Far Horizons Read Free

face him, face the useless promises he was making now, when he left on the morrow. She’d imagined this conversation so many times, had expected to feel joy, not pain. Not anger, and certainly not despair.
    “Harriet...” Allan began. He sounded lost, as lost as she’d been all those years ago, curled up among the stones of Duart Castle. Her anger drained away and she closed her eyes, summoned a silent prayer for strength.
    Straightening, she turned around. “What is it you want to say to me, Allan?”
    He drew in a deep breath. “I know it's much to ask. I ask it anyway, for love of you and believing the love you have for me. Will you wait for me, Harriet? Wait for me to come back to this land when I've made my fortune and bring you home to the New Scotland with me?”
    Harriet was silent. She struggled with the bitterness and resentment that surged up inside her at his presumption to ask such a thing of her, and so late! “You’ve known you were leaving for months,” she finally said when she trusted her voice to be even. “Why ask me now? If you loved me...?”
    “I told you, I didn’t want to bind you...” Allan’s gaze was steady upon her but Harriet still sensed he was not speaking the whole truth.
    “Bind me?” She shook her head, her words nearly carried away on the wind that was now rising, ruffling the surface of the sea. “What are you doing now, Allan, but binding me? Binding me to an empty promise, for you’re sailing on the morrow!” She felt tears sting her eyes and she blinked hard.
    Anger flashed in his dark eyes. “My promises are not empty!”
    Harriet was too furious, too raw with this new grief, to apologise. “If you’d asked me months ago, Allan MacDougall, we could have been married by now! I could’ve been sailing on The Economy with you, looking forward to our new life together, perhaps a bairn in my arms already!” Her heart raced at her own audacity, but now she couldn’t keep back the flood of regret and confusion. “Why?” she whispered.
    Allan looked away, his expression wretched. “I... couldn’t. Perhaps I shouldn’t even ask you now, with my prospects so uncertain--”
    “And leave me here, thinking you didn’t care? Have you any heart at all?”
    Allan drew himself up. “Aye, I do, and more honour.”
    “I’m not seeing that from here.”
    Allan turned away, raking a hand through his dark hair. His whole body seemed to quiver with tension. “Ah, Harriet, don’t make me do this!”
    “What am I forcing you to do?” Harriet cried. “You’re the one asking for promises!”
    Allan sat on a tumbled rock, his fists in his hair, an expression of such ferocity on his face that Harriet nearly quelled her tide of angry questions.
    When he spoke, however, his voice was calm and even. “When I tell you that I love you, do you believe me?”
    Harriet swallowed. Despite the raw grief that threatened to tear her in two, of that she was sure. “Yes.”
    “When I tell you I’ll come back as soon as I can, do you believe me?”
    She scrubbed at her now-wet cheeks with her fists. “Yes.”
    “Will you wait for me, then, Harriet? Can I take that promise with me? I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t intent to honour it with my very life, my own soul.” He stood up, his expression fierce in its sincerity. He touched her cheek with his fingers, brushing away the damp tracks of her tears. “I know you don’t understand, and if I could explain, I would. It’s my own honor that keeps me from doing so.”
    “I don’t understand why you cannot explain,” she cried and Allan smiled sadly.
    “I know.”
    “So,” Harriet said slowly, “I am supposed to understand something kept you from declaring yourself to me months ago? And you cannot tell me what it was?”
    “I would rather not.”
    She held up one hand. Her fingers trembled. “Answer me this. If you could have asked me to marry you, would you have done so? When you first learned you were emigrating?”
    Allan