A clipped bitter laugh escaped him. “Cruel to all but her horse that is. I ’ll still not understand it. She ’d beat the groom with her whip then stroke that mare for hours. ” He added as an afterthought, “We had to put the mare down last fall. Lamed herself kicking another mount. Took after her owner till the end, I suppose. I wasn ’t grieved to say good-bye to that one. It was the last ghost of Mairi left on Cameron lands.
“Except for our son John. His wickedness tries me as much as his mother ever did …” Ewen’s voice trailed off.
Lily was overwhelmed. She could tell that Ewen had been hurt more deeply by this woman than he was letting on. It wasn ’t the agony of a lost love she heard in his voice, though. No, it was clear his feelings for his former wife could, at most, be summed up as young lust. What she did hear there was isolation. Being a leader like Ewen must mean standing alone, never allowing yourself to trust another, never letting any emotion or vulnerability show through. At a young age, he had discovered the hard lesson that when you have power, people rarely approach you with more than selfish intentions. Lily knew it was so in modern America and imagined it was no different in seventeenth-century Scotland.
“I… I’m so sorry, Ewen. That sounds horrible. ”
“Och, I had my youth and learned what lust will get me. Nay, I ’ll not marry again. I have my heir. ”
“But not all women are like that! ”
“Aye, lass, some women are soft and kind. ” He laughed and winked roguishly at her, and Lily felt her face flame crimson to her ears.
“But when it comes to pledging my troth to a woman, aye, I ’ve done my duty as Lochiel. John as my heir will take over when I’m gone. No need for me to marry again. Ever. ” He finished his diatribe as if it was the last thing to be said on the subject and quickly changed the topic.
“But what of you, lass? Why’ve you no husband then?”
His tone was incredulous, and Lily bridled at the implication that she was somehow aberrant not to have a man in her life. She replied, “It never came up. ”
“Your family did not find you a good match, is it?”
“That’s not really how it goes in my time, ” she answered coolly. “Many women don’t marry until well into their thirties, or later. Besides, my family wasn ’t really in the picture.”
Ewen considered her intently, as if studying some foreign creature. “I don ’t ken your meaning … in the picture ”
“Oh, that’s just a saying …it’s that … well, it was mostly just my grandmother and me. My mom wasn ’t around much, and I never had a real father to speak of. ”
Ewen stared at her solemnly, and Lily fumbled to fill the uncomfortable silence. “My mom took off when I was young. She came back years later with some new husband, and I just, well, I just didn’t want to have much to do with them. ”
“You had a choice?” He continued indignantly, “And what of your mother to disappear so? What sort of a woman quits her wean?”
Lily felt strangely defensive of the woman she ’d spent a lifetime deriding. “It happens. Some women leave their children. ”
“Och,” Ewen hissed, “not in Scotland. ”
“Oh, it’ll happen. ”
“Nay in the Highlands,” the laird replied dismissively.
“Lass,” Ewen ’s affronted tone softened, as if he lamented Lily’s worldview, even felt sorrow for her, “there ’s no other thing than family. ”
“I … the thing is ” Lily struggled for words “it’— — s just different, is all. In modern times. People move away from their families, husbands and wives divorce, we even have special homes for grandparents. ” Her cataloguing became more confident, even though deep down she wasn’t so certain. “People change and move on and it’s …okay. ”
Lily had never given much thought to it. Of course, she had regretted the absence of her mother. And envied her friends at school who had big, bustling holidays at home with relatives. But Gram was her only family really, and to discount her as somehow not enough felt dreadful, and traitorous.
“To… move on from your bairn, to abandon your flesh and blood, och, lass, if that’s to be accepted in the future, then I ’ll have nothing of it.
“The whole clan is a family. ” He grew impassioned, nearly pleading with Lily. “Like the Camerons, aye? We call ourselves sons of the hound, and ’… tis like that. With the laird at the head, faithful to kin as a hound to the pack. The laird … I… I take care with mine own. And I expect mine to care for theirs in turn, aye?”
The corners of his eyes wrinkled as Ewen regarded her.
“Otherwise, ” he added with quiet compassion, “it’s all for naught, lass. Otherwise, you’re alone with naught but the ground at your feet and the stars in the sky for to guide you. And that ’s not any way to live, Lil’. I don’t care what your century. ”
Lily was speechless, and the moment suspended in time, feeling utterly extraordinary, searing her to the quick. Ewen had laid bare all that had felt empty in her life, a wanting that she herself hadn’t realized until that moment. She had loved Gram, more than anything. But in Lily’s world, family could be an afterthought, and now her biggest regret was that she ’d let herself drift apart from her grandmother in those last years.
Lily scrubbed her hands over her face. She was exhausted, and the potent whisky was working its way through her veins, blunting her thoughts, numbing the agonizing throb in her foot, and sending a dull heat to unspool the muscles in her neck and back.
She would come up with an insightful rejoinder to Ewen ’s polemic against modern life. First, though, she would just shut her eyes and mull it over for a little while.