys for the concert, and Reikart had run into his dad in the office while waiting for his brother. Then his dad had made a crack about how the law firm where Reikart had just been made partner was filled with a bunch of criminals, and he had suggested that if Reikart had any morals, he would leave the firm. He’dsuggestedReikart was shaming the family.
He could see himself storming away from his dad, not because he’d thought his dad was wrong, but because he had suspected that Dad might be right, and it pissed him off to no end that he could have been so willfully blind. He’d been so proud to have joined the firm and made it on his own without his dad’s help. His anger had transferred from his head to the gas pedal, and he’d pushed it too hard and too fast. It hadn’t been until the car had started dinging at him that he realized Amanda hadn’t buckled her seat belt. He’d told her to do so, and she had looked right at him, narrowed her eyes, and refused. Then she had gotten snarky and reminded him that he wanted her to make her own decisions. Up went the radio, down went her hand on his thigh, and then his brother had started lecturing Reikart, sounding just like their dad, about how he should slow down. He had been about to. Christ, he had been letting up on the gas already, but it was too little too late.
The guilt pounded at him now and drove him forward almost blindly. He ran down the trail, grass tickling his legs, the cold breeze freezing his face as the pebbles on the trail dug into his feet. Could he ever live again as Deirdre had suggested? Was that even fair? Was he a selfish bastard for even asking himself the question? He felt like he was, but as he ran down the winding dirt path through the cold air and twilight sky, he also realized that he’d told Deirdre more today than he’d told anyone, including his shrink and brother, in years. And he hadn’t felt uncomfortable doing it. That feeling of being alone, feeling as if no one could possibly understand how he felt, had disappeared in his time on the cliff with Deirdre.
She made him want to let go of his guilt and live again. He couldn’t allow himself to start over, to replace Amanda when it was his damn fault she’d never get the chance to replace him, to start over with someone new, someone better for her. Why should he get a do-over? But oh, he wanted it. Damn it all to hell.
He came to the end of the path where thick trees rose and darkness sucked up all the light but the stars above. Shaking with the emotions he was trying to repress, he stripped off his clothes, the cold caressing his skin like an old lover. He ran through the shadows, came to the river’s embankment, and dove under the surface…and straight into someone.
His outstretched hands hit their shoulder, he thought, shoving them away from him and down. His mind froze for a moment, and then he was swimming rapidly downward, grabbing an arm even as the person tried to get free of him. They were likely panicked, so he took a firm hold, tugged them to the surface, and he came up with a sputtering Deirdre.
Before he could say a word, he heard a voice, male and irritated. “Had I known ye gave yer favors for free, I would never have offered to wed ye, ye wench.”
“Ye are despicable, Fearghas,” Deirdre snapped, wiping the water from her eyes.
Something exploded inside Reikart, and he looked toward the edge of the riverbank. His first instinct was to swim out of the water and beat Fearghas to a bloody pulp, but that would not help matters. Damn. Four silhouettes were there, four men all witnessing him naked in the river with Deirdre. He glanced toward her. Gooseflesh covered the swell of her breasts, which were very visible through her thin slip. Damn it! He knew enough about the thirteenth-century Scotland to understand that with this little accidental swim, Deirdre’s reputation had just been ruined, as well as her chances of getting a good husband.
“If you say one more word to disparage Deirdre, I promise you’ll regret it,” Reikart said, barely holding on to his temper.
“The scene here says it all.” Fearghas and his men crouched and looked down into the water at Reikart and Deirdre. Reikart moved Deirdre behind him so they could not see her. “She’s nae chaste,” Fearghas said to agreeing grunts from the three men around him. “And there is nae a man who will want her now.”
