The Last Rose

Dhà

My màthair and leas-àthair were in bed by the time I got home. Their light snores reverberated around the cold stone room despite the sheet hung around the bed to give some illusion of separate rooms.

Imagine, I thought, two rooms! I would never complain about anything else again if they had that luxury.

With bleary eyes and burnt red hands I managed to close the front door without waking them up. My shoes made next to no sound on the compact dirt ground as I padded towards my corner of the room. The fire embers were still glowing brightly, and I decided they were giving enough light to see what I was doing.

Flimsy shoes were wrenched off my aching feet.  I unlaced my tight bodice and took a much need deep breath. Next the skirts. I was left only in my white undergarments, already feeling a shiver rack up my spine. The clothes were thrown on an old broken stool with little care and I dived under the blankets. Despite the deceiving heat of the kitchen earlier in the evening the night had turned cold.

My leas-athair's sister still wasn't home.  Most nights Annag worked so late with the clan healer that I stayed at the castle instead of journeying back in the middle of the night.  Many dark nights I wished I had a bed in the kitchen to rest in, but my tired feet always made the short trek down well-trodden paths by moonlight and more often than not dingy candle light.

The woollen blankets scratched my face but I pulled them tighter with shivering hands.  I tugged at the worn string in my hair until long brown curls fell onto the pillow and into my eyes.  I shook my head, pulled my legs up to my body and wrapped my arms around them but it did little to keep the heat.

I wouldn't be asleep for a while anyway, I decided.  Alasdair was on my mind.

There wasn't an exact moment when we stopped being friends, though I thought it was just after his fourteenth birthday.  That was when he changed from another young boy to a Laird's son.  He didn't have time to play hide and seek with me in the forest or pretend we were Scottish spies in an English castle while celebrations were going on.  He barely even gave me a second look when we passed each other in the corridor.  So I stopped smiling at him and never looked at him when I noticed he was looked at her.  I resented him for a time.  He was a pompous little boy who ignored a lady's maid's daughter the second he was given an ounce of responsibility.

It wasn't until I stopped helping my màthair upstairs and began working in the kitchens downstairs that he started to pay my some slight attention; and even then it wasn't until I was sixteen when he and Calum frequently visited the kitchen that he spoke to my for the first time in years.  After that he talked to my like I was any other kitchen maid, no hinting at the past or friendly conversations.  I was certain he was closer with many of the other girls than he was with me now.

But some of it was my fault too.  When he first tried to talk to me I ignored him.  I hardly said more than one word to him for weeks.  It was a struggle.  He was persistent though, and eventually their conversations evolved into shadows of what they once were.  He would smile when he saw me, maybe say hello, and I would sometimes return it.

Then I realised I liked having him around again.  After so long it was like my Ally was finally back.  He was taller now, a strong young man who drank with the old men, rode with a sword around the hills and spoke with a deeper voice.  Yet some things hadn't changed.  His hair was still an unruly mess, his laughs loud and his sense of humour intact.

It was so tempting to pretend that we could be like they were; young and happy with not a care in the world.  But times had changed and we were forced to adapt to a world full of war and death and punishment.

There was no place for me in his life anymore.  It had taken a while to accept and it had been hard to swallow but I had forced myself to do it for it would only save my hurt in the long run.  There was no good in dreaming of things that could never and would never happen.