balcony.
“’Tis good to see you, Morgann. Are you well?”
“Aye, Sister,” he replied, and then was gone.
She hadn’t expected his cool response. Aye, he was the stoic, serious one, but they had become friends. He had warmed to her on their journey. Now, it was all gone. She suddenly felt like weeping.
She felt the captain’s gaze on her and turned to him.
“What is it?” he was quick to ask.
Everything was about to change. It had already begun. None of the men would treat her the same way when she became a nun. “I am sad.”
His jaw tightened as he bit down on words he could not utter, save one. “Why?”
There were too many reasons, so she chose one. “What is going to become of us?”
The weight of his brow brought shadows to his eyes. “There is no us if ye say yer vows.”
“Cap—Galeren, my uncle has vowed to destroy my life if I betray him.”
“Then,” he said quietly, “ye are speakin yer vows fer the wrong reason.”
She was quiet. He was correct, but it didn’t matter. “One of us must leave.”
His gaze deepened on her. “Silene, is that what ye want? To be apart from me?”
“I need you not to be where I am, and all will be well.”
He shook his head and looked into her eyes. “I canna agree to that.”
“We must part,” she cried on a hushed voice. “There is no other way.”
She ran from him, crying all the way to her chambers. The more she told herself that living without the captain was not impossible, the less she believed it.
She wanted to go to the church and wait for the leaders there, but she needed her white cloak.
She met Louise in the hall.
“Why are ye crying, Sister?”
Because I’m about to lose a man who walks around with a kitten cuddled in the crook of his shoulder. “I am overwhelmed by everything going on.”
“Aye, I heard ye were sayin’ yer vows today.”
“Aye.”
“And that makes ye weep?”
“Nay,” Silene told her honestly. She understood that Louise was jealous of the captain and would likely turn on her, but she wanted a friend and, right now, Louise was here.
“I weep because I would be sacrificed for anything. I thought I had time, but now I do not have any time at all.”
Louise nodded, looking, for an instant, sympathetic to Silene’s plight. But then she stopped at the door to the chambers without going inside. “Sister,” she said, moving in closer, “I would advise ye to forget Captain MacPherson. I hear it could kill ye…or him.”
Silene’s blood ran cold. Not Louise, too! “Are you threatening me?” she demanded, having had enough of this.
Louise shook her head. “Not me.”
“Then who? I wish to know! Is it my uncle?”
“Sister, I canna tell ye.”
Silene opened her mouth to say more but heard voices around the corridor.
“I must go,” Louise said, taking the opportunity to hurry away without answering her question. She was gone without a sound.
Silene quickly opened the door to her chambers and slipped inside. She felt too shaken up to talk to anyone.
She heard men’s voices pass her door, and then it grew quiet again. She went to the hearth and stared into the flames.
Forget the captain or die.
She could not get warm. Her head was spinning, making her feel ill. Too much was happening at once. Her vows were upon her. She could not make the wrong decision because of lack of time. What did her heart want her to do? If she said her vows to God, she could not, would not break them. If she did not say them, she could take a husband of flesh and blood—and possibly anger someone enough to see her dead.
John surely knew that Galeren came from Invergarry. If he wanted her dead, he had men enough to do it. Her uncle had reason to hate her. She would have destroyed his connection to the powerful church.
Perhaps it wasn’t someone as dangerous as her uncle who threatened her. Perhaps it came from one of Galeren’s many admirers. It didn’t matter—someone had threatened her to Louise. She should tell the captain.
Oh, how would she ever forget him? He would always remain in her heart, her thoughts, there to haunt her. There to tempt her to regret her choice.
“Cleanse my heart of him, Lord, I pray. Let it be that when I see him, I feel nothing. Nay. Let him repulse me.”
Someone knocked softly on her door. Her heart thrashed against her ribs.
“Sister Silene,” a child’s voice came