Page 42 of The MacGregor's Lady
She gave the smallest, nearly ineffective push with her skate and Asher let the momentum pick up their pace minutely.
“Do your brothers wish you’d stayed in Canada?”
“I haven’t asked them. They gathered willingly enough to greet me when I returned to Aberdeenshire a few months ago.” With their wives and children, no less, the entire lot of them weeping, even the women who’d never laid eyes on him before. “Part of me expected them to have remained as I left them. I’ve the prettiest niece…”
All red braids and big green eyes. Fiona had been shy and dear, spying on the grown-ups from the balconies and banisters. She told stories to the stable cats and left cheese out for the pantry mice.
“If you were raised in Canada until you turned eleven, and you’ve spent much of your adulthood in Canada, do you even know your brothers?”
She’d abandoned her rigid, eyes-front posture to peer at him as they glided along.
“I know them. I’ll always be grateful to my father for bringing me to Scotland, because I do know my siblings.”
“You had to work to convince yourself of this.”
Much more of her perceptivity and he might have to lose his grip on her—momentarily, of course.
“I’m unsure if they feel likewise. We got on well as youngsters.” They’d been thick as thieves.
“Must we go so quickly?”
He eased their pace back. “We’re positively doddering. I hadn’t realized being two years Ian’s senior made me nigh doddering to him. We were an odd bunch. None of us spoke English as our first language. I taught them some of my tongue, and they soon had me babbling away in Gaelic. Mary Fran seemed to comprehend it all, though she was barely out of leading strings.”
“Children manage to delight in one another’s company with little but imagination and idle time to aid them.”
Her tone held stark wistfulness.
“Have you had enough, Boston? I don’t want to overtax you.”
He’d meant it solicitously—mostly—but her chin came up a half inch. “Just a few more times around. Didn’t your brothers find you very different?”
“They were… fascinated by me, and I by them. I taught them what I knew of tracking—Connor’s a natural at it—and they taught me about family tales and the various clan histories. Ian and I shared a bedroom, and when he saw that I intended to sleep on the floor, he made up his own pallet, as if all boys normally slept on the floor.”
He’d forgotten these memories, lost them beneath other memories not as happy but nearer to the present.
“What about your younger brothers? Did they resent you?”
“You don’t resent family when you live in the Highlands. There’s precious few people of any stripe, much less people you can call your own.”
And for the first time, Asher felt a connection between his two families—the Canadian and the Scottish—that resonated right down to his soul. Whether it was the climate, the infernal superiority of the English, the sheer magnitude of the northern wilderness, or something of all three, both families understood the blood bond and valued it.
As he considered this odd paradox, they glided to a stop.
“Are we done then?” She regarded him out of serious green eyes as they stood on the ice in a near embrace.
“We are. We can come back, if the weather stays cold enough.”
“I’d like that.”
He assisted her up the bank, both of them clumping the few steps to the bench.I’d like that.Her words had been shy, almost bashful. “Your hip has to ache, Hannah. You don’t need to stand on ceremony with me.”
“It usually aches.” She crossed one ankle over the other knee, an unladylike, practical posture that let Asher know he wouldn’t be unfastening her skates for her. He busied himself with his own footwear.
“I forget,” she said, shifting to remove the second skate. “I forget what it’s like to move easily—to move symmetrically. I have strength now, in my crookedness, but it’s a backhanded strength.”
What was she saying? What was she talking about?
“You move as well as most people, Hannah Cooper. A little hitch in the gait is hardly remarkable.”
