She took a deep breath. He'd seen her. She couldn't go back now. She wouldn't go back — Cormac was the only one who could help her.
Marjorie picked her way toward him. He stood still as granite, waiting for her, watching her. His dark hair blew in the wind, and his brow was furrowed. Was he upset to see her? Simply thoughtful?
Suddenly, she regretted the absence of her slippers. She loved the sensation of the smooth rocks beneath her feet, but now she felt somehow naked without her every stitch of clothing. She fisted her hands in her skirts. She imagined she'd always been a sort of naked before Cormac, and there was nothing that could ever truly conceal her.
He was the only one who'd ever been able to read her soul laid bare in her eyes.
He was silent and still. What would he see in her eyes now?
She felt as though she'd forgotten how to walk. She made herself stand tall, focused on placing one foot in front of the other, but she felt awkward and ungainly, unbearably self-aware as she made her way to him. Lift the foot, place it down, lift and down.
He was not ten paces away. He was tall, but with a man's body now, broad with muscles carved from hauling nets, from firing guns. That last gave her pause. She spotted the fine sheen of scars on his forearm, a sliver of a scar on his brow. He'd been long at war. What kind of a man had he become?
Inhaling deeply, she let her eyes linger over his face. She was close enough to see the color of his eyes. Blue-gray, like the sea. Her heart sped. She forced herself to step closer.
She'd been unable to summon an exact picture of him in her thoughts, but now that he stood before her, his face was as familiar to her as her own. There was Cormac's strong, square jaw, the long fringe of dark lashes. But he was somehow foreign, too. The boy had become a man. A vague crook had appeared in his nose, and she wondered what long-ago break had put it there. Where had she been the moment it happened, what had she been doing while he'd been living his life?
She stopped an arm's length from him. Intensity radiated from him like the sun's glare off the sea.
Her throat clenched. She couldn't do it. What had she been thinking?
He blamed her still. He didn't want to speak to her. He didn't welcome the sight of her.
The silence was shrill between them. She swallowed hard, wondering how best to get herself out of there, how to gracefully back out, never, ever to see him again.
For Davie. She had to do this for Davie. That thought alone kept her anchored in place.
Cormac opened his mouth to speak, and she held her breath.
“Ree,” he whispered, in the voice of a man. “Aw, Ree, lass.” Her every muscle slackened. Her fear, her disquiet stripped away, leaving Marjorie raw before him. Hot tears came quickly, blurring her vision. “Cormac,” she gasped.
“It's happened again.”
Chapter 2
Cormac heard the hollow clack of rocks shifting behind him. Years of savage training had attuned his senses, sensitized them, rendering him as acute as any predator. The merest rustle could sound at his back, and pure instinct flared, making him ready to fight or to kill.
He'd spun, but it was her: Marjorie. The sight of her was a punch in the sternum.
She was his guilty pleasure. Through the years, he'd hold himself off, until he could bear it no longer, then he'd allow himself to ask after her, or more delicious still, find an excuse to travel to Aberdeen and the promise of a chance glimpse or two. To his family he feigned casual disinterest, but Cormac felt certain the world saw through his mask to the anguish beneath.
He should've saved Aidan that day. If he'd been stronger, less clumsy and inept, he could've fought to save him.
But like a fool he'd gotten himself stuck in a damned chimney flue. He'd borne the shame of it every day since. His stupidity had lost him his twin, and his grieving mother hadn't survived the year. Two losses on his head, all before his eleventh birthday.
The third loss, though, the crushing blow, was this woman who approached him now. This fine and beautiful creature whom he'd never deserve.
He suspected Marjorie saw more in him than his shame, but he could not. He was beyond feeling love or joy, and he'd sealed that fate when he'd gone off to war, craving battles like a parched man water, baptizing himself in blood. But rather than washing his soul clean, the blood of others had only stained it blacker.
Marjorie grew closer, gliding across the rocky beach as though it were a ballroom. She held her head high, and long strands of her golden brown curls whipped in the wind. The ache in his chest turned sharp, from the punch of a fist to the twist of a knife.
Rarely did he truly see anyone anymore. All faces looked the same to Cormac. All, except for hers. She emerged from the world's meaningless bustle as a goddess would a frieze.
Marjorie was close enough now that he could see her eyes. He'd been seeing them in his dreams for years. He'd convinced himself it was merely a last remaining boyish fancy that had embellished his memories, but he knew now he'd been wrong. Her eyes were as brilliant as he'd remembered. They were wide, a rare blue that had always reminded him of the petals of barraisd. Her eyes, like the flower, impossibly vivid and bright.
“Ree,” he heard himself whisper. And with that, a veil cleared from before those startling eyes, and he saw her pain; it sliced through his armor as easily as a blade between ribs. “Aw, Ree, lass.”
“Cormac, it's happened again.”