Three Little Secrets (25 page)

None but the pitiful pine, and a weak
heart n’er won a wise wife.

T
hree days after his brother’s abrupt and inauspicious departure from Gretna Green, Sir Alasdair MacLachlan stood high in the southeast bartizan of his castle, staring hard into the distance across the glistening loch. His arms were crossed over his chest, his fine lawn shirt open to the throat and to the wind. No carriage had yet appeared in the distance to disturb his newfound family harmony. But one was surely coming, and Sir Alasdair was none too glad of it.

“Now, tell me again, Merrick,” he said to his brother. “What made you think this trip was a good idea?”

Merrick placed both hands on the stonework and leaned into the wind, hoping it might clear his head. “I wanted the boy to see Scotland,” he said vaguely. “I wanted him to meet Granny MacGregor—and you, of course.”

“Of course,” echoed Alasdair dryly.

There was a long silence, punctuated by nothing but the soughing wind. “Alasdair, he has the gift,” said Merrick quietly. “He has it, and he does not know why.”

“The devil!” his brother responded. “The gift? Are you sure, Merrick?”

“Oh, aye, I’m sure,” he said grimly.

Alasdair gave a low whistle. “Damn. Does Granny know?”

“I’ve not told her.” Merrick’s knuckles had gone white from clutching the stonework. “I’ll likely not need to.”

“No, for she will know it anyway,” Alasdair agreed. “But the lad does not yet know he is yours. Indeed, if what you say is true, and if you keep agreeing with the woman and her impossible demands, then he may
never
know. What, then, is the purpose?”

“He
will
know he is mine,” gritted Merrick. “By God, eventually, he will know.”

His golden-haired god of a brother turned to him, one eyebrow skeptically lifted. “This woman still has you under her thumb, brother,” he said. “I cannot like it.”

Merrick shoved away from the wall. “Damn it, I thought we would be made welcome here,” he snapped. “I thought I might count on my family for support. Do you wish us to go, Alasdair? We can be halfway back to Glasgow by tomorrow afternoon, if that is your wish.”

Alasdair watched him in silence a moment. “You know that I do not wish you to leave,” he answered. “And yet I certainly have no wish to watch you suffer again. Do you think it has been easy on any of us, these many years? Watching you live half a life, eaten with bitterness? And now, knowing what that woman has done to that child—to
our
blood?”

Merrick curled his hands into fists. “She was young, Alasdair,” he said quietly. “Her father tricked her and played upon her sense of duty. And we were both of us unutterably stupid.”

“Her actions suggest a cunning with which you do not seem to credit her,” his brother answered. “She has managed to pass off your bairn as another’s these past dozen years and hidden her marriage to you as if she were ashamed to be a MacLachlan.”

“Aye, play the great laird when it suits you, Alasdair,” said Merrick sourly. “As if
you
have spent the last fifteen years elevating our good name to lofty and respectable heights.”

Alasdair looked suitably shamed. “Well, what happens now?” he asked. “The lady arrives, is embraced by her long-discarded family, and then what? Is all forgiven?”

“Aye, perhaps it is time to do just that,” Merrick answered. “For I’ve no more fight left in me, brother. But Madeleine does not come here as my wife.”

Alasdair was silent for a long moment. “There is no hope, then, of a reconciliation?”

“No,” he answered. “She does not love me. And I have grown bitter and wiser.”

“Then your bitterness damns you to a life lived alone,” his brother warned. “And recall if you will another of Granny’s favorite adages:
A man gets wisdom at his own cost.
”

With both hands, Merrick shoved himself away from bartizan’s low stone wall. “Well, what the devil would you have me do?” he snapped. “Two minutes ago, you thought I was clutching a viper to my breast. Now you would have me reconcile?”

Alasdair considered it. “Well, I would prefer she vanish from the face of the earth,” he finally said. “I would prefer you to be able to marry again. But since that is not possible unless one of us gives her a shove down the well—and we’d have to look to Esmée for that; she’s the only one with the mettle for it—then we must think of the child instead.”

“Which is precisely what I am doing,” said Merrick, turning from the wall and opening his hands plaintively. “The boy is a MacLachlan. He has a right to his heritage and to his family.”

“And a right to his father,” said Alasdair. “Aye, you’re doing all you can. I know you are. I was just damned shocked, old boy, to see you riding across the bridge yesterday.”

“Esmée did invite me,” he said quietly. “The day of the wedding.”

Alasdair looked vaguely surprised but not displeased.

“I hope she meant it,” Merrick went on. “I hope she does not mind this intrusion. It is, after all, your wedding trip.”

“This is your home, Merrick,” said Alasdair, and he sounded sincere. “We are all of us happy you’ve come.”

Merrick managed a sideways grin. “Sorcha is not,” he said. “The little imp bit me yesterday when I picked her up.”

Alasdair winced. “Damn!” he said. “I thought we’d broken that nasty little habit.”

“Well, good luck to you with that one, old chap,” he muttered. “I should account myself lucky, I suppose, that young Geoff is twelve years old.”

“Sorcha will still be biting when she’s twenty,” Alasdair grumbled. “Well, at any rate, Granny MacGregor is over the moon with joy that you’ve come. You have usurped my role, I believe, as the prodigal son.”

Just then, Merrick caught the sight of what looked like dust coming up the edge of the loch.

“Damn me, there they come!” Alasdair gave Merrick a heartening slap between the shoulder blades. “Buck up, old boy. I’d best go down and have everyone make ready.”

Merrick barely heard the ancient wooden door scrape open behind him. He watched the dust rise in an ever-nearing semicircle around the loch, and his mind again turned to Madeleine. He was halfway surprised she had not turned back, given their last afternoon together.

Of course, the whole thing had begun innocently enough. He had been at first stunned, then oddly pleased, to see her standing so awkwardly in the smithy. She had clutched her shawl with an unexpectedly girlish charm, her cheeks flushed from the brisk walk, her eyes wide with uncertainty, and for an instant, he had been hurled back thirteen years.

But somewhere along the line, their sentimental interlude had gone all to hell, and his words to Madeleine when they parted had been hard and ugly. He had been, as usual, too blunt and heavy-handed. And Madeleine had struck back in a way which had been deliberately calculated to wound. Well, wound she had. With a few cruel words, she had brought back to him on a powerful rush the sense of loss and rejection which he had felt as a young man—and had never really shaken off.

Now, a full three days later, he could not get past the pain which kept clouding any vision he might have had of the future. For once, he was desperately glad he did not share his grandmother’s gift. Were he to see the future, it might well blight the remainder of his days. He was beginning to fear his last years would go on just as this previous dozen had—which implied that at some point in these last few weeks, he had been foolish enough to allowed hope to kindle in his heart again. To have Madeleine dash it so thoroughly had brought him crashing back down to reality.

Alasdair was right. He was to have no real life, and no helpmate with whom to share it. He would have no family of his own, save whatever part of Geoff’s affection he was able to wrestle away from his wife.

He was sorry now, deeply sorry that he had threatened Madeleine with the courts. And he was especially sorry about the vile remark he had made concerning his conjugal rights. The legalities of the matter aside, the moral truth was he had no rights, and he’d sooner have no woman at all until the last of his days than to have one taken to his bed by force. He had let the whisky and the anger and his rekindled lust do his talking that night, and long would he rue it.

The truth was, he was better suited to women like Bess Bromley, a woman who valued nothing but pleasure, pain, and the price of raw, dispassionate sex. Women who were so opposite what his wife had been that having them could sate his needs without making a mockery of his memories. Merrick had not the benefit of his brother’s angelic beauty or glib tongue. There was a darkness about his soul which he could not explain, not even to himself, and only during those few brief weeks with Madeleine had it seemed to leave him. Fleetingly, it had lifted in Treyhern’s shabby little pantry. Dear God. That feeling, that indescribable moment of pure joy was enough to cause a man make a fool of himself—again and again.

But Merrick had suffered a just punishment for that lapse in judgment: day after day of sitting opposite Madeleine in a snug little carriage. Night after night of envisioning what she might be doing behind the tightly closed door of her bedchamber. Half a dozen trips up and down the corridors each evening, often pausing to lift his hand to knock, then thinking better of it.

So here he was, trying very hard not to think of that night at Treyhern’s. It was hard. Damned hard. For so long, Madeleine had been nothing but a fantasy—but unlike most such fantasies, the reality had far exceeded the dream. He still shuddered when he thought of it.

The lead carriage—
his
carriage, the one which was bringing him his wife and child—was rounding the last of the loch. Soon it would come rumbling across the arches of the bridge, and out into the very loch itself, all the way to this rocky little spit of land which some long-ago warrior had fortified against his enemies. But Madeleine, the most dangerous thing his heart had ever known, would be allowed to roll right under the portcullis and stroll into the house unimpeded.

Suddenly, something like panic gripped him. It was said in the City that the Black MacLachlan feared no man and feared no risk. But he was unaccountably nervous at the prospect of seeing his slight, demure wife again, and being near her was the greatest risk he knew. He had been known to spend half a million pounds with scarcely a second thought and level entire city blocks at the drop of a hat. But a small female shook him.

Damn. There was naught to be done for it now. He had forced her to come here, had he not? Merrick dragged open the heavy wooden door, ducked low, and started down the twisting stairs.

He found his grandmother in the Tower Room, which she had long used as her private parlor and study. She closed the distance between them, her gait still strong.

“Och, she has come, laddie,” said his grandmother, her hands going to his open shirt collar to neaten it. “Do ye no’ wish a neckcloth?”

Merrick shook his head.

His grandmother set her palms against his chest and caught his gaze, holding it quizzically. “What is it that ye want, Merrick?” she asked softly.

He took one of her hands, folding the softly withered fingers around his own as he lifted to his lips. “Granny, I hardly know,” he said.

“Och, I do na’ believe that,” she said. “But what is it ye want of
me,
laddie? I knew before ye got here that ye were coming—and wi’ a purpose, too.”

He watched her appraisingly for a moment. “It is the boy,” he finally said. “You will know it when you see him.”

She pursed her lips, and nodded. “Aye, then.” She wrapped her hand around his arm. “We’d best go down.”

Madeleine watched through the carriage window as they sped along the last quarter mile of their journey. The beauty which surrounded them was beyond anything she might have imagined. The loch lay before them like a sheet of blue glass suspended from the heavens, and cradled by the soaring green mountains. Her next breath was stolen by the castle itself. From a distance, the massive gray edifice seemed almost to float upon the loch, its walls, turrets, and towers shimmering silver in the water below.

The carriage was lurching slightly left, nearing the castle’s approach. Even Geoff gasped when the bridge came fully into view. It was like something from a fairy tale, with its high-arching semicircles seemingly built upon nothing but rubble and water.

“Magnificent,” whispered Mr. Frost.

Just then, the carriage made a sharp turn to bear onto the bridge.

“Look!” exclaimed Geoff. “We are going right out over the water!”

The carriage wheels rumbled more loudly, and the house was rapidly nearing. It was by no means a large castle, but it rose proudly from the rocky promontory beneath, its entire circumference walled in stone at least twenty feet high. The portcullis was up between the two small towers which guarded the castle’s entrance, and they rolled beneath and into the close, stopping before a wide double door of rough hewn wood which was thrown open on both sides.

A wide but short flight of stone stairs came down into the forecourt. Sir Alasdair stood near the top. Madeleine recognized him at once, for the years had little altered his golden beauty. He carried a child on his hip, and a diminutive young lady stood beside him wearing an emerald green stole over one shoulder.

Just then, Merrick stepped out into the sunlight, an elderly lady on his arm. She was reed-thin and tall, her shoulders unbent by time. Her hair was bound in a silvery knot at the nape of her neck, and, like the younger woman, she wore a light wool stole across one shoulder, this one blood red.

This, doubtless, was the grandmother. Madeleine felt a shiver of unease upon seeing her bladelike nose and strong cheekbones. Could such a woman see into one’s future? Or into one’s heart? That was just nonsense, was it not? On the other hand, if it were total nonsense, then it meant she had dragged Geoff off on this dreadful journey for nothing.

There were no servants in sight. Sir Alasdair came down to help them from their carriage. When he caught Madeleine’s hand to help her step out, their eyes caught, too. She saw a flash of recognition and, lurking behind it, a barely veiled mistrust.