Thorn in My Heart (49 page)

“Aye,” Leana agreed, nodding as she slowly climbed the stair, two steps ahead of her, “that it has.”

The knotted bow in Rose's chest tightened further. What
was
this all about? She followed her sister into their shared bedroom and found her trunk and packages neady stacked in the center of the room. How she'd missed home! Her gaze took in the familiar box bed, Leana's reading chair by the window, the stacks of books, and two gowns hung out to air—Leana's new embroidered one and her rosy wedding dress, still waiting for her.

“We'll be wearing these soon enough.” Rose sighed witli delight as she hurried over to inspect the two dresses. Her gaze was drawn to the hem of Leana's claret gown, and her eyes narrowed. “Heavens! How ever did this get soiled?”

“Rose.” Leana was standing beside her now, her hand gendy touching her elbow. “I have much to tell you.” Rose turned, dismayed to find tears streaming down her sister's face.

“Leana! Dearest, whatever has happened, it cannot warrant such tears.”

“Oh, but it does. I only wish my tears were enough for both of us.” Leana inclined her head toward their box bed. “Please, sit with me. Here, where I can look you in the eye and hold your sweet hands.”

Rose sensed her own well of tears beginning to fill as she sat, her sisters clammy hands gripping hers. Was Leana ill, desperately ill? Was that it?
Please God, no!
She could not imagine life without her sister. “Tell me. Just begin. I cannot bear it another moment.”

Leana swallowed, then moistened her lips. “I must start by asking for your forgiveness. What I have done…what we… Nae, what /have done is…” She choked on her words, releasing Roses hands to smooth away the flood of tears, though it did not stop them. “Rose…oh, Rose, when you did not appear on your wedding day, Father thought it best…in truth, he demanded that we…continue with the…ah, ceremony. With me as your proxy.”

“Proxy?”Rose
felt the knot in her chest rise into her throat. “What… what does that mean, Leana? A proxy?”

Leana squeezed her hands over and over, struggling to get out a single word. “It means that…1 stood in the kirk and…said your vows for you.”

“What?”
Rose shot to her feet, throwing her sisters hands aside. “Why? Why would you do such a thing, Leana? It was
my
wedding!”

“I know, dearie, but—”

“What possible benefit was there to go on without me?”

“Father said…” Leana looked up, her gaze filled with despair. “He said we could not postpone the wedding because of our many guests and because of the expense—”

“Money!”Rose
threw her arms over her head, now furious with her father as well. “I should have known! With Lachlan McBride, it always comes down to what a thing costs.” Storming about the room, she noticed her kell discarded in a wrinkled heap on her dressing table and gasped, snatching it up. “And
this!
I suppose you wore
this
when you said my vows.”

“Aye.” Leanas head hung so low Rose could not see her face, only the coil of yellow braids on top of her head. “I did wear your kell. Father insisted.” Her voice thinned to a vapor. “He wanted me to wear your gown as well, but I refused.”

“Och! And I'm to thank you for that, no doubt.”

“You are to thank me for none of it, Rose,” Leana said softly. “We
kept hoping you'd come. We didn't learn about the snowstorm until we arrived home for the bridal supper, and even then we prayed you might come riding up.”

“If you expected me, why didn't you
wait
for me?” Rose swatted at her dress, her face crinkled with tears. “Why didn't you
wait?”

“We should have waited. I know that now only too well.” Leana stood and began pacing back and forth across the room, wringing her hands as she tried to explain. “We had both gowns with us at the kirk so that you could dress at the manse and slip into the kirk in an instant. We never imagined the whole day would unfold without you, dearie.”

Rose hated when her sister sounded so sincere. “
We
, meaning you and Father, I suppose.”

“
We
, meaning all of us. Jamie, Neda and Duncan, Susanne—everyone in the neighborhood kept thinking you might appear, riding up in the chaise with Willie.”

Rose pouted, not caring if it made her look twelve years old. “You were feasting on
my
bridal supper while I sat with old Aunt Meg, eating porridge.”

“I'm so sorry, Rose. I would do anything,
anything
to have refused to stand in for you. How I wish I had.” Leana whispered those words again under her breath, turning away from her for a moment, looking as though she might be ill. “Father did not allow us much choice.”

“And I had no choice at all.
Och!
“ Rose groaned, dropping into the chair by the window. She had missed her own wedding.
Her own wed-ding!”lts
all Father's fault. He can send a person spinning like a top with his endless reasons why a thing must be done.”

“Aye, he can. But Rose…” Leana sank to her knees by the chair, laying her hands on Rose's lap. “That is not the worst of it. Wearing your kell, saying your vows, looking into Jamie's eyes…”

Poor Leana!
Rose nodded, understanding at last what she was trying to say. “It was terrible for you, wasn't it? To stand next to Jamie, saying those vows yet knowing that he loves me.” She squeezed Leana's hands, suddenly feeling generous. “You cared for him a great deal once. Shame on Father for expecting you to do such a difficult task.”

“But, Rose, it wasn't difficult. It was…” Leana sank back, folding
up on herself as though she could not bear to be seen. “God forgive me, it was…wonderful. We kissed outside the kirk…”

A cold wave of shock ran through Roses body. “You kissed… Jamie?”

Leana only nodded as tears splattered her dress, staining it. “Reverend Gordon insisted it was…unlucky not to do so.”

Rose fell back against the chair, her mouth agape, her emotions reeling. “Unlucky?” Knitting needles clicked in her addled mind. A dress fitted on a Friday. A wedding gown worn by another. “It seems I'm the unlucky one, to have missed seeing my beloved Jamie hold someone else in his arms. My sister.
My sister!”
She shrieked the last words, unable to restrain herself. “How could you?
How could you
, Leana?”

Leana held out her palms, unable to speak, struggling to breathe.

Rose rocked back and forth, feeling sick, feeling faint, trying to swallow, trying desperately to grasp what Leana was saying. The image of her sister in Jamie's arms, their lips, their bodies pressed together in a kiss. “Do you no longer love me, that you would treat me so ill?”

“Of course I love you, Rose!”

“You can't, you can't!” she wailed, her own tears flowing now, forgiveness abandoned.
“My
sister, kissing
my
husband, pretending to be me!
Pretending to be his bride! Heaven
help me, this day cannot get any worse.”

“Aye, it can, Rose.” Her sister clenched her tear-drenched hands and pressed them against her mouth. “Much worse.”

Grasp me not, I have a thorn,
But bend and take my being in.

H
ARRIET
P
RESCOTT
S
POFFORD

W
orse?”
Rose cried. “How can it possibly get worse?”

Leana sank her teeth into her knuckles, pleading for mercy, knowing it was useless. God was nowhere to be found. “Please, dearie.”

“Dont call me that.” Rose stood, her skirts brushing Leana aside as she abandoned her chair to pace. “I cannot be
dear to
you, or you would not have kissed my Jamie.”

“You are more than dear to me.” Leana hastened to her feet, needing to be near her, to look her in the face when she told her the worst news of her young life. “You are precious to me, Rose. You are my only sister, my closest friend, a daughter—”

“Nae!” Rose
whirled about, her braid slapping Leanas cheek. “I am
notyour
daughter!” Pain and anger sparked in her dark eyes, though her chin trembled like a child's. “And
you
are not my mother. My mother is dead.”

Leana could barely speak for the tightness in her throat. What lies had she whispered to herself in the wee dark of yestreen that had brought her to this?
Jamie would decide.
Aye, he had done that. Unless she bore him a child, that decision would stand. She swallowed, trying to make room for the painful words that must come. “If Mother had been here, perhaps none of this would have happened.”

“None of
what?”
Rose tossed her hands in the air. “You being my proxy? You speaking my vows? You kissing Jamie?”

“Aye. And none of the…rest.” She feared she might be sick so tightly clenched was her stomach.
God, help me.
A fools prayer, that. What had she told Jamie their night together was?
Necessary.
Rose
would not consider it necessary. Rose would think her sister was the worst kind of woman that ever took breath. And she would be right.

“The rest of w/wi? Leana, you are not making sense.” Rose groaned, walking back and forth in front of her, her boots, still muddy from the mornings journey, making marks on the wooden floor. “Kissing my betrothed is quite enough. My own
sister! lu
appalling.”

“Aye, it is,” Leana agreed, heaping guilt upon herself like kindling on a fire. “What is more appalling still is that I thought…that is, I convinced myself…that Jamie…enjoyed it.”

“He did not!” Rose stamped her foot, as though her words were not loud enough to make her point. “I
know
he didn't.”

Her own words hurt more. “You are right. He did not.”

Rose eyed her askance. “Then why did you
think
he enjoyed it?”

“Because that was what I chose to believe.” Leana's fingers found a loose thread on her dress to worry with as her mind struggled to find words to say what should never be said. “When Jamie looked at me, I saw affection where there was only…where there was…nothing. Nothing at all.” The thread, pulled taut, turned her fingertip pink, brighter than the sweetbriar in the hedgerow. She stared at it, willing it to hurt more so she wouldn't notice the pain growing inside and threatening to engulf her.

Rose shrugged. “Jamie once told me he cared for you as a sister.” Her tone soured. “Though a sister's love is not always what it appears.” Dry for the moment, her eyes narrowed. “You
did say
my name when you spoke the vows?”

“Aye.”
But my heart whispered my own.

“So, our cousin is my husband now, by the law of the kirk?”

Leana released the thread. She could not bring herself to respond.

Rose did not seem to notice, for she'd spun around to walk the floor again. “Jamie is…well, he
must
be my husband now. My silver ring is safe in his pocket, is it not? Waiting for me to claim it.”

Leana could answer that one. “Aye, it is.” She'd seen him studying it moments before Rose appeared in the dining room.

“So then.” Her sister paused by the hearth, disbelief giving way to wonder. “I must be…his
wife?
No longer Rose McBride but Rose
McKie!”
Her eyes widened, and a flicker of apprehension came and went from their dark depths. “A wife who might be expected to…share her husbands bed this night.”

Leana closed her eyes.
Nae, Rose.
She must say those words. Now.
Nae, Rose.

She could delay no longer, hoping to be struck dead by a vengeful God or spared by an impatient Jamie bursting into the room. She must tell her sister the wicked thing she'd done and cast all the blame upon herself. Not on Jamie, not even on her hatesome father. She alone had yielded to temptation. She had wanted Jamie for herself. Wanted him so blindly that she saw love where it did not exist and desire that was not hers to satisfy.

She could not hope for forgiveness. She dare not even ask. Leana opened her eyes and looked direcdy into her sisters bonny wee face. “Nae, Rose. You will not share Jamie's bed this night.”

Rose jerked her chin. “And why not, if he's my husband?”

“Because he will be sharing his bed with me.”

The room grew so still she could hear the clink of dishes in the dining room below. Rose stared at her, like a doll with black buttons for eyes. Her mouth hung open as though she would speak but had forgotten how.

“Rose, I cannot begin… It was…a mistake.”

Coward. It was a sin.

Her sisters mouth closed, then opened again as she breathed out the word.
“Mistake?”

Leana swallowed. She would do better this time. She would tell her the truth. She would not hold back. “Yestreen, I persuaded myself that Jamie loved me as I loved him. I did npt know yet that I was…mistaken. When I went to him in his darkened room, he…well, he.

Rose spoke so softly her voice barely dinted the air. “He…what?”

Leana turned away, unable to bear the agony on her sisters face. “He thought I was you.”

Color slowly seeped into Roses cheeks. Not a maidens blush. The heat of anger. Her eyes came to life, and her words seared like flames. “Then you are no longer my sister. You are a
howre.”

In the election of a wife, as in
A project of war, to err but once
is
To be undone forever.

T
HOMAS
M
IDDLETON

I
will
never
forgive you!”

“Rose, please, please…”

“Never!
I trusted you. I
trusted you
, Leana!”

Jamie cringed at the harsh words pouring from beneath the door to the sisters’ bedroom. He'd not intended to eavesdrop yet could not drag himself away. He edged closer to the door, ready to bolt at the slightest footfall on the stair.

Leana had not handled things as well as he'd hoped. Rose was hysterical, and no wonder. “You have stolen my Jamie!” she cried. “You have stolen my
love!”