by Lauren Royal
But that wasn’t all. He felt…
He knew not what he felt.
Except confused. About Kendra, about Hamish. About all of it.
“We found a new brother last year,” said Kendra, a merciful distraction. He watched her move the amber bracelet back and forth on her wrist. “Jason had a run-in with a man who was revealed to be our half-brother, the son of our father before his marriage. But our brother turned out monstrous. A murderer, nothing like Niall.” She glanced up. “It was a horrible thing to accept.”
For a few moments he remained quiet, imagining. “That must have been very hard.”
“It was. Although I don’t expect accepting Niall and Hamish is easy, either.” The amber stones glimmered in the firelight as she slid them with a finger. “An instant family.”
“Niall felt like my brother right off. It’s hard to explain.” He focused on the bracelet, remembering when she first wore it on their wedding day. It had looked strange on her then, but tonight it seemed like it had belonged there all along. Just the way he felt with Niall. “But Hamish…” He met her gaze. “I feel nothing there. I hear what you’re telling me, and it makes sense, but I’m not sure I believe it.”
She took their goblets from the bedside table and handed him his. “Just think about it,” she said and drained her remaining sack posset.
The drink was cold now, he was sure. The rain coming down sounded cold, too, but she felt warm wedged beside him. He wondered how she managed to smell like sunshine on a blustery night like this.
“There’s no need to rush into acceptance,” she said softly.
“He could be dying.” Trick downed the last of his own drink. Cold, it was, but thick and bracing nonetheless.
“He could,” she conceded. “But he seems to be getting better.”
He took her cup and set them both on the table. “This may have just been a good day.”
“Morning will tell.” She yawned, then leaned over for a kiss, a kiss that tasted of the sweet, milky posset. With a soft smile, she lay down and curled tightly against him, like precious cargo carefully nestled in a ship’s hold.
She felt good there, a perfect fit. “It’s odd,” he said quietly, his breath fluttering the downy hairs on the nape of her neck. “They don’t know me, really, and yet they seemed to accept me from the first.”
“They’re family,” she said simply. “They love you, Trick. Unconditionally.”
And now she was family, too.
Unconditional love.
The idea was so alien to him that he thought about it far into the night as he watched her sleep.
FORTY-EIGHT
“FOR THE LAST time, you gaberlunzie, wake up!” Mrs. Ross poked Trick’s shoulder, and he moaned and rolled over. “Lord Niall is downstairs, pacing and waiting to take the two of you off somewhere, aye? So get your bones out of that bed.”
“I’ll make sure he gets up this time,” Kendra told her, sitting down to pull on a stocking. “If you’re nearly finished in here, could you send Jane up to fix my hair?”
“Aye. That I can do.” On her way out, the wiry woman gathered the empty goblets they’d left on the night table. “Did you enjoy this, then?” she asked with a kind smile.
“Very much.” Kendra silently scolded herself for thinking the sack posset might have been poisoned. Trick was right; though she sometimes had a brusque manner about her, the old nurse wouldn’t hurt a midge. “Do you know, Mrs. Ross, where that corner staircase leads?”
The woman swiped her dust cloth over the table—not that it helped very much. The dirt just flew up and settled right back down. “That turret comes from the dungeons, lass. And goes to the roof above.”
“Oh.” Just as Trick had said. Kendra glanced at her slumbering husband. He slept like the dead, like he’d spent another wakeful night before succumbing to exhaustion. She, on the other hand, had slept like a newborn babe, dreaming dreams that made her cheeks burn to remember them.
Mrs. Ross was watching her, a question in her faded blue eyes. Kendra put a cooling hand to her face. “Though Trick insisted it was surely the rain, I thought I heard footfalls on those steps last night.”
The woman’s gray head nodded sagely. “It’s been said to happen.”
“People go up on the roof?”
“Not people, lass.”
“Ghosts, then?” Kendra’s breath caught. “The ghosts of prisoners?”
“Not that I’ve heard.”
Kendra blushed as the woman bent to retrieve yesterday’s clothes from the floor. Cavanaugh and Jane ought to be doing that—not that she and Trick should have left their garments on the floor in the first place. What could Mrs. Ross be thinking?
But apparently she was still thinking about the stairwell. “Other ghosts,” she clarified, shaking out Trick’s discarded kilt. “One in particular, a young servant girl who was said to have borne an illegitimate Duncraven son in this room some two hundred years past. Potential threats to the title, they were, and both swiftly put to the sword by an anonymous knight.”
Kendra swallowed. “Anonymous?”
“Well, you cannot very well tell who’s in a suit of armor now, aye? But legend says it was Lord Duncraven himself. A heartless man, to hear the tales.” She smoothed the folded tartan over one arm. “The girl still wanders the spiral staircase, searching for her bairn. Some say they’ve seen her in this room, watching at the foot of the bed where a cradle may have once rested.” Mrs. Ross draped the red fabric right where Kendra imagined the poor murdered girl might gaze. “But don’t you worry now, lass. She doesn’t do any harm.”
Was it the ill-fated servant girl she’d heard, then? Kendra wondered. Or had Mrs. Ross invented this story to cover her own wanderings? Or had Annag or Duncan been trodding the winding stone stairs?
Or had it only been the storm, mixed with her own imagination?
Her musings were interrupted when Mrs. Ross bustled over to Trick. “Wake up, lazybones.” She thwacked him with her dust cloth. “Lord Niall awaits.”
FORTY-NINE
HALFWAY downstairs, Trick’s feet dragged to a halt on the second floor landing. “Bide a moment.”
On the step below him, Kendra turned and looked up, tightening Mrs. Ross’s shawl across the bodice of her lemon gown. “Niall is waiting to take us to the treasure chests.”
“Then he’ll wait.” She looked so pretty this morning, all cheerful yellow against the dingy stone staircase, her mouth slightly swollen from his morning kisses. He bent down to give her another one, their lips clinging for a long, sweet moment before he straightened with a sigh and stepped from the turret, crossing the sitting room to knock on the master bedchamber door.
“Enter,” came a muffled voice.
A voice not unlike his own? Trick hesitated, his hand on the latch.
“Did you not want to go inside?” Kendra asked.
He took a deep breath and pushed open the door. Beyond it, Hamish sat against the sturdy oak headboard, his long, skinny legs looking like stilts beneath the coverlet. Trick gazed at him, a question burning inside him—a question only Hamish could answer.
But he couldn’t seem to make himself cross the threshold, nor could he force the question past his lips.
Kendra had no such compunctions. She pushed past him and hurried over to Hamish, grasping the old man’s hand. “Goodness.” With a flounce of her English skirts, she seated herself at his bedside, a bright ray of sunshine in the gloomy room. “Rhona’s potion really worked magic, didn’t it?”
Indeed, Hamish was munching on breakfast and looking much better. Younger. Trick was surprised to realize he wasn’t such an old man, after all.
“Aye, I expect it did work magic,” Hamish agreed. “But although she left a supply, I haven’t been able to force myself to drink more of the vile stuff.” He made a face. “She’ll be at me like a screaming banshee when she sees how much remains. Maybe I can prevail upon you to tip it out the window?”
Kendra l
aughed. “Where is Rhona, anyway?”
Hamish shrugged. “I’m mending, aye, and she has her own life to attend to. There are people here to help me should I need it.” His mouth curved in a smile very like Niall’s—and his own, Trick grudgingly admitted. “To tell you the honest truth, it’s been pleasant to spend a wee bit of time alone. A man gets cranky with people always fussing all over him.”
“I’m sure he does,” Kendra said, slanting a glance at Trick. She rose and went to open the shutters, letting morning light flood the room.
Hamish’s gaze shifted to the open doorway, and his forehead creased in a frown. “Come in, lad, will you?”
Trick did so, slowly, still gazing at the man that Kendra insisted was his father.
“Have a seat,” Hamish said.
Trick didn’t. The question fought to get out.
The older man blinked. “It’s uncanny how much you look like Niall. I used to catch your mother staring at him with a sad, faraway look in her eyes.”
The same sad, faraway look that Hamish was giving him now. A look Trick suspected was on his own face.
At last, the words tumbled forth.
“Niall and I, we look so alike because…because we have the same father, don’t we?”
Before Hamish even answered, Trick knew Kendra had been right.
“Why?” he asked. “Why was I never told? And why did my mother marry another man and then have a child with you?”
Hamish licked his lips, not so papery this morning. “It wasn’t like that, Patrick. She was already carrying you when she agreed to the marriage. Her only other choice was to give birth to a bastard child.” His light brown gaze met Trick’s own. “Her father threatened to kill me if she refused to marry the duke.”
Kendra gasped. “He cannot have meant that.”
Hamish turned to her. “Can you blame Elspeth for not testing him, lass?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I cannot even imagine…”
“Well, if you’d known the man, the threat wasn’t so hard to imagine coming from him.”
“Very well, then, maybe she had a reason.” Trick ran a hand back through his hair. “But why keep the truth from me?”
“The duke never knew you weren’t his child. We didn’t mean to keep you in the dark forever, but you left here at five—too young to be told, to understand the importance of hiding your true parentage from the man you thought was your father. And when you returned…” Hamish’s gaze flickered down to his lap, then back up. “I wanted to tell you the moment you arrived. But after all this time, I wasn’t sure how you would react.”
Trick wasn’t sure how to react. Despite a wakeful night spent contemplating these matters—or perhaps because of it—he felt more muddled than ever. Surely anyone, even Hamish, had to be better than the duke, but the discovery of a new father left his head reeling.
“I’ll have to get used to this,” he admitted.
Hamish nodded, looking both solemn and pleased. “I’ve waited twenty-three years to acknowledge you as my son. I can wait a wee bit longer.”
FIFTY
THE DAY WAS sunny, the ride toward the town of Falkland pleasant over rolling hills. It felt so good to be out of the depressing castle that Kendra found herself smiling at nothing more than the light breeze, the purple thistles dotting the hillsides, a pair of blackbirds flying by. She chattered to Niall about anything and everything, enjoying his easy company. Seeming as grateful as Kendra to be out and about, Pandora felt familiar and frisky beneath her.
Trick, however, was brooding.
Two miles into their journey, he finally turned to Niall. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Pardon?” Niall cocked his head, gleaming blond in the sunshine. “Why didn’t I tell you what?”
“That our mother’s is not the only blood we share.”
Niall reined in at that, turning sideways to block the road. His mount danced beneath him as he stared at Trick. “What are you trying to say?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t want to know we’re full brothers?” His jaw tight, Trick studied Niall a moment. “Did you think I wouldn’t care to know that Hamish is my father as well as yours?”
The younger man’s face went white. “I didn’t know.” His amber eyes wide, he swallowed hard. “Are you sure? I swear to you, Patrick, I didn’t know. Mam and Da never breathed a word.”
Kendra, for one, believed him. Nobody was that good an actor.
But her husband, evidently, was blind. “Why wouldn’t they tell you?” he pressed furiously. “What possible reason could they have had?”
“Trick!” she exclaimed in irritation. Not unlike her own brothers, he could be thickheaded beyond bearing. “I expect they thought your parentage was none of Niall’s business.”
“Mam knew how to hold her tongue,” Niall added, his amber eyes darkening to bronze. “And my Da is the most loyal man I’ve ever met. A loyalty I thought we’d share, now that we’ve found each other.” With a jerk of his reins, he turned and trotted off down the road.
Kendra glared at her husband until his face turned red and he looked away. “All right,” he shouted after his brother. “I believe you!”
There was no response, and looking at Niall’s stiff back, she could sense his pain. Trick dug in his heels, motioning impatiently for Kendra to follow.
“You might also say you’re sorry,” she suggested under her breath as she drew alongside.
He gazed at her a moment, then looked back to Niall. “And I’m sorry!” he called. Maybe not as sincerely as she’d have liked, but the effort was there.
Yet his brother’s back remained rigid.
She saw a muscle twitch in Trick’s jaw. “Very well, then, I’m not sorry,” he growled.
They caught up to Niall and rode three abreast, the men in an obstinate standoff on either side of Kendra. The blowing of the horses failed to drown out their alternating huffs. She felt like Zeus in the Trojan War, stuck between the battling gods, wanting to stay neutral but suspecting she couldn’t.
The gates of Falkland loomed ahead, and still neither of them softened. They were most definitely brothers, one as pigheaded as the other. As they entered the town, a few people waved to Niall, calling out greetings and condolences. He nodded his acknowledgments without uttering a word.
They rode past Falkland Palace, two long ranges of gray stone with a charming turreted gatehouse and slanting, moss-covered slate roofs. Kendra turned to her brother-in-law and forced a jaunty tone. “From how Hamish described the banquet, I expected the town of Falkland would be larger. Busier.”
She’d known he wouldn’t ignore her. “At one time it was more important,” he told her, looking straight ahead. Heaven forbid he should inadvertently meet his brother’s eyes. “But Falkland today is naught but a small market town, populated mostly by weavers who keep indoors practicing their craft. You can blame the Union of the Crowns for that.”
“Why would that make a difference?” she asked brightly. “Trick, you know a lot of history.”
“Not of Falkland.” She’d never heard him sound quite so vexed, not even when he was fixing to murder Duncan. “For heaven’s sake, I haven’t lived here in eighteen years.”
As her efforts at conversation ground to a halt, she heaved an internal sigh. The clip-clop of their horses’ hooves on the cobblestones seemed loud as thunder against the men’s willful silence. As they rounded the market cross, a dray cart coming from the other direction forced them to the side of the narrow street nearer the houses.
“The lintels are all carved,” she remarked, prattling on like a featherbrained nincompoop. She pointed to the nearest door, the stone beam above it engraved with letters and numbers. “What do they mean?”
“They’re marriage lintels—” Trick began.
“Look there,” Niall interrupted. “Two lovers’ initials, and 1610, the year they were wed—the year their household was established. And other markings indicate their occupations. S
ee, the crossed mells of a stonemason. And there, a shoemaker’s knife.”
As they rode past a few more, Kendra started to make sense of the symbols. “I see a butcher’s cleaver. But the big ‘4’ with three little x’s…what does that mean?”
Niall opened his mouth then clamped it shut when his brother rushed to answer before him. “A merchant—a burgess with trading privileges.”
The carvings were lovely, she thought, determined not to let their attitudes affect her appreciation. Lasting memorials to marriages begun in hope rather than deception. She turned to her surly husband. “These lintels are so romantic.”
Trick rolled his eyes, prompting Niall to nod—pleasantly, she would think, if she didn’t know it was mainly to make his brother look bad. “Some go back a hundred years or more,” Niall told her. “Watch for them as you ride.”
She peeked down the wynds as they went, but soon they were passing through West Port, the gate that marked Falkland’s boundary. Dense woodlands loomed ahead. “The trees are so near to the town,” she remarked, sounding inane to her own ears.
“Why wouldn’t they be?” Trick asked churlishly.
“Actually,” Niall said with a smug smile, “though nearly all of Fife was once covered in forest, the only large tracts remaining are here by Falkland. One of the reasons the Stuarts of old so valued their palace, a place to escape from affairs of state and spend some time hawking and hunting the wild boar.”
She half hoped to see a wild boar now—at least such a threat would put an end to this petty bickering. Here they had to ride single file, weaving through the trees, which looked much the same as trees in England. Finding nothing left to comment on, Kendra chewed the inside of her cheek, wondering why she’d bothered trying to get her husband and his brother to talk in the first place. Brothers would be brothers, that she knew—from entirely too much experience with her own.