Page 49 of The Duke's All That
“At the beginning would be a good place,” she replied. “Specifically with your parents, and whose side these relations are from.”
“Aye.” He stretched his legs out and leaned back on his hands. The green-and-blue plaid of his kilt spread over his lap, brilliant against the pale sand and washed-out greens and browns of the tall grasses. “They are my father’s kin—his mother, and his brother’s child. All that is left of that particular branch of the family.”
His lips twisted, but not in humor. No, pain was threaded through it, like the bands of ironstone seams in the brittle shale cliff walls back on Synne. “It seems the MacInnes family has experienced its share of bad luck since my father up and left, cutting off all contact with them. Sickness took two of his brothers before they could marry, infection from a burn took another. There have been all manner of accidents that took the rest. Almost an entire clan wiped out in a matter of just over three decades.”
“Oh, your poor grandmother,” she murmured.
She expected him to agree. Instead he appeared surprised,as if he had not considered it. “Yes, I suppose so,” he replied, his eyes going distant, a small divot forming between his brows.
In the next instant his frown deepened, as if to banish whatever kind thoughts he’d had for that woman. “Though if she had bothered to look for me or my father, she would have had me to comfort her, wouldn’t she?”
Seraphina’s heart ached at the anger simmering in him. It was only too obvious that he was incredibly, painfully angry toward the woman he called grandmother. She could not blame him, not truly. From the many secret, heartfelt talks they’d shared when they were young, she knew how much it had pained him to think he was alone in the world.
But while she had never known Iain’s father, she had heard something of him. Iain had been shunned in the nearby village because of him, a man who had wreaked enough havoc that it had polluted his son when he’d gone to his Maker. A man who had done nothing for his child but left a stained, lonely legacy. And as anger filled her up for what he had stolen from Iain—a parent’s job was to protect their children, protection that had been painfully lacking in her childhood as well—she realized that maybe, just maybe, Iain wasn’t truly angry at his grandmother. No, maybe his anger was for his father, but he felt he was betraying the memory of the only family he had known in his youth by admitting as much, even to himself.
She placed a hand on his arm, and he looked at it, startled, as if he had forgotten she was there. “Tell me why your father left his mother’s home.”
“My father?” He frowned. “To hear my cousin, Cora, explain it, he had a falling-out with his father regarding hisexcesses. Namely an addiction to laudanum after requiring it for a particularly painful broken bone as a young man.”
It was something she had seen often enough in those first years on the run from her father, a malady particularly prevalent in the slums and gutters, the call of the poppy so powerful people destroyed everything else in their lives to get it.
“And do you believe Cora?” she asked quietly.
His frown deepened. “I dinnae ken.” His voice had taken on a thicker brogue in his agitation. She shifted closer to him, leaning against his arm, a silent comfort should he need it.
His reaction was instantaneous, his arm stealing about her to bring her even closer. “I suppose it makes sense,” he admitted hesitantly, as if her presence alone had given him the courage to face what he had been too fearful to acknowledge before now. “He was always so erratic, in temperament and attention, disappearing for days at a time, leaving me with his landlady when I was younger and, when I was older, leaving me to fend for myself. Then there were the times he lay insensible in his bed, and I could nae rouse him nae matter what I did.”
Ah, God, her heart broke for that boy. She leaned her head on his shoulder. Even Phineas, who had until then been quietly sitting in her lap picking at a stray thread in her bodice, waddled over to sit on Iain’s leg, as if attempting to offer comfort.
“He did the best he could for me,” Iain continued. But his voice lacked conviction, a thread of sound trying to find purchase in the faint breeze coming in off the sea. “I cannae vilify him. He was still my father.”
She was quiet a moment, gathering her thoughts. Andthen she said, “Yes, he was your father, and he did the best he could under the circumstances. I cannot imagine that raising a child on your own after your spouse dies is easy.”
She raised her head and looked him steadily in the eye. “However, speaking as someone whose father failed her horribly, I can say that sometimes the best someone can do for their child is not the best that child deserves. And you did deserve so much more. It is not a betrayal to admit that your father should have made certain you received all that you deserved, whether that was with him or someone else.”
He remained silent, and for a moment she thought she had gone too far. But then he rested his head against hers and sighed. “That, to my immense frustration, makes entirely too much sense.”
She smiled. “How that must bruise your pride to admit.”
“Oh, aye,” he agreed readily enough. And to her relief there was a smile in his voice.
“But we digress,” he continued, straightening away from her, letting his arm fall, and Seraphina tried not to think how the simple act of him pulling away had her feeling the loss of him. “You wished to ken more of this newly found family of mine. Upon the death of her last son, my grandmother went in search of my father, that son she hadnae seen in nearly four decades. And while she quickly learned he was nae longer living, she also learned he had been married for a short time, and that my mother had died in childbirth, and she went in search of me. And a year ago she found me.” He shrugged, as if it was a simple-enough thing, something that happened every day.
She turned to gape at him. “But don’t you see how extraordinary this all is, Iain? You thought you were alone all those years. Now you have a family.”
Again he paused. Though this time when he glanced her way there was deep emotion in his eyes. “But I was nae alone,” he murmured. “Nae when I had you in my life.”
“Oh.” The breath left her, and she felt as if a thread had been pulled behind her navel, yanking her back into her moment of doubt that she was doing the right thing in staying the course of their trip.
“But enough of this,” he continued, even as she attempted to find purchase in the midst of the painfully familiar emotions flowing through her. “We’d best be heading back to the carriage.”
With that he encouraged Phineas to return to her lap. Then, rising, he held a hand down for her. She stared at it a moment, remembering the feel of it on her body. Gathering up Phineas, she reached up and allowed Iain to help her to standing.
But even with her feet securely under her in the sand, the next moment she was set completely off-balance.
Iain, his fingers still firmly clasped about her own, cupped her cheek with his free hand. Before she knew what he was about, he bent his head and took her lips in a tender kiss, one light as the breeze that caressed her skin yet powerful enough to steal the very breath from her body. He gazed down at her, his eyes searching her face, and for a moment she thought he wanted to say something more. Something that, to him, was incredibly important.
But then Phineas, who had been silently watching the whole interaction from his perch on her shoulder, chirped loud and spoke up.
