Trick knew little of this land’s traditions. “I’m listening.”
Now that the rowdy mourners had gone home to bed, the great hall seemed larger, yawning huge and dark, much more like Trick had remembered. Niall took a deep breath before his voice rose in song—not the mournful, haunting wail that Trick had imagined a keening would be, but a heartfelt, melodic lament that echoed off the vaulted stone ceiling.
“Oh, Mam, ye have left us! Ochone!”
He paused and looked at Trick, his golden eyes expectant.
“Ochone? Is that some pagan god?”
“Nay, it’s Gaelic. Nothing more than an expression of sorrow or regret.”
“Ochone,” Trick said softly, expecting to feel silly. But he didn’t. Sharing the sitting duty with his brother, keening their mother together, felt right.
“Why did ye leave us? Ochone! What did we do to ye? Ochone! That ye went away from us?”
“Ochone!” Trick sang for him.
“’Tis ye that had plenty!”
“Ochone!”
“And why did ye leave us?”
“Ochone! Ochone! Ochone!” The ancient syllables slipped through Trick’s lips, and a tiny sliver of the pain went along with them.
THIRTY-EIGHT
WHEN DAWN HAD broken, Trick made his way upstairs to find a gray-garbed woman in his room, her back to him as she stoked the fire on the ancient, blackened stone hearth. At the sound of him entering, she slowly straightened and turned.
He gasped. “Mrs. Ross?”
“Aye, it be me,” the tiny woman said in a reedy voice, coming closer. She was shorter than he remembered, but of course he’d last seen her through the eyes of a child. Her face was even more wrinkled, if that were possible, her blue eyes faded but glittering the same as they always had. “Why, I’d recognize you anywhere, even after all these years. Patrick, dear, how fare you?”
“I’m well.” The door banged louder than he would have liked when he shut it behind him, and in the bed, Kendra stirred. “How are you?” he asked Mrs. Ross. Heart’s wounds, the woman had to be eighty years old.
“No complaints. But your mam…” The blue eyes flooded with tears. “I don’t know what happened. She went so fast…”
“Trick?” Kendra blinked herself awake. At the sight of a stranger in the room, she clutched the blanket over her chemise-clad form and tucked it beneath her chin.
“My wife, the Duchess of Amberley,” Trick introduced her. Smiling to himself, he walked over to smooth her sleep-mussed hair. “Good morning, leannan. No need to blush—it’s only Mrs. Ross, my old nurse.”
“And his mam’s before him,” the older woman added.
“I haven’t thought of her as Mam in eighteen years,” he murmured. “She’s Mother to me now.”
Mrs. Ross’s thin, bluish lips straightened into a disapproving line. “She was never Mother to you, and well you know it. She was much warmer than that. And why did you not write her, aye?” Her expression hardening, the bird-like woman came near and whacked him on the shoulder, although not without a modicum of affection. “You’d been taught how to write before you left here. Eighteen years and you never once answered one of that poor woman’s letters.”
Trick rubbed his shoulder. “What on earth are you talking about? She never sent me a letter.”
“Oh yes, she did. She cried for weeks after your father dragged you away. Then she started writing the letters—”
“I never received any letters,” Trick insisted.
But Mrs. Ross wasn’t listening. “—every week at first, then every month, and then, when she never heard back, once a year. Until finally she gave up. You broke her heart, Patrick Iain. I knew you were a bairn yet, but I thought I’d taught you better—”
“Mrs. Ross!”
The woman jumped and began twittering, and Kendra clapped her hands over her ears, her eyes wide as round portholes.
He waited until his old nurse quieted before continuing. “I never received her letters. Did you hear me, Mrs. Ross? I never received her letters. Not one.”
She stilled, studying him for a long moment. “Did he keep them from you, then?” she whispered and burst into tears.
He gathered her fragile frame into his arms. “There, Mrs. Ross. I know you miss her.” Patting her on the back, he silently cursed his father—the blackguard—for hiding the mail. And himself for never considering the possibility. “Mother wouldn’t want you to be sad.”
“Your mam was like a daughter to me.” She raised her tear-stained face. “A woman isn’t supposed to outlive her children.”
He pulled back and nodded, and they gazed at each other until Kendra shifted on the bed and cleared her throat. “What was she like, Mrs. Ross?”
The old nurse dashed the tears from her wrinkled cheeks and sat herself down to catch her breath. The bulky oak armchair dwarfed her. “She was good. A good woman, Elspeth. She had no easy life.”
Kendra slanted Trick a glance, knowing he didn’t want to hear this, but also knowing he should. “How is it she came to marry the duke?”
“Him.” The woman looked as though she wanted to spit. “King Charles—the first one—arranged the match. Part of his plan to Anglicize Scotland.” She twisted her bony fingers in her lap, her voice going softer, as though it were coming from far away. “And my poor Elspeth was so in love with Hamish Munroe…but her father had never liked the lad. Too common for his tastes. A third son, and a businessman besides, buying flax for the weaving and then selling the cloth. He made a fine living, but Elspeth’s father was the laird, and he expected better for his daughter. The Stuarts had made him an earl, but that didn’t make him English.”
“Of course not,” Kendra said gently, noting that Trick seemed to be studying his bare toes. “My husband told me his grandfather signed the Covenant.”
“Aye, the old earl was a bit of a rebel. It’s in the blood. But
