Page 36 of Farlan (Immortal Highlander Clan McKeran #3)

Grace grew horrified. “Who would do that to Olivia?”

“Her màthair .” Alec watched her face. “Forgive me. I guessed you too suffered at the hands of yours.”

“She didn’t lock me up or starve me, but she found other ways to make my life miserable,” she said, immediately wishing she’d kept her mouth shut. “She’s gone, so it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It shall ever matter to you,” he assured her. “I ken ’tis hard to speak of the past we’ve suffered. Before Olivia came to me, I never trusted anyone with the full truth.”

Grace wondered if he went around talking to everyone about things like this. “Please let Inga keep thinking her daughter was a princess. That would be a kindness.”

“You’ve no’ a cold heart, Mistress Johansen.” He smiled a little. “Olivia, she’s just as generous. Indeed, if no’ for her loving care, I reckon I’d yet be a distrustful, unforgiving bastart who hates females.”

She pressed her lips together for a moment. “Then I’m glad I jumped on Farlan instead of you that first night.”

Alec made a rusty sound that she realized was a chuckle, which prompted her to do the same. After a few seconds they were both laughing, shaking their heads and knuckling tears from their eyes. A couple of guards saw Alec and waved to him, gesturing toward the garrison hall.

“’Twould seem the men need me, likely to approve their preparations for nightfall.” the war master said. “Can you find your way to the great hall alone?” When she nodded he gave her a deep, respectful bow. “Go carefully, then, my lady.”

Grace dropped into a curtsey. “Thank you, War Master.”

As the sky began to darken she went back inside, and stopped by the guest chamber to wash and change.

As she did she silently debated whether or not to tell Farlan what she had just confided to Alec.

Being able to tell the war master about it had helped, but she knew it would be different with her lover.

Part of her feared rejection, of course; she’d never confessed her love to anyone in the past.

I never loved anyone before Farlan .

What worried her more than that was what he didn’t know about her.

Her lover thought she was beautiful and lonely and needed him.

He didn’t have the slightest clue about everything else locked up inside her.

All the resentment and rage could only be controlled by keeping the promise she’d made to herself on the day her mother had died.

I will never give anyone any power over me again.

E scaping the forge had been easy for Inga, as in the past she often used the secret tunnel behind the smelting furnace to check on Rory when he went into one of his work frenzies.

The hidden passage went by the gallery above the lists, where she had stopped when she’d heard Grace and Alec’s voices.

She didn’t lock me up or starve me, but she found other ways to make my life miserable, Grace had said, giving Inga pause. Dread filled her after her granddaughter had asked the war master not to say anything about Tonje to her. Let her keep thinking her daughter was a princess.

Ever since Grace had arrived at Dun Talamh she had avoided speaking about Tonje. The only thing Grace had told Inga was that she had died; she’d said nothing about how she had lived. Now that she thought about it her granddaughter’s expression had gone remote each time she’d mentioned her mother.

What did Tonje do to her? I have to know.

Emerging from the hidden passage, Inga nearly blundered into Farlan as she hurried toward the clan’s archive room, where she knew Tasgall kept his father’s viewing scroll. “Excuse me, Seneschal.”

He put a hand on her arm to keep her from hurrying on. “Where do you rush, Chatelaine?”

That reminded her that she needed one of the clan to activate the scroll, which the laird told her would only respond to someone with Keran’s Fae blood.

“I need to use the viewing scroll to check something, right now,” Inga told him. “It’s very important, and I don’t have time to ask Tasgall for permission. Will you help me?”

Farlan looked as if he wanted to refuse, but then he nodded and accompanied her to the storehouse, where he took down the blank scroll made of enchanted Fae parchment, which sparkled as if ground gems in a thousand different colors had been sprinkled on the surface.

After mounting it on the stand, he turned to her. “What do you wish see, Mistress Holm?”

“Show me Grace Johansen’s life from the time she was a baby,” she said, and when he frowned she clutched his arm. “I heard her and the war master speaking about my daughter, but she didn’t mention any details. I have to know what Tonje did to Grace when she was a child.”

Farlan touched the scroll and repeated her request, and a series of images began to move across the magical parchment.

They showed a blonde bairn in a crib crying for hours, and a man and woman arguing outside the door.

The woman yanked the baby upright and slapped her face before shoving her back down and stalking out.

Inga covered her mouth to muffle her own cry as the man went and picked up the now screaming baby and tried to comfort her.

More images ran from one side of the scroll to the other, all displaying Tonje as an adult and Grace as an infant, toddler and then little girl.

The man stopped appearing in the images, which suggested he’d left them.

Alone now, Tonje either neglected or raged and screamed at her daughter, usually while drinking.

Inga saw how quickly Grace had learned to keep quiet, stay out of her mother’s way, and hide from Tonje when she became too drunk and violent.

One night she’d barricaded herself in a bathroom, the door of which her mother had nearly kicked in trying to get at her .

Farlan made a strangled sound, drawing Inga’s eyes to his pale face.

“Did she tell you any of this?” she asked him.

“No. Naught.” He flinched at an image of Grace hiding under her bed as her mother hurled an empty bottle across the room, shattering it against the wall and raining broken glass all over the bed.

An image of Grace picking each shard off the heart quilt on her bed and carefully placing it in a bag was followed by her watching in tears as her mother destroyed the same quilt.

As the little girl grew older her mother’s binges seemed to dwindle, but even sober Tonje had never treated Grace with any affection.

By the time she reached her teens, blossoming into stunning, flawless beauty, her mother took full advantage by signing her to a modeling agency and sending her across the country.

When the last image faded, she asked Farlan, “Show me what their lives were like after Grace left her mother’s house.”

Inga expected to see her granddaughter living her best life as a model, but the scroll’s images only made her more heartsick.

Grace had worked long hours, often going the whole day without a break or a meal.

She’d had no friends, and most of the people she’d worked with openly showed their resentment and jealousy of her.

She watched as her granddaughter transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars to Tonje while living in uncomfortable rooms with little to eat.

She never had any hope, only this grueling life trying to please her mother.

As for Tonje, she had finally stopped drinking in favor of two new addictions: endless shopping sprees and dining on gourmet food, sometimes with other women who seemed interested only in a free meal.

Inga could well imagine her demanding more and more money from Grace as she indulged herself.

Seeing her daughter’s pathetic death from food poisoning was almost as bad as watching her granddaughter come to make the final arrangements.

Grace had been the only one at the funeral, and she hadn’t shed a single tear.

Why should she? Sudden, intense nausea made bile rise in her throat. She must hate her mother even more than she despises me—and all I did was demand she tell me about Tonje.

Inga ran out into the passage, and emptied her stomach into one of the sand buckets they kept for putting out fires.

She then slid down the wall and sat beside it, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes.

Everything she had believed with all her heart had been nothing but lies she’d told herself.

She would never have come to the castle if she hadn’t been running away from the abuse she couldn’t take any more.

Because she had wandered into the spell trap, her daughter had been raised alone by her abusive father.

He’d turned her into a monster just like him.

Grace was the one who suffered because of all of us.

Inga struggled to her feet, and found Farlan there helping her up and steadying her. “Thank you. I must go and find my granddaughter. I have to speak with her, I have to apologize for what I did to her and her mother.”

“’Twasnae your doing, Chatelaine—and shall you admit to her that you spied on her past?

That you watched all she suffered?” The seneschal looked at her with his kind eyes.

“She keeps her suffering concealed, and shallnae accept your apologies for what your daughter did to her. Leave her the dignity she desperately needs to hide her pain.”

“I left her mother alone at home when I came here. My husband must have abused her because I disappeared, and then Tonje abused Grace.” Tears kept pouring down her cheeks, faster than she could wipe them away. “I could have stopped this from happening, if only I’d stayed with him.”

“You didnae intend to become trapped here with us, nor would you willingly leave behind your daughter.” Farlan pressed a handkerchief in her hands. “And no woman should stay with a brute who harms her. ”

Everything he said was true, but it didn’t give Inga any relief.

“I knew something was wrong when Grace behaved the way she did after we met. Every time I’ve mentioned her mother she must have hated me.

” She wiped her face before she met his eyes.

“I have to say something to her. I have to explain…but there is no excuse for what Tonje did to her. She could have gotten help. She could have loved Grace. Why didn’t she love her? ”

“Be the mother she never had, then, Chatelaine,” the seneschal said softly. “’Tis what she most needs here now. Once you come to ken each other better, then you may speak of such matters—if ’tis her wish. For ’twas her heartache, no’ yours.”

“All right, I’ll do that.” He sounded almost as if he wanted to tear the scroll apart, Inga thought. “Please don’t tell anyone else about what happened to Grace. I think it would hurt her even more if everyone knew.”

Farlan bowed, turned and left.