“The scars on your back … they were inflicted before the military. By your own father?”
“Most of them,” he answered honestly, simultaneously dreading and resigning himself to her pity.
She showed him neither, though she paused and gave an audible swallow. “Would you permit me to ask you something?” she inquired.
She could say whatever she wanted if she’d only keep using that voice, the one that reached for him through the shades and memories to caress the tension from his muscle, sinew, and bone.
When he didn’t answer she proceeded anyway. “If your father’s treachery caused you such a wound, would you then hurt Andrew in the same fashion?”
He stiffened. “Nay, lass, doona ye ken I’m trying to protect him from such a loss? I had Brutus less than year before he was … slaughtered in front of my eyes. What if my son had such an attachment for ten or fifteen years, and then the wee beastie died or ran away? Is it not kinder of me to circumvent the pain of that altogether?”
“Wasn’t it Lord Tennyson who first said that ‘it is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all’?” Slowly, his governess lowered her frame onto the dainty bench of her vanity. She was within an arm’s reach now, and Liam kept his hands fisted in his lap.
“I doona know, lass. I’ve never read much poetry.”
“Well, that must be remedied.” She sighed softly and leaned toward him in the darkness. “The point you make is frankly absolute nonsense, and yet I feel as though I am finally beginning to understand you, Laird Ravencroft.” The whisper of a smile warmed her voice and Liam thought that if he sat very still he could feel that warmth radiating from her skin, though she didn’t touch him.
Liam’s brows drew together as he tried to figure whether her words pleased or offended him.
“You know that I’m acquainted with Farah Blackwell, the Countess Northwalk,” she continued.
“Aye.”
“Well, I will confess that she has taken me into her confidence, and I know that she is not only an association, but your sister-in-law. You see, I understood your father to be a vicious man before I came here, because Farah told me that he paid to have your brother, his own son, beaten to death by the guards at Newgate Prison where he was wrongly incarcerated.”
She’d uncovered another guilt he carried locked beneath his ribs. Something he should have been able to stop, somehow, had he acted sooner. Had he become the Demon Highlander back when Dougan Mackenzie, the boy who had become Dorian Blackwell, had needed him, might he have saved his brother from becoming the Blackheart of Ben More?
“I felt so much sorrow for your brother all those years ago.” Mena’s voice caught for a moment before she cleared the emotion from it. “I mourn for all of the ill-treated and illegitimate children of Hamish Mackenzie and men like him. But what I realize now is if that was the awful fate of the unwanted boy, what must it have been like for the child who had to reside with such a man?”
No one, not even Liam, himself, had thought of it in those terms before. He’d always mourned for the countless victims of his father. Never had he thought to count himself among their ranks. He’d been the heir apparent. The legitimate issue who at least had inherited a castle, fertile land, a title, and a business, one he’d built from failing to thriving. He’d always thought that of all Hamish Mackenzie’s offspring, he’d received the most reparation, and therefore had little entitlement to his pain.
Liam raked his hands through his hair before returning them to his lap, finding it impossible to lift his gaze. For the first time since he’d been a child he felt brittle. Breakable. As though he were stretched out on the rack and the last turn of the screws would tear his limbs apart.
“I hated my father,” Liam admitted. “I promised to never become like him and yet, though I’ve never laid a hand on my son in anger, he still wishes me dead.”
The whisper of her touch caressed him before her hand rested tentatively in his open palm. Again he had to close his eyes because, even in the dimness, the moon illuminated too much.
“Your father was unspeakably cruel to you, and I am so very sorry for it.” Her fingers curled around his hand and exerted a soft, comforting pressure. Her voice warmed the chilly evening. “If I know one thing, Andrew is your son. Hot-blooded and hardheaded, but tender for all that. I think he speaks from a place of injury rather than conviction.”
“How do I tell him that Gavin was right? That I stayed away because, even though my father is dead, through me he somehow seems able to destroy everything or everyone in my path…” An aching void opened up in Liam’s chest that stole his breath. One by one, he allowed his fingers to curl around hers.
“I became the Demon Highlander for them, ye ken? Not for the glory of the empire. Or the Mackenzie clan. Not to make a name or fortune for myself. Ye see, as a young man, I always thought if I died at war, if I left this world a hero, my children would remember me fondly. Not only that, their futures in society would be secure. ’Tis why I always led the charge, why I jumped into the most dangerous circumstances without a thought. Every mission, every battle, I expected to be my last. I think Andrew and I both anticipated that I would be nothing but a distant memory for him, not an ill-tempered man he’d have to live with. Someone he’d wished had never come home…”
“He didn’t mean what he said,” she crooned to him.
“He’s within his right to,” Liam murmured, troubled and yet transfixed by the soft, small hand tucked into his.
“No he isn’t.” She tightened her hold again, and oddly enough he felt a little bit of the pressure in his chest ease so he could take a deep breath. “He loves you. It’s why he’s so angry. He wants you to love him. He wants you to teach him. I think he needs to know that he can be difficult and you will not abandon him.”
Liam clung to her, his only salvation in the crashing and eddying tides of emotion he never allowed himself to examine. “What if it’s too late?” His fear amalgamated into something solid. Tangible. And once he’d given it voice, it grew with enough force to crush him.
“I’m not of the opinion that anything with Andrew was broken tonight that cannot be repaired as swiftly and thoroughly as my door can.” She’d pushed a bit of cheek into her voice; to lighten the moment, he assumed.
Despite that, shame weighted down the edges of Liam’s mouth as he thought of the physical force he’d used against her door. The only illusion she had of safety. “I shouldna have acted so barbaric. I doona want ye to fear me, lass. I’ll have the door fixed in the morning.”
She was silent for a breathless moment. “Think no more of it,” she said. “We’ll hopefully both wipe it from our memory and move forward.”
Liam hoped like hell she’d be able to, though he knew he’d be tormented by the memory of her sumptuous flesh for countless days to come. His eyes had adjusted to the lack of light, and whatever the shadows concealed, his recollection of her perfection filled in the spaces.
“I know this is a sore subject between us,” she ventured. “It’s only that I don’t know what Lord Thorne said to make you think I’d allow him into my room, but I want to assure you that I have no intentions toward your brother, and wouldn’t dream of conducting myself in a manner that—”