Page 15 of Lost with a Scot
Aiden’s eyes flicked to her, full of fire and misery. “They called it the clearances—because my people were cleared off their land.”
Something niggled in the back of her mind, fire and war and betrayal, but before she could grasp it, it was gone. Hesitantly, she continued her interrogation. “And your family, they survived Culloden?”
He answered with a sad smile. “Oh yes, our ancestors were clever and won the trust of an English lord, and he let them have their castle back. Our mother was the last true Kincade. Her people had been in Scotland since the beginning of our country. My father was but a distant cousin but was the only male heir left. To keep the land in my mother’s family, she agreed to marry him, but he wasna a good man.”
Anna swallowed past the sadness that engulfed the room, waiting for him to continue.
“They had four children—my older brothers, Brock and Brodie, and my wee baby sister, Rosalind—not so wee now, actually. You look about her age, perhaps a few years younger.” He gestured slightly to Anna, and Anna felt an absurd blush crawl up her cheeks. She didn’t know why, but this man’s attention made her warm.
She cleared her throat and refocused on his words. “And your parents, they are—”
“Dead. Both are dead and gone.” Aiden’s voice was wooden and quiet.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she replied in a voice as soft as his. A sudden flash of blood and smoke, pain and grief, stabbed her heart so violently that she held her breath and rubbed at her chest to erase the feeling. And just as quickly as it had struck, it faded away.
“’Tis the past,” he said. “’Tis over and done.”
“We say that, don’t we?” she mused. “But the past and future echo forward and backward in time endlessly.” She’d heard someone tell her that once, but she couldn’t remember who.
Aiden sipped his wine. “That is more true than I care to admit. My father was a brutal man, and my mother, rest her soul, was unable to protect her children. She was a warmhearted woman, kind and gentle, not made to be married to a cruel, cunning creature like my father. A broken heart drove her to an early grave. My father’s hate still lingers, even though he’s dead and buried.”
“I’m sorry.” As she said that, Anna had a sudden memory, as clear as the sun breaking through a bank of clouds. She had clung to that broken ship mast in the vast and stormy sea, and she had cursed someone. Screamed a name over and over and wished the cruelest of fates upon the man’s head. A name that was ruthless, a name that meant betrayal of the deepest kind.
Aiden leaned forward. “What is it? Ye’ve gone pale.”
“It’s a name, the name of someone who drew my deepest hate... When you spoke of your father and his brutality, a name came to me, one that made me feel an unspeakable rage.”
“What name?”
“Yuri.” She wished she could remember why that name came to mean something so violent in her mind. It was terrifying to come again and again to a blank void in her mind where everything that mattered should be clear, but wasn’t.
“Yuri...” Aiden repeated the name as if he hoped it would mean something to him.
They ate in silence for a few minutes before she worked up the courage to ask another question.
“What are your brothers and sister like?” She finished her wine and basked in the comforting warmth that filled her body.
Aiden smiled broadly. “My brothers are trouble, ye ken. But one canna help but love them. Brock is responsible, but he has a strong temper—mind ye, one he would never vent on innocent people or animals. But he can become cross, like the badger he is named after. Brodie, well, he can charm a snake, and before he married Lydia he bedded far too many lassies. And Rosalind, my sister, is a darling. A very smart and clever and beautiful lass. All three of my siblings are married to English bloodlines.”
“Oh?”
“Brock married a lass named Joanna Lennox. And Joanna’s older brother, Ashton, married our sister, Rosalind.”
“Really?” Anna giggled at the tangled web of his family tree.
“Brodie married an English lassie too, but thankfully she wasna a Lennox. That would have been too strange for my liking.”
“And you... are not married?” She’d seen no evidence of a wife, but that was easy enough to hide, and the customs here for such things were unfamiliar to her.
“No, not me,” he replied. “I was once told that my path to love would come at a great and terrible price.”
“Someone told you that as a child?” Anna was horrified at the thought of someone putting such a great weight of the soul upon a little boy’s shoulders.
“Aye. When I was a wee lad, a band of Romani, Travellers, came to our lands while my father was in Edinburgh for business. My brothers and I let them stay for three weeks while my father was gone. I used to sneak out of the castle at night, lured by their fires burning bright in the dark.
“Women in bright skirts wearing golden bangles on their hands and ankles would dance around the fires. Men would play tunes on pan flutes, and I would join the children in their dancing. The embers would catch upon the breeze and lift in the air, swirling like fireflies all around us. It was magical. The last night the Travellers stayed with us, an old woman, the ruling grandmother of their clan, called me to sit before her next to the fire. She took my palm and read my fate in the fire’s glow.”
Anna leaned forward, spellbound by his words.
