"My what?" he shouted.
"A wee bit removed," Ambrose said calmly. "Trace your mother's line back to the fourteenth century and the laird Malcolm. You'll find that he has a pair of daughters. The younger was Grudach. The elder is your vision up the way."
Thomas leaned on his hands and hung his head. "My aunt."
"Your half-aunt, if you want to put a finer point on it. Your mother's ancestor and the lass up the way had different mothers."
"Oh, that's a relief." Thomas looked calculatingly at the bottle, then shook his head. "I'm going to bed."
"Best place for you. Rest your head."
"My aunt," Thomas muttered as he walked around the table. He paused at the door. "Well, outside of that news flash, it was a pleasure talking to you, my laird."
Iolanthe watched as Ambrose preened like a peacock. He beamed a smile over his shoulder at Thomas.
"My pleasure, grandson."
Thomas left the chamber with a shake of his head. The door closed behind him. Ambrose drank deeply from his mug, as if he hadn't a care in that white-capped head of his. Iolanthe rose to her feet.
"You old fool," she grumbled.
He looked at her and winked. "Auntie."
"Be silent," she said in disgust.
Ambrose laughed as he rose, crossed the room, and pulled her into a ferocious hug. "Come and have a tankard of ale with me. It seems years since last we did so."
"It has been years," she muttered, but she didn't protest
when he tugged on her hair affectionately, nor did she decline the offer of a chair before the fire next to his and a hefty mug of drink. She sat and drank, then found that she couldn't ignore his assessing gaze any longer. "What?" she demanded, looking at him.
He only smiled. "A father's worry, my girl. Nothing more."
How was it when he called her girl, it was full of affection and concern? Would that her father could have shown her the like. Would that she'd had a father such as Ambrose.
"You know," Ambrose said slowly, "there are many men who are not good."
"Stop reading my thoughts."
" 'Tis difficult not to, when you think them so strongly. Your father, I daresay, was less of a man than he might have been."
"You've been talking to Duncan."
"As it happens, I have. He is my kinsman as well, you know, and he has a fine head for thinking. But that isn't how I knew of your sire. Unlike you, my dear, I get out and travel about. There is much to be seen in this world, and you've no reason to lock yourself away in that keep."
The reason she stayed was such a foolish one, she could scarce bear to think on it. To think she remained confined simply because she didn't want to travel about without a man to share the view with her.
A particular man.
And a particular view.
"And whilst I was out traveling about, I visited your sire," Ambrose continued.
"You didn't!"
Apparently he had no fear of her temper, for he only looked at her placidly. "Raging and roaring like a stuck boar, as you might imagine." He shivered. "Don't know as how anyone gets any sleep in that keep with him howling at all hours."
"And he stopped bellowing long enough to talk to you?"
"I am a MacLeod as well, my girl, and I can shout as long and as loudly as the rest of them."
"And what did the wretch have to say for himself?" She knew no words would excuse him, but 'twas an idle curiosity she had.
"It was more what he didn't say." Ambrose looked into the fire. "You were but a wee thing when your elder brother was murdered and your mother wounded so grievously."
"I had passed ten summers already in his hall," she interrupted.
Ambrose sighed. "I cannot answer for his actions. Perhaps your sire went mad from his grief."
"He didn't. He'd been whoring about for years. He certainly had no trouble taking a mistress and siring other children on her—and that years before my mother was wounded."
"As I said, he was not himself."
"And I am to forgive him for that?" she exclaimed, then she shut her mouth with a snap, horrified by how plaintive her question sounded. She threw her mug into the fire. "That doesn't excuse him."
Ambrose merely looked at her. "I think you need to forgive him more for yourself than for his own absolution. Whatever neglect, whatever injuries he did to you are in the past."
"They feel as fresh as if 'twere yesterday."
"Aye, and they bind you to those stones up the way as surely as if by chains."
And with that, he turned away and contemplated the fire. Iolanthe had nothing else kind or polite to say to him, so she stomped from the kitchen in a fury.
Her anger lasted all the way back along the road and almost all the way to the keep. It failed her just before she reached the barbican. She looked at the castle in front of her and cursed it. Aye, 'twas her prison, as surely as her father's was in the north. And, just like him, she wasn't sure she would ever free herself from it.
Then she realized just what she hadn't done. She'd gone to the inn to seek Ambrose's advice on how to rid herself of a man who had offended her so deeply, only to listen to that same offensive man describe her in glowing terms she was certain no one had ever used on her poor self before. She'd left without any ideas on how to rid herself of him.
Of his bad-mannered self.
Of his astonishing compliments.
"Oh, by the saints," she said in disgust.
Mayhap she would go back down on the morrow and consult with Ambrose on how she could be about her business. She wasn't about to go down again that night. Perhaps on the morrow Thomas would come back to the keep, and Connor MacDougal would push him off
