It had been his personal consideration of all the people who might want him dead that had driven him to this place, beneath which several generations of Mackenzie lairds were entombed.
His brother Thorne, who still saw their father when he looked at Liam. Who blamed him for so much, including Colleen’s death.
The ever-present Jani, who’d truly glimpsed the Demon Highlander more than any other person on this earth. The gentle boy had scrubbed the blood of his own countrymen off Liam’s uniform more times than he could count. Had he been biding his time, waiting until Liam felt not only safe, but affectionate toward the boy, to take the revenge he rightfully deserved?
Then … there was his own child. His heir. Though Andrew was of smaller stature than him, he teetered on the cusp of manhood. He was sturdy … but was he strong enough? Maybe his hatred had lent him the might he’d needed to push that barrel. Maybe he wouldn’t wait until he could look Liam in the eye to challenge him, but would use his cunning and intellect, instead of brute strength and physical prowess.
The thought lodged in the cavity of his chest, driven like a wedge with a mallet, until the pressure was more than Liam could possibly bear. His chest refused to expand. Guilt and regret were heavy mantles, smothering him until he fought for breath.
Lost in his struggle, Liam barely noted the whisper of soft slippers against the long violet carpet leading up the aisle until the ruffle of a golden skirt teased at his peripheral vision.
He didn’t want to look at her. She was a temptation that didn’t belong in this sacred place. To gaze upon her was to commit a dozen sins at least. How was it that God could grant someone so angelic a body crafted for little else but wickedness?
“Forgive me if I’m disturbing you.” His governess’s voice permeated the stillness and warmed the cold stones of the walls with a sacrosanct melody. Like the song of a seraphim in spoken form. “I confess I didn’t expect to find you here.”
Why would the Demon Highlander be in a church? There was nothing for him here … No forgiveness, nor redemption.
He’d been beyond that for longer than he could remember.
“I doona often find myself in this place.” Liam neither moved nor dared to glance at her. He wanted her to go, but not as badly as he wanted her to remain.
“I can leave—”
“Nay.” He spoke with more haste than he’d meant to. “Nay … say yer prayers, lass. I’ll go.” When Liam would have stood, she sat. The soft, gilded fabric of her skirt pressed against the rough material of his kilt. Liam stared at the tiny loose fibers of his wool plaid as they rose to touch her silken skirts, drawn by some unseen current toward her.
Just as he was.
“Are you here to give confession?” she queried uncertainly.
Liam’s scoff grated roughly against the smooth stones. “I keep no priest at Ravencroft.” He had no desire to confess his sins to a man who would take it upon himself to deem him worthy or damned. In his life, men had only been judged by battle where there was no good or evil, only strong or weak. He had no use for priests. He knew what he was, and where he was headed once this life was through with him.
“Then … do you come here to be closer to God?”
“Nay, lass, only farther from my demons.”
“Oh.” They sat in silence a moment while she smoothed an imaginary wrinkle from her skirts before primly returning her hands to fold in her lap.
It occurred to Liam that she may have been seeking a priest. “Have ye sins to confess, Miss Lockhart?” He doubted she was Catholic, but he knew curious little about the mysterious woman next to him.
“I come here sometimes to pray for forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness?” he echoed. “What possible atrocities could ye have committed that need forgiving?”
“Perhaps I don’t ask to be forgiven, but to be granted the ability to forgive.”
She was looking at him with level eyes when Liam finally lifted his head. In the dim room, cast only in the illumination of the sun filtered through stained glass, she was a kaleidoscopic study in blasphemy. No artist could have given her face a more cherubic shape, but the rendering of her plump lips brought to mind only the most profane acts a man could devise.
The moment his gaze lowered to those lips, she turned away and bowed her head.
“That isn’t to say I’m not without sin,” she continued. “We all have things we’ve done in the past that haunt us. Of which we feel ashamed.”
Some more than most, he thought darkly. “Do ye believe, Miss Lockhart, that we may be forgiven our sins? That the past can ever be left behind us?”
She shook her head. “We may try to leave the past, but I don’t think the past ever truly leaves us. It is a part of us; it shapes us into who we are. I don’t think any of us escape that fate, my laird.”
Then I am damned. He finally looked up to the window, and met a stained-glass gaze that no longer seemed compassionate.
“Why do you believe you are damned?”