When she shook her head, her expression relaxed a fraction. “That’s not how I remember it.” The faint ease seeped from her features. “So when the laird was so insistent that you’d sent him to do your dirty work, something in me was feeble enough to believe it. At first, he just offered me money to disappear. But I refused to go. Things only got rough after that.”
Outraged, Malcolm surged toward her, but she waved him back. “Oh, nothing too bad. I wasn’t injured, at least. They tied me up and bundled me into a carriage and took me away.”
Her explanation did nothing to allay his dismay. He loathed to think of her sufferings. “You must have been terrified. I can’t believe my father was so ruthless. I’d always considered him a man of honor.”
“He acted according to his lights. You were his heir and only child. I wasn’t part of his plan at all.”
“That’s very tolerant of you,” he said, sure that she didn’t really feel like that.
“I’ve had plenty of time to think about what happened.” Her tone was resigned. “At least he didn’t kill me. I feared he might at first.”
Malcolm couldn’t bear to imagine what she must have thought when rough men ripped her away from everything she knew and loved. A young girl, alone, afraid, defenseless, and carrying her lover’s child. The thought set nausea seething in his gut.
“Dumping you alone in London to fend for yourself could have been a death sentence.” Her pregnancy would put respectable work out of reach.
She must have read his thoughts, because she made a dismissive gesture. “I never had to sell myself. I found kindness where I was most likely to come to grief.”
Malcolm should be relieved, but he wasn’t sure he believed her. “Rhona…”
“I’m not saying that just to salve your conscience.” Even after all this time, she could still read his reactions. “I prospered in the city. You don’t have to imagine me servicing a string of men to keep body and soul together.”
He took a breath to fill starved lungs and banished the hideous images that had pursued him since he’d lost her. “I worried about that for years and blamed myself.”
She shook her head. “I’m quite respectable. Well, almost.”
He cut the air with one hand. “Do you think I’d despise you if you’d taken that path? Even if you’d swived every man in the King’s Navy, I could never despise you. I’m just so bloody grateful that you stayed alive. You can’t imagine how I felt when I heard you were dead.”
The news had sent him spiraling into a dark pit of hopelessness and misery. He’d wanted to die himself. For a long time, life had lost all purpose, until he decided to gamble on the chance that his child might be alive.
More of that compassion deepened her eyes. “I’m sorry. Once things had settled down, I could have written to you, I suppose, and let you know that all was well.”
He tried to see things from her point of view. “You were convinced I’d abandoned you with a callous disregard for your welfare and feelings.”
“Yes.” She paused. “What can all this ancient history matter? I suppose you married and had children. You owed it to your name after all.”
He sent her a straight look. “I vowed to my father that if I couldn’t marry you, I wouldn’t marry anybody.”
Incredulity widened her eyes. “But when we parted, you weren’t much more than a boy.”
“Perhaps. I still knew my mind.” He drew in a shuddering breath and gave her the stark truth. “I kept that vow. I’ve never married. I’ve been alone all my life, Rhona. I have no children but the one we made together. The estate is mine to dispose of as I wish, so I want to make Patrick my heir.”
Chapter 3
Rhona stared in shock at this man who in any reasonable world should be a stranger, but who didn’t feel like a stranger. In her memory, Malcolm Innes had remained the gloriously handsome and lighthearted boy she’d loved with such reckless abandon. But this man before her had an intimate acquaintance with suffering.
He was still handsome. Age could never mar that perfect bone structure. The high cheekbones and straight nose and defined, angular jaw remained the same. But the thick satiny hair was no longer pure ebony. Instead, it was streaked with silver, although at thirty-six, he was in the prime of life. And nobody who looked into those intense dark eyes would imagine that this was a happy man.
Her gloved hands fisted against the hay bale she sat upon. She’d spent years hating him, the other side of the coin from loving him so completely. Before their tragic separation, he’d been everything to her. She’d spent so much time sure she’d been wrong to give her trust and her heart to Malcolm Innes.
Now it turned out his travails had been far worse than hers. His travails still continued. She’d found purpose and a place in the world. More, she’d had Patrick to love and tend and guide. Her son had given her a reason for living. Malcolm had had nothing but an empty life and an increasingly hopeless search for a child that he must fear was dead.
When she thought of her girlhood lover, and despite her anger, she’d often thought of him, she’d whipped up her self-righteous indignation by imagining he never gave her or his son a second’s consideration. She’d pictured him marrying some horse-faced, blue-blooded harridan who made his life a misery and presented him with a brood of horse-faced children.
When she really wanted to torment herself, that unknown blue-blooded lady was bonny and charming, and Malcolm’s lying eyes looked at her just as he’d once looked at Rhona. Then her mind had also summoned up children who were beautiful and bright, and happy to bask in their father’s love. A father’s love her own dear Patrick would never know.
Now as she studied this man worn down by long years of sorrow, she wanted to cry. She wanted to take back every curse she’d ever laid on her first lover’s dark head. With a desperation that futility couldn’t seem to temper, she wanted to make everything better, to heal the wounds that festered inside him.
As the silence extended, his sardonic humor reappeared. “Say something, Rhona.”
She swallowed to shift the painful lump of emotion blocking her throat. “I can’t believe you’ve found no comfort or connection in all this time.”
He shrugged as if the matter was insignificant. “Whether you believe it or not, it’s true.”
“But your parents must have done their best to make you marry.”
His snort was scornful. “Aye, they did. Until my father died, a bitter man, six years ago, they must have paraded every suitable girl in the Highlands before me. My mother is still alive. She has a house in Edinburgh. At last, she’s given up trying to interest me in marriage. I think she’s come to regret tearing the two of us apart, although she’d never admit it. She’ll love Patrick when she meets him.”
Until her brutal banishment, Rhona had liked and admired Malcolm’s mother. Everyone in the glen had. The Lady of Dun Carron had been closely concerned in the clan’s welfare.
Malcolm’s father had been a good and fair laird, too. No wonder his reaction had taken Malcolm and Rhona by surprise, although looking back, she also recalled the laird’s oft-stated pride in his Innes bloodlines. When he’d sent her away, he’d been frank about not allowing a lowly Macleod to pollute the family escutcheon. She still cringed to recall his unconcealed disdain for her pretensions to marry the heir.