A light rain slipped in gentle cascades down the windowpanes and crept through her heart. “You shouldn’t have gone alone.”
“Shh, I’m not the enemy. It’s your grief talking.” He stroked Bonny’s hair, but she pulled away.
“I could have lost you. Kieran, you prayed for a child. How can God allow this?”
He pressed a tender kiss on top of her head. “God is loving, but we’re too blind to understand. We’ve both grieved before and healed. Loss hurts, but we’re neither one alone this time. I’m content with only you. I made my peace before we married.”
Perhaps it was pain medication and weakness, but every struggle of her life combined into one crushing burden. His swollen jaw burned hot beneath her fingers. “I can’t help my anger. First, Brennan Grant shoots you, and now you’re attacked out of nowhere. Did this man say anything?”
“Get off my land.” Kieran lowered his eyes and shook his head. “I have no idea what he meant.”
***
Bonny snuggled deeper under the blankets, chilled as the transfusion trickled into her arm. The flash in her husband’s eyes didn’t promise a pleasant conversation when Hamish and Maggie returned to the room.
“How could anyone claim part of Stonehaven Farm?” Kieran raised the head of his hospital bed. The gracious staff had allowed them to share a room while they observed him for a severe concussion. The pitch of his voice rose with every word, eyes focused on Hamish. “You inherited it and your father before you.”
“Lad, I should have told you—”
“What?” Kieran’s pale face flushed with anger, his eyes narrowed and wary. “You’re sayin’ this maniac makes sense?”
“Let your father explain.” Maggie stood and patted her husband’s hand. “I’ll try and find us some tea.”
Red spots of anger bloomed in Kieran’s pale cheeks. The combination of a blow to the back of his head and his forehead meeting the steering wheel triggered blinding headaches. With Bonny’s blood count near normal, the doctors agreed to release them into the care of his parents the next day.
Chair legs scraped across the floor as Hamish scooted between the beds. “It happened before you were born, mo mhac.”
My son. Bonny was beginning to understand the Gaelic endearments used by her new family. It erased the sense of being an outsider.
“It was wrong—my not telling you. I’m sorry, lad. The years went by, and nothing happened, so I didn’t think it mattered.”
“How could you withhold important family information? What if a legal matter came up after your death and I didn’t know?” Kieran’s face reddened. His voice grew louder. One fist pounded the bed. A pillow flew to the floor.
Her father-in-law cleared his throat and turned to face her. “Lass, you know about my great grandfather, Euan MacDonell, who bought back the land we lost in the Highland Clearances of the late 1700s. A distant cousin, Cormag MacDonell, bought the Greenfield land. The families were never close, but we owned the Laddie Wood to the east, which required permission to drive our flocks across their land.”
Bonny shifted a glance toward Kieran.
His bruised hands balled into fists. “Why not tell me someone had prior claim to the land?”
“Keep your kilt on, man. I’m gettin’ to it.” Hamish leaned toward his son, one hand on the bedside rail. “Not long before I inherited Stonehaven Farm, Cormag’s great-grandson, Diarmid inherited the Greenfield land. A ne’er do well if ever I saw one, drinkin’, gamblin’, leavin’ his wife and bairns with precious little to survive on. Your mother and grandmother were always givin’ them handouts.”
Kieran ruffled his hair until it stood on end. “What year, Da?”
“After they dammed the loch about 1960. One day, Diarmid knocked at our door, disheveled and drunk, sayin’ the government was takin’ his land for taxes. He begged for a loan, and we worked out a deal where I obtained the deed to Greenfield in exchange for payment of the taxes. When he saved enough to buy it back, I would return it to him. We wrote the agreement on the back of the deed, and both signed.”
“He never paid you?” Impatience coarsened Kieran’s voice. Only God, Bonny, and his parents came before his love and devotion to the mountainous, wooded glen of loch and verdant pastures they called home.
“Will you be patient, mo mhac?” Hamish’s voice raised half an octave, eyes flashed, and he gulped from his water bottle. “The last I heard, Diarmid lived and worked on a sheep farm in Caithness. The deal was for ten years. He never returned.” A choking sound gurgled from his throat. “Bear with me. It’s difficult after all these years. I had a baby sister, Brighde, the bonniest lass in all of Lochaber. Your Bonny reminds me of her, a wee lassie with red curls and bright eyes, though Brighde’s were blue, not green—”
“Da!” Kieran interrupted. “You’re sayin’ I had an aunt I never heard of until today? Granny and Granda never mentioned their own daughter?”
Despite the tension, Bonny stifled a smile. Their accents grew much more pronounced when emotions ran high. The endearing trait provided a helpful cue to their feelings. Kieran clenched his bristled jaw, blue eyes gone gray.
Maggie stepped through the door bearing a tray with four cups of tea, set it on Bonny’s bedside table, and handed around the cups. She sniffed the hearty aroma. Her eyes roved from her son to her husband and back again.
“There were painful circumstances. I’ll get around to it all. If Diarmid wasn’t bad enough, his older brother Taran was worse, and a more black-hearted seducer I never met, angered by his father’s decision to disinherit him. Ach, I hate the name.” Hamish’s anguished voice roughened, like a truck on a graveled road. “My wee Brighde, at seventeen, and eight years younger than me, loved him from the day they met by the bridge over the loch. Your grandparents forbade her to see him, but there’s many a hidin’ place in those hills. Before long, they arrested Taran for killin’ a man in Tomdoun and jailed him in Fort William.”
“Drink your tea, Hamish,” Maggie said. “I put extra sugar to ease your throat.”
“Thank you, love.” He savored the warm drink, closed his eyes, and sat back. “With Taran gone, Brighde confessed she was carryin’ his child. They’d planned to elope, but with her startin’ to show, my parents had to know. I’ve never been so furious or seen my father angrier. He swore no child of Taran MacDonell would ever enter his house. Told wee Brighde to find a home for the bairn.”
“Oh, how awful.” Bonny wiped her arm across her eyes. The tubing from the blood transfusion snagged on the sheet, and she untangled it with care. A tide of sorrow threatened to drag her under a sea of grief at the idea of giving up a child. “The poor thing.”
Kieran eased himself out of bed, took the few steps to hers, sat, and hugged her close.
“Things were different then, lass. Having a child without a husband meant scandal. Brighde threatened to leave before givin’ up her bairn and packed her bags.”
“A true MacDonell, hardheaded as rocks on the Ben.” Maggie nodded toward the window, where Ben Nevis raised its snowy head.