The Highlander's Touch

Circenn dropped his hands and expelled a frustrated breath. There was not one selfish bone in her body, yet she was lambasting herself, carrying the blame for everything. He watched helplessly as she rocked back and forth, her arms wrapped around herself—a posture of deep grieving he’d seen far too many times in his life. “No one has ever been there to comfort you, have they?” he asked grimly. “You carried the weight of it all alone. This is untenable. This is what a husband is for,” he muttered.

“I don’t have one.”

“Well, you do now,” he said. “Let me be strong enough for both of us. I can, you know.”

She wiped angrily at her tears with the back of her hand. “I can’t. Now do you see why I must return? For God’s sake, will you please give me the flask? You promised when we were at Dunnottar that if there was a way for me to return, you would help me. Was that something you said merely to placate me? Must I beg? Is that what you want?”

“Nay, lass,” he said violently. “I never want that from you. I will give you the flask, but I must collect it. It is in a safe place. Will you trust me? Will you go to your chambers and await me there?”

Lisa searched his face frantically. “Will you really bring it?” she whispered.

“Aye. Lisa, I’d bring you the stars if it would cease your tears. I did not know. I knew none of this. You did not tell me.”

“You never asked.”

Circenn scowled as he mentally kicked himself. She was right. He hadn’t. Not once had he said, Excuse me, lass, but were you doing something when I snatched you out of time with my curse? Were you wed? Did you have children? A dying mother who relied upon you, perhaps? He helped her to her feet, but the moment she had her balance she tugged her arm from his hand.

“How long will it take you to retrieve it?”

“A short time, a quarter hour, no more.”

“If you don’t come to me, I will return with a bigger knife.”

“You won’t need a knife, lass,” he assured her. “I will bring it.”

She left silently, carrying part of his heart out the door with her.

* * *

Circenn opened his secret chamber and grimly retrieved the flask from the hidden compartment in the stone floor. It had never occurred to him that she’d had a full life in her time; he’d been so selfish that he’d never once asked her what he’d taken her away from. He had seen her only as proud, tenacious, sensual Lisa, as if she’d lived nowhere before she had come to him, but now he understood clearly. She had sacrificed most of her adult years caring for her mother, carrying burdens a laird would stagger beneath, nurturing the only clan she had left. It explained much: her resistance to adaptation, her continued attempts to search his castle, her illogical unwillingness to give up on the flask as a way to return home. He knew Lisa was an intelligent woman, and he suspected that deep down she realized that the flask wouldn’t return her, but if she formally gave up on the flask, she would have no hope. People often clung to irrational hopes to avoid despair.

His heart wept for her, because he knew that the only man who could return her would see her dead first. For the first time in his life he was furious with himself for refusing to learn the things Adam had so often offered to teach him.

Come train with my kind, Adam had coaxed on numerous occasions. Let me teach you the fae arts. Let me show you the worlds you might explore.

Never, Circenn had replied scornfully. I will never become like you.

But the magic is inside you—

I will never accept it.

Yet now he would have given anything for the art of sifting time. Anything Adam wanted at all. He straightened his shoulders, closed the hidden chamber, and moved to the door. How could he have been so blind as not to realize that she’d had a life and lost it? How could he have ever thought she was duplicitous? The image of her huge green eyes, shimmering with tears as she’d gazed up at him, refusing his solace because she’d obviously never been given comfort and didn’t know how to accept it, would burn forever in his mind.

He had a difficult path to walk with her now. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, bracing himself for her discovery that she was truly trapped. With a deep sigh, he left his chambers.

* * *

“Lass,” he said softly.

Lisa glanced up as he entered the room. She was huddled in the center of her bed, her pale face stained with tears. He fished about in his sporran and moved slowly to her side, making a journey he was reluctant to complete.

“Stand up, lass,” he said quietly.