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. See, 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.
They were both stubborn as mules, she decided, and they could hate each other for life for all she cared.
Suddenly Niall heaved a sigh and looked back, his gaze reaching past her to Trick. “Full brothers,” he said, calm as anything. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
“Aye.” Aghast to hear Trick’s agreement, she twisted in the
