Free Shipwrecked by Jenna Stone Page A

carrying two. 
Moments later, Rowan slid down from the mare and slowed his pace, lagging
behind Quinn and Anna as he walked next to his youngest brother.
    “What happened to
you?” Anna said boldly, breaking the silence and seizing her opportunity alone
with Quinn.  His unusual manner and tormented eyes had perplexed her.
    “What do ye mean?”
Quinn responded, pretending not to understand what Anna was asking about.  His
body went rigid with tension beneath Anna, and she knew that she had struck a
cord.
    “You know what I’m
talking about,” she prodded, placing her hand atop his on the pommel of the
saddle.  She patted his hand and continued, “It’s alright if you don’t want to
talk about it, I should have never asked.”  Anna pulled her hand away from
Quinn’s and looked into the forest, collecting her thoughts.  “It’s just that
you aren’t like them, your brothers I mean.  You seem broken…” she trailed off,
unable to find the right words.
    There was a long
silence which caused Anna to regret having brought the topic up.  She wondered
how long it would take her before all three Murray brothers refused to talk to
her.
    “That’s because I am broken,” Quinn whispered, adjusting the reins in his right hand, astonished
that Anna had seen right through his rouse of normalcy and straight into his
soul. 
    “What happened?”
asked Anna softly, again placing her hand atop Quinn’s, and gently stroking the
back of his hand with her thumb.  She wanted to somehow ease his pain.  She
felt Quinn’s muscles relax beneath her, and he began to talk.
    “Her name was Mairi,”
he said, clearing his throat.  The pain of speaking her name aloud reverberated
through his body, and Anna felt him go tense beneath her once again.  “And
since they killed her, I’m just the leftover shell of a man.  I doona think
that it will do ye much good tae pray for my soul Anna, because it’s long
gone.” 
    Pain was heavy in
Quinn’s voice, and Anna knew that whatever had happened to Mairi had caused him
to retreat into the solace her found in being quietly controlled, angry with
life, not really living.
    “She grew up on
the farm next tae ours, and I spent all of the years when I was about Malcolm’s
age chasin’ after her, trying tae get her tae notice me,” Quinn said, chuckling
softly as he remembered how hard he had worked to capture Mairi’s attention. 
“All the lads wanted her, she was beautiful…her hair was as black as the night
sky, and she had these grey eyes that could look right intae yer soul.
    Anna leaned back
against Quinn and listened quietly, allowing him to talk.  She could tell from
the way that that his words spilled forth that he was now lost in his memories
of her.
    “I don’t ken what
she finally saw in me, but when she gave me her heart she gave me the whole
damn thing.  Her love was like fire, it consumed me.  With just one look of
those gray eyes she could get me tae do anything for her,” Quinn smiled,
remembering how it had felt to be loved so completely.  “She was my best
friend, we were inseparable.”
    Silence fell
between them again, and Anna began to understand why Quinn acted the way that
he did, quietly withdrawn, distant.  He was thinking of Mairi. 
    Anna focused on
the steady, rolling gait of the horse beneath them, and waited for Quinn to
continue.  She felt guilty for bringing up the topic, for asking for Quinn to
relive these painful memories.  She wished that she could retract her naïve
question, but now that Quinn was talking, bearing his soul to her, she felt
committed and knew that she had no choice but to allow him to continue.
    “Her father went
with ours, they had been friends forever, and they never returned from the
Rising.”
    “I’m so sorry,”
Anna whispered, intimately knowing the pain of losing a parent.  “Quinn, you
don’t need to tell me about this.  I can see that it’s difficult, and I’m sorry
that I brought it up,”