lowered the hand that had covered her mouth. “Is that all?” she said. When he nodded, she said, “But where did you go?”
“To St. Andrews.”
“Why?”
Not so easy, that question. The truth was that he had gone to Bishop Traill, hoping that Traill would tell him what he must do to find an honorable answer to his dilemma. But Traill had failed him.
He knew that he could not explain all that to her, just as he knew that he had already—albeit without knowing as much—decided that he could not kill her father.
Shaw was not only the Clan Chattan war leader. He was also her father and Hawk’s. All that Fin had heard about Shaw, and what he had seen of him so far, he respected. He respected the Mackintosh, too. Moreover, both men had trusted him with something very precious to them, Catriona herself.
Since he was explaining any of it, part of him insisted that he ought to tell her everything. As he tried to imagine how he could best describe the dilemma he had faced, another, perhaps wiser voice suggested that he would simply be sharing a burden with her that was his alone to carry. The voice was so strong that he decided to heed its counsel long enough to consider longer before he told her.
She was frowning, waiting for him to explain why he had gone to St. Andrews. But that only made it more difficult, because he did not want to lie.
Suddenly, her brow cleared. “God-a-mercy!” she exclaimed. “That is why you asked if I thought a man who hated war must be a coward. You acted without thinking, and now you think that the act was cowardly! But you fled because Ivor told you to, so that is what you meant about agreeing to an act simply because you trusted the one who had told you to do it!”
Fin could not speak. He had not meant that at all. He had been trying to admit that the dilemma he’d once described to her was his own and explain that he had sworn to the second oath because his dying father had demanded it. But he realized as emotions surged through him that he could not tell her she was wrong. She wasn’t. He had left when Ivor had said to go because he had trusted Ivor.
But that did not alter the fact of his having left the field as he had.
He looked so shocked that Catriona could not bear it. “Ah, poor laddie,” she said then, softly. “You do believe that your leaving in such a way was cowardly. That is why you wanted to discuss war and cowardice.”
“You don’t understand, lass,” he said. “Leaving in such a way was—”
His voice cracked, revealing the emotion he felt over what he had so clearly feared was an issue she believed that only a man could think was important.
Still speaking softly, because she knew how important the subject was to him, she said, “Men often say that women don’t understand them. But I do understand about men and cowardice, and even about their sometimes strange notions of honor. You should think instead about what the outcome would have been had you not done as Ivor told you to do.”
“I would have died, but I would have died honorably.”
“Don’t be stupid; dying is dying,” she said, wishing she could hug him. “Had you died, you would not be here. Had you died, Rory Comyn would have found me alone on the trail that day.” She nearly added that Boreas would have killed Rory, but that would not aid her argument. Standing, she moved closer to Fin. “Did I not say that life is always the right choice? Had you stayed, Ivor would have felt obliged to kill you. How honorable would it have been to put your good friend in that position?”
His mouth twitched as if he would protest, but he did not.
“What?” she demanded, confronting him toe-to-toe. “Are you now afraid to tell me what you are thinking?”
“Nay, but you won’t like it. Honor would have demanded that I kill Ivor.”
“You could not. He is a very fine swordsman. Moreover,” she added as a clincher, “if you had killed him, the others would have killed you. Aye, and it has just occurred to me that this battle of which you speak is likely the clan battle at Perth, and Clan Chattan ended that battle with eleven men still living, did we not?”