"I still love ye."
"If ye love me, ye will stay away."
"Ye know I cannae. I must visit every farm when I ride the land."
"Then dinna ride the land so often. Yer nearness be torture for me." Tears started to well up in the rims of her eyes. "Ye stayed away all these years. Please, please dinna make me suffer now." She picked up the pail of water and walked away.
Stefan was not yet old enough to completely understand the love between a man and a woman, but he could not help but pity the man Jirvel left standing alone on the bank of the river even if he did wear Anundi's sword. He looked to be in just as much pain as Stefan felt over losing his father. Perhaps they were the same. Perhaps it is the loss of love that hurts so very much. He watched Macoran gaze aimlessly across the water until at length, the laird walked away.
*
Agnes Macoran might appear to be a frail woman on the outside, but inside she was as strong as the jagged rocks on the shore - and she was filled with wrath. She was painfully thin, a skinny malink longlegs her husband called her when she was out of his presence. Her blond hair was also thin, she had a long hook nose and brown eyes that appeared to be set a little too far apart.
She often walked barefoot along the edge of the ocean, hoping the Vikings would come back. The sun was high in the sky and if she would let herself, she might enjoy watching the steady rhythm of the water rushing in and then withdrawing. But she loved her mystery too much to let any sort of pleasure interfere.
Agnes was the wife of a laird, mistress of an entire clan and she hated every one of them. She hated their red hair, their green eyes, their smiles and especially their laughter. Even her sons reminded her of her unhappiness and to them she gave just a touch more affection than she gave her husband…which was none at all.
She was the youngest daughter of Laird Brodie and it was with him she longed to be. Ripped away from her clan at the age of twenty, she left behind dozens of friends, her mother, her siblings and her beloved father, whom she was convinced favored her above all others.
Macoran tried in the beginning to win Agnes over, and he was civil for the most part even now, but she was consumed with her desire to go home. A spinster she might well have become, but anything would have been better than being so cruelly torn from the people she loved.