“You like horses?”
“I do. But we’ve got nothing on the farm to match her.”
Malcolm bit back a gasp. He felt like someone stuck a knife into his heart. He, too, had been a horse-mad lad. This echo of his younger self in his son made him want to weep.
He needed a few seconds to dislodge the jagged emotion from his throat before he could speak. “The stables at Dun Carron are famous.”
Patrick reached out to pat Senga’s shoulder. “I’d love to see them.”
“You will.”
Patrick stared at him, and Malcolm saw the wonder he himself felt reflected in the boy’s glowing eyes. “I don’t know anything about you. I didn’t even know your name, until Mother told you to get out of the house.”
That knife in Malcolm’s heart twisted, piercing him with a shaft of new agony. What on earth happened here? Did Rhona hate him so much that she couldn’t bear to mention his name? That made no sense.
He hoped to God that he had the opportunity to find out what lay behind her hostility. She must know that he’d been another victim of those events eighteen years ago. They’d destroyed his life. Yet everything indicated that his beloved saw him as more sinner than sinned against.
“I’ve looked for you your whole life, Patrick.” He spoke slowly and carefully. He didn’t want any misunderstandings between him and his son. “Whatever your mother may say about me, I never gave up the hope of meeting you one day.”
Patrick regarded him with troubled black eyes. “I’ve got a lifetime of questions to ask you. I feel like I already know you. Yet you’re a stranger.”
Malcolm smiled at the son he’d longed to find for so long. When he first saw the boy, the resemblance had floored him, but now he started to count differences. Patrick’s face was gentler than his, and there was a hint of Rhona’s beauty in the arch of his brows and the flare of his nostrils. And something purely himself in the benevolent intelligence shining in the dark eyes. “It’s dashed awkward, isn’t it?”
Patrick smiled back with a hint of relief, now he heard that Malcolm understood his confusion. “Yes, it is.”
Only at that moment did Malcolm recognize something that had tugged at the edges of his awareness since Patrick had opened the door to him. His son had an English accent. The mystery deepened.
Patrick went on. “I want to talk to you for hours. I’ve got a thousand things I’d love to know. But if I stay out too long tonight, Mother will guess that I didn’t send you on your way.” He pointed toward a closed door at the end of the aisle running between the stalls. “There’s a camp bed in there. I’ll try and sneak you out some dinner if I can. I’m sorry I can’t offer you warmer hospitality.”
Malcolm shook his head, still feeling as if he struggled to keep his balance on shifting sands. “A lifetime of searching has come to an end. That’s enough to make this a red-letter day. If I go to bed without any supper, I’ll live.”
Patrick smiled again. He seemed to be a contented soul. Malcolm could only be grateful. In his darker moments, he’d imagined his son suffering an encyclopedia of horrors without a father to protect him.
“Mother will come round.”
Given his earlier reception and Malcolm’s memory of the younger Rhona’s stubbornness, he wasn’t so sure about that, but he admired Patrick’s optimism. He clapped him on the shoulder, all too aware that this was the first time he’d ever touched his almost-grown son. The urge to hug the boy close was nigh on overwhelming, but he didn’t yet have that right.
By God, he’d have the right before next Christmas, whatever Rhona thought about the matter.
“You’d better go,” he said gruffly. “We’ll talk tomorrow, even if we have to do it at the inn.”
“Yes, we will.” Patrick sent him a searching look that made him look older than his seventeen years. He held out a steady hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Father.”
When Malcolm grasped Patrick’s hand, a stinging mist obscured his vision. He had to blink and clear his throat again before he spoke. “Aye, son, it’s splendid to meet you, too.”
Chapter 2
“My softhearted son has been at it again,” a toneless feminine voice said from the entrance to the stall. “Softhearted, not to mention softheaded.”
Now Malcolm had accepted that Rhona was alive, her presence shouldn’t punch him in the belly with that same visceral impact. But the sound of her voice still made his heart leap high to lodge in his throat.
Perhaps his memory played tricks, but it was lower and huskier than the voice that had haunted his dreams. Little trace of her Scottish accent remained.
“Rhona…” He looked up from where he groomed a fine bay colt. He’d rubbed Senga down and given her oats and water, then decided to see what he could do for the other half dozen horses in the barn.
“Don’t bother pretending that Patrick didn’t ask you to stay.” She wore a thick coat, and her head was wrapped in a plaid shawl. At her side, she carried a lidded basket.
“Don’t take it out on him.” He tried a placatory smile. It was a waste of time. She didn’t smile back. “He was worried about me making it through the snow.”
Fine green eyes flashed with outrage. “Don’t you dare to presume to explain my son’s behavior to me. Five minutes in his company doesn’t offer you any special insight.”
With a pang, Malcolm noticed the way she emphasized the “my” in “my son.” He already knew he had a long way to go with her before she accepted that he had any role in her life or Patrick’s. She was even further from viewing him as a welcome presence.
Sighing and wondering how he could be both so elated and so despairing at the same time, Malcolm set the currycomb on a shelf. The bay whickered uneasily and shifted from hoof to hoof, as it sensed the troubled currents flowing between the two humans.
Malcolm stepped away from the colt and closer to the woman he’d last seen eighteen years ago. He kept his voice even and soothing, the way he’d talk to a skittish horse. “I have no intention of driving a wedge between you and Patrick.”
Dislike hardened her gaze, but even after all this time, he knew her well enough to perceive the apprehension lurking beneath her bristling hostility. “You couldn’t do that if you tried.”
He spread his hands in a gesture that he hoped indicated he meant peace. “Rhona, I’m really not here to cause trouble. Trust me.”
Her growl told him what she thought of that suggestion. He cursed himself. Trust was the wrong thing to mention, although he still didn’t know what he’d done to earn such implacable hatred.
Once she’d adored him, just as he’d adored her. He reminded himself that was half a lifetime ago.
“Too late for that,” she snapped.
A grief so powerful that it verged on agony flooded him. Too late to see Patrick grow up. Too late to share nearly twenty years of troubles and joys with the woman he loved. Perhaps even too late to salvage anything at all from the catastrophe of so long ago.
But by heaven, he had to try. The first thing he needed to do was convince Rhona he wasn’t some monster poised to destroy her life, even if tonight wasn’t the best time to get her to listen to him.