Regret is a cold companion and I lived with it for months after Alex left me.  It was with me always, but never more than at the end of the day, when I would climb the stairs of the keep and watch the sun go down behind a blue island.  Alone.

It kept me company later that autumn, when we women tried to keep Kilgannon alive with the children and the handful of me left behind. And was with me as we gathered the meager harvest, tried our hand at fishing, rounded up the cattle, and moved them to their winter grazing.  At night I tried not to think as I bandaged my blistered hands and laughed with the others at our new skills.  But regret was never far away.  It stood with me as I watched the last of the men leave on the brigs to join the others, their sons gleeful, their wives crying.

Regret came into its own as the autumn nights approached winter and I stood at the windows watching icy rain run in streams down the panes. It was mid-September when Alex left to go to war, four weeks after his birthday and a week before mine.  Regret was the guest of honor at my scanty birthday celebration, organized by Ellen to cheer me. I did my best to appear merry as I thanked her.  And I was grateful to have her with me, for I could not imagine life without her now.  It was difficult to

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remember that she had once been a housemaid in my aunt’s London home. She never complained, though she was suffering the loss of wee Donald, her sweetheart, gone off with Alex. That regret was also Ellen’s companion did not ease my burden; it only sharpened it.

The long October and November nights passed slowly. Sleepless, I roamed the halls of Kilgannon, making speeches in my head, remembering what had happened in each part of the house, staring at the family portraits as though they had something to tell me.

I regretted I had let him go.  I regretted that he went. I regretted that he had not chosen mine above all other claims, that I could not accept his choice with grace. That I had let my husband leave knowing my anger and my fear.  I should have told him I had every confidence in him and his people, but I had only wept and told him he would lose. And I regretted, in those long hours, that there had been no child of this union, and perhaps never would be. I stood on that parapet every evening, watching the blue islands and bartering with God for just one more night with my love. How many women, over the centuries, I wondered, had stood staring off into space and wishing their men home? I don’t care who is king, I told the stones. Just bring my love home to me.  But the stones kept their silence and eventually I descended and joined the others.

One thing I did not regret was loving Alex, nor marrying him and coming to this impossible place.  Meeting Alexander MacGannon that summer night in 1712 had changed my life forever.  He was unlike any man I’d ever known, and I’d been fascinated from the start with the blond giant who strode into my aunt’s ballroom with his Highland clothing, impeccable manners, and enchanting smile.  He was honest and direct, full of humor and disdainful of the conventions London adhered to so slavishly.  And the most handsome man I’d ever seen.  That had not changed with marriage.  I still caught my breath when he moved toward me, still was enthralled by his touch, and still moved to passion I’d never known could exist.  Even after two years of marriage, all he had to do was flash those blue eyes at me and I was his.

 And now he was gone to war and with him had gone all my hope for happiness, for it was my own country he fought.  And how I had struggled with that. And with him, begging him not to join the Jacobites, not to commit treason. For it was treason. And folly. I knew they could not win, could not hope to taunt the might of the English military and win. No matter how glorious their intentions, no matter how heartfelt their convictions or gallant their warriors, they would lose.

Politics did not matter to me.  Alex did.  And in my more honest moments with myself, I even admitted a grudging respect for his decision.  I knew he loved me, but I also knew he would always put duty and loyalty, as he saw it, first.  I did not regret that in him, only that I had ever let the MacDonalds and MacKinnons through the door.  When they’d come to ask Alex to raise the clan in James Stewart’s defense, I should have been ruthlessly rude and driven them away.  But I might as well have tried to stop the tide as prevent Alex from joining.

Regret was with me, of course, on that cold and windy evening when the news came that the battle of Sherrifmuir had been fought on November 13th.  The runner, a MacDonald, shivered as he stood before us.

“Five Kilgannon men killed,” he said, naming them.  “Had any other Kilgannon men died, I would have been told.”

Ellen, at my side, gave a sigh of relief.

The runner frowned.  “But . . . Lady Mary, yer lord was wounded.”

 The boys exclaimed and I rose from my chair.  “Alex?  Wounded?”

 “He was alive when I left, but . . .”

I stared over his head, filled once again with regret.

Alex.