“Of course she mattered.” Her hands fell away and came up to grip his shoulders; her eyes cleared of the confusion and filled with concern instead. “It’s natural, Trick. To want to reach out, reconnect. With people, with living. Like the draidgie, don’t you see? Niall said it was to celebrate your mother’s life, rather than dwelling on the death that ended it. It cannot be wrong.”
She made a sort of sense, and he wanted to be convinced. When she touched her lips to his, his shoulders relaxed beneath her fingertips. The kiss turned from sweet to fervent, and for long, perfect minutes, all he thought of was Kendra.
The only person, it seemed, who had ever really cared.
“I don’t deserve you,” he whispered, wondering when this would end. Because everything good in his life always did.
A soft smile on her lips, she went on tiptoe to kiss him again.
“Patrick! Kendra!” Niall’s voice slashed through the leaves overhead.
Trick tightened his hold around Kendra’s waist. “What does he want?” he muttered against her mouth. When his brother appeared on the tree-lined path, he dropped his arms and groaned.
“Da is awake,” Niall said. “And this seems to be one of his good days.” Producing the escaped shawl, the lad offered it to Kendra. “He wants to talk to you both.”
FORTY-THREE
“ELSPETH WASN’T dying.” Though Hamish was still in bed, he was sitting up for the first time since Kendra had met him. “When she wrote that letter, she was in perfect health.”
His voice was strong and sure, which Kendra hoped meant he was getting better. Seated at his bedside next to Trick, she reached to touch one of his hands. “Perhaps she was already ill but didn’t want to tell you.”
“Nay, lass. Elspeth and I kept no secrets.”
A look of disbelief crossed Trick’s face. “Why, then?” he demanded. “Why would she have written saying she was dying if she wasn’t?”
“She wanted to see you,” Hamish said simply. “She was hoping the thought of her death would bring you here to Duncraven, even though you’d never answered any of her other letters.”
“I never received any of her other letters.”
“So Mrs. Ross informed me quite tearfully this morning.”
“But you didn’t believe her.”
Hamish blinked. “Of course I believed her. What makes you imagine I’d think the worst of you, Patrick? If you say you never received the letters, I take you at your word.”
A faint pink stained Trick’s neck. “My father must have intercepted them.”
Kendra took his hand and squeezed, feeling tension coursing through him. He didn’t want to be here, talking about this. He wanted to be back in the garden. He’d grumbled as much to her three times on their long trek up the stairs.
“Your father…” Hamish’s fingers tapped an irritated tattoo on the coverlet. “I wouldn’t put destroying her letters past him, I can tell you that.”
Trick set down the goblet of whisky he’d snatched in the great hall and brought along with him upstairs. “I assure you, sir, I didn’t hold him in any higher esteem than you did.”
Sitting on the bed beside his father, Niall sipped from his own cup of spirits. “Da, do you want to tell Patrick why Mam summoned him?”
Trick’s gaze snapped to his brother’s. “Did she not just want to see me, then? Had she another reason?”
“Aye,” Hamish said, “and it’s a long story I have to tell you. A story about the first King Charles and his ill-fated visit here to Scotland.”
“What could that have to do with—”
“Just listen.” Looking toward the closed door to ensure their privacy, Hamish settled back against his pillows for the telling. “Charles was born here, as you know, but left when he was yet a bairn, and we Scots heard tell he rather fancied himself an Englishman.” He took a small sip of the green concoction Rhona had left him, then grimaced and held out a hand for Niall’s drink. “Still and all, Charles was our king—a Scottish king. The nobles insisted on a second coronation, on Scottish soil with the Scottish crown jewels. Thirty-five years ago, in the eighth year of his reign, he finally assented to the visit.”
Intrigued, Kendra leaned forward. “Had he not been home in all that time?”
“He didn’t think of Scotland as home, as you will soon see.” Hamish drank, closing his eyes for a long, contented moment as the whisky slipped down his throat. “Excitement was rampant,” he said after smacking his lips. “Everyone threw themselves into the preparations. Roads were fixed and bridges were repaired. Thatched roofs were replaced with shingles, lest the king should think us poor. All in all, a great deal of money was paid out to improve and decorate the Royal route and show we were as good as the English. We hoped to appeal to his Scottishness, so he’d let up on us and allow us to live as we saw fit.”
He paused for another sip. “But it soon became clear that he wanted to forget his origins. He arrived here for a month-long tour with a baggage train two miles long. Fifty wagons, two bishops, dozens of courtiers. Along the way, they stopped to lodge with our Scottish nobles, bankrupting them one by one with all of their costly demands. On a whim, Charles would change his itinerary, bypassing the places that had been so carefully prepared and making it clear he wasn’t impressed with the preparations anyway. He treated us as inferiors when we hoped he’d relate to us as the Scot he was by birth.”
Trick’s thumb kept teasing the palm of Kendra’s hand, and his lips quirked when she shivered in response. He didn’t seem to be paying attention to the story at all.
“When the
