Harlequin Historical July 2020 - Box Set 1 of 2

by Virginia Heath

  ‘Do what you will,’ he repeated. ‘But I’ll have none of it. I have nothing to do with it.’

  ‘I didn’t think you were an unreasonable tyrant. I knew how badly your father had hurt you. How badly he hurt all the people here. And even though I don’t believe your blood is tainted, Lachlan Bain, I could understand why you do. But what I don’t understand is why you…why you’re angry with me about taking this child in.’

  She didn’t understand. For she had not seen the things he had. The way the loss of her babies had destroyed his mother, year after year. The vow he’d made to that wounded child, on a battlefield years ago, that he could not keep.

  That strength, love and power could not keep a bairn on this earth. No matter how deep it was.

  She said she knew. She didn’t.

  ‘If you wish to take this on, I cannot stop you. I won’t. But you’re sheltered, Penelope, and you still believe that everything will work out right for you in the end because it has. But I know how quickly fever can take something that small. And when your heart is shattered over the death of a child…’

  ‘Lachlan, you can’t… We cannot guarantee that things in life won’t hurt. Just like you could not know for sure if you would succeed here. But it doesn’t mean you didn’t try. I cannot guarantee that the child will live two years, ten years, thirty years. But… This kind of closing off yourself…that’s what my father did. And he couldn’t stand my emotions. He couldn’t stand them, so he shut me away. And then I ended up shutting away pieces of myself for most of my life. And I missed them. But here… Here I have found myself, and I will not go back. I won’t stop love simply because it might harm me. I cannot do that.’

  ‘On your head be it.’

  And he turned and left his wife standing there. If he were a man who could feel guilt, he might have felt it now.

  But he couldn’t.

  His wife was still the woman who had saved that bird.

  But he was not the man who had helped her.

  And he never could be again.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The closeness that she had felt to Lachlan began to splinter. It made her whole body feel splintered with it. But she had made Mary a promise and the duty she felt for the baby required action.

  After Mary was bundled up and sent tearfully away to England with one of Lachlan’s men, and also with Flora, who had found a position in London, it only got worse.

  Because then Penny began to take over the care of the baby in earnest. It was up to her to name him. But she was having difficulty thinking of a name. Her father certainly didn’t deserve a namesake. Lachlan wouldn’t want one. And his father…

  Well. There was no chance of that.

  She had spent the past two days walking the halls, holding him and repeating different names.

  The midwife had helped her find a wet nurse and they had got the woman situated in the castle. Penny was sorry that she couldn’t feed the little boy, if only because she was desperate to find some way to let him know that she was his mother.

  His mother.

  She had lost her own mother so young she could barely remember her, and the word mother was tied to beautiful, soft feelings, which often gave way to the sharpness of grief.

  But the gift of being able to be a mother, to be able to find a way to reconnect with that word, with that relationship as the mother herself… It was a gift she had not realised she wanted.

  She had wanted to be a mother because she had simply assumed it was something she would do. Because it was a given that a lady of her standing would become a wife and mother.

  When Lachlan had told her she wouldn’t be, she’d been forced to contend with why that hurt.

  And the reason became bright and brilliant while holding the baby one afternoon.

  Because it brought her closer to her own mother. Because it made her understand the way she had looked at Penny. And made her feel as if she might have been loved once in the way a parent ought to love a child.

  * * *

  It was a week into her being the child’s mother, when she finally thought of a name. And right at that same moment, she realised that she had not thought of the little box inside herself where she used to keep her feelings in all that time. She had simply felt them. She had felt love and concern and worry and despair, so deep and real over these past days.

  She had felt happiness, joy, deeper than she had ever known it.

  It astounded her that with that joy she could also feel some of the deepest pain she’d ever contended with. Over the fact she wanted Lachlan by her side for this. Wanted him to be united with her. For they had become family. Clan. And now this child was part of it and there was a wedge between them. She wanted all of them to be family.

  She wanted Lachlan. By her side, always.

  But she felt it. She didn’t hide from it. And she wasn’t confused by it.

  He was not withholding his body from her. He was as ravenous for her every night as he had always been. But she could feel a distance there. And he didn’t speak to her the way that he often did. Their silence no longer had that sweet sense of the companionable.

  She was part of him enough to feel the distance and to know that it was real. She didn’t have to know why.

  There was a particular torture in having his body and knowing she no longer had his soul with it, for she’d experienced the difference. And now that she knew…now that she knew, it was devastating.

  ‘I’ve named him,’ she said, as she held him during supper that night.

  ‘Have you?’ He could not have sounded less interested if he’d made an effort to.

  ‘Yes. Camden. It’s Scottish.’

  His expression was dry. ‘Thank you. I didn’t realise.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘It means winding valley. I wanted to give him a name that was connected to this place. To the clan.’

  And one that felt like the true journey of her heart. Through a winding valley that was sometimes dark and frightening, fraught with peril, but was beautiful and worth the journey, no matter the cost.

  ‘Not an English name?’

  ‘He’s not English,’ she said. ‘And neither am I.’

  He paused, his broad shoulders shifting. ‘You still sound English enough.’

  ‘I’m part of this place. I’m part of you. Even if you’re not very happy with me for the moment.’

  He arched a brow. ‘I’m not unhappy with you.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘What have I done to make you think so?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘Am I not sitting with you and having a meal?’ He made a broad gesture over the food as if to suggest his grandness.

  ‘You are. But it’s not the same.’

  ‘Do I not give you my body every night?’

  ‘For all I know you give your body freely to whores as well. It used to be different between us. And you know that.’

  His face turned to stone. ‘Do you give your body to whores?’ she asked. ‘Even though I asked… I told you not to?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  She let out a sigh of relief, and looked down at Camden, brushing her thumb over his downy soft head. ‘You like me a great deal more than you pretend. And right now, you’re a great deal angrier with me then you’re admitting.’

  ‘It’s just I’ve nothing to discuss when it comes to the lad.’

  ‘So he’ll grow up without a father?’

  ‘I cut his father’s head off and did us all a favour. I would have done well to grow up without a father.’

  ‘Is that the problem? Do you not think you’ll be a good father? Because you will. I know you will. The way that you take care of the clan, the way that you defended Mary… You’re a leader, Lachlan, in a way your father never could’ve been. And his blood is in your veins. So I do
n’t believe that blood is weak. Because in you…in you it has become something entirely different. You believe in honour. And you believe in what’s right.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I do. I believe in taking that which my father corrupted and restoring it. And giving it, along with the burden of leadership, to the people. I had intended for it to be Callum, now not so. But there are men among the chieftains and I will choose one of them, and their descendants, when I see who is worthy of it.’

  ‘Honourable,’ she said. ‘But that’s only relinquishing responsibility in the end. It’s just fear of what you can’t control, isn’t it? And I understand that. I came here with my feelings locked away tight. And can you blame me? For nobody in my world ever treated me with any care. The only one who ever did… It was you, Lachlan. And then you were gone and I was left devastated yet again. But there is no good that comes from living that way.’

  ‘There is plenty of good that comes from it,’ he said. ‘See the good that I’ve done here? That’s what comes from it.’

  There was something strange behind his eyes, though, and if she didn’t know her hardened husband quite so well she would’ve thought that it was fear.

  Fear. Was it possible the man was afraid?

  * * *

  Camden had a particularly difficult night and she chose to sit in her bedroom, which was now the nursery, holding him close, rather than allowing Rona or one of the other maids to see to him. The wet nurse came when he was hungry, but otherwise, Penny sat with the baby.

  Perhaps Lachlan was afraid of being like his father. Or perhaps it was something deeper, yet more simple. She looked down at the tiny delicate baby and thought of what Lachlan had told her.

  That babies died.

  And she wondered if that was what truly frightened him. Loving something only to lose it.

  For Lachlan did withhold his love.

  He might care for her, but he didn’t…

  What a foolish thought.

  Love.

  She had never imagined she would have a husband who loved her. It was such an uncommon thing that you might find a person you could marry who might also love you. Whom you might also love.

  A whisper of something went through her heart. Like an arrow. She chose to ignore it.

  She simply continued rocking Camden. But it was Lachlan whom she thought of. And all the great distance between them.

  And while she didn’t push her feelings away, she refused to give names to them.

  To do otherwise would cause far too much pain.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  He could hear screaming. Wailing.

  It pierced through his sleep. His dreams shifted, morphed half into memory. And he saw him. A tiny, helpless boy lying next to the body of his mother.

  Crying and crying. Blood all over him. No way to tell if it was his or hers.

  And he held him close. That tiny, fragile thing. He held him close to his chest.

  ‘I promise,’ he whispered. ‘I promise to protect you.’

  He woke with a start. His eyes open in the darkness of the room, but there was still wailing.

  It was coming from the room next door.

  And his wife wasn’t in bed.

  He got up, stumbled to the door that connected the two spaces and opened it.

  This room was empty, too, of everything except for the bairn.

  Camden.

  Camden, she had named him. For the valley. For the land that belonged to his clan. For this new place that she claimed to have adopted. As she had done this child.

  The image of Penny, devastated and grieving, tore at him. But he was still in a strange fog. A place somewhere between sleep and awake. That was where these memories came for him.

  And they were all mixed together with the baby that was screaming in front of him.

  He approached the cradle, which held the child, and stared down at his angry, red face.

  He reached down and one flailing fist connected with his finger. He stilled. The child’s fist rested there and he didn’t know what led him to shift, but he did, and the tiny fingers wrapped around his own.

  A strange, primal surge of possessiveness ran through him and he took a step back, uncertain of where it had come from.

  The child started to cry again.

  The crying only reminded him of that boy.

  He had not held a child since…since one had died in his arms.

  Slowly, he picked the tiny body up out of the cradle, held it in the crook of one arm.

  The baby turned his head back and forth, making small routing sounds, like a pig. ‘You’ll be disappointed,’ Lachlan whispered. ‘I’ve nothing for you. I don’t know where your nurse is. Or your mother.’

  His mother. If Penny was the boy’s mother, he supposed that made him a father.

  He had never wanted to be a father.

  For reasons that had built one on top of the other over the years. For reasons that echoed inside his heart and never seemed to get any quieter.

  For reasons that screamed at him even now, as he looked down at the tiny, improbably fragile being.

  He had made promises before. That all would be well.

  He had made promises to save a life he had not been able to save.

  Babies died.

  It was the way of things. He had learned that early. He had grown up in a house filled with such death. This very castle. So much loss within the walls of it. He had come to accept that. To expect it.

  But the useless brutality of what he had come upon on that battlefield…

  He had promised. And he had failed.

  What promises could he make his own children? What promise could he make to his own son?

  He knew he could not prevent disease or sickness any more than he could prevent a clear day from turning into a storm.

  He would not be able to protect this child, any more than he would be able to protect Penny from the grief that would drown her if she were to lose the child.

  He had never wanted to be a father.

  The door to the chamber opened, and in came Penny.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I went to the kitchen to see if I could find something to eat. I didn’t realise he would be so upset. He was fine when I left.’

  Her eyes were round and she was staring at him with a mix of fear and scepticism.

  ‘Take him,’ Lachlan said. He offered the child to her.

  ‘Just a moment,’ she said softly. She began to move around the room, setting her tray of food down on the table by the bed. ‘I’ve been with him all evening.’

  ‘Did you leave after I went to sleep?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t been getting much sleep. I might have to call the wet nurse.’

  ‘Why is it that you tend to him quite so much?’

  ‘I don’t know how else he will know I’m his mother. I didn’t give birth to him. I can’t feed him. I wasn’t with him from the beginning in quite the way I am now. I just want him to know.’

  ‘I’m sure that he does,’ Lachlan said. He was not certain of any such thing. He knew nothing of babies and even less of what one might know or think.

  ‘Why do you not want him?’

  ‘Penny…’

  ‘I want to know. I want to understand. Because you’re a good man, Lachlan Bain. You care for all the people in the clan, yet you don’t want to care for this child. And look at how easily you hold him.’

  ‘All I know of small children is death,’ he said. ‘Loss.’

  He went to her and handed the child to her. ‘To me, that is what this means.’

  ‘But some children live. Or you and I would not be standing here.’

  ‘Aye, some do. But many do not.’

  ‘Lachlan…tell me. What is it?’

>   His lip curled. ‘Is it not enough my mother lost every bairn save me?’

  ‘There’s something else, I can feel it.’

  So could he. Pain like a wounded, clawing beast.

  A darkness that went somewhere past rage.

  It wasn’t the rage that bothered him. It was the grief. Useless and soft. As pointless as mercy. But if Penny wanted to know, if she wanted to take part in this…on her head be it.

  ‘The woman I found. Raped and murdered by the French. They left her baby for dead as well. He’d been grazed by a bullet. A deep wound, but nothing vital hit. They left him by his mother’s body to die. I picked him up and wrapped him in my shirt. I made a promise to save him. For days we marched on and I carried that child. Until he became hot with fever. He died, Penny. There was nothing I could do. My promises were empty. I cannot promise you this bairn will live, nor any. I could not stop it if sickness took him. Nor can you.’

  He never spoke of this. It had happened before young William had joined the company. He didn’t know where any of the men who’d witnessed it were. It was a failure he carried alone. The one that rested heaviest of all.

  For while he felt guilt over his mother’s death, he’d had no way to return. He felt anger over that, most of all, for it was Penny’s father who had prevented his return.

  But he’d been able to take his revenge against that enemy.

  Nameless French soldiers…

  He’d slain many on the battlefield and somehow it had done nothing to make that boy and his mother feel avenged. The stain was on his hands, no matter how much he tried to make it otherwise.

  ‘Lachlan, you tried.’

  Three more useless words he could not fathom.

  ‘And it did nothing. It would do nothing to protect you either.’

  ‘I’m not your mother,’ she said quietly. ‘More importantly, you’re not your father, so you could never push me to be.’

  That hooked into something deep inside him and he realised that he did worry about that. About her sinking into a state of despair should she encounter such loss. His mother had been left with nothing to live for. Nothing.