Trick knew little of this land’s traditions. “I’m listening.”
Now that the rowdy mourners had gone home to bed, the great hall seemed larger, yawning huge and dark, much more like Trick had remembered. Niall took a deep breath before his voice rose in song—not the mournful, haunting wail that Trick had imagined a keening would be, but a heartfelt, melodic lament that echoed off the vaulted stone ceiling.
“Oh, Mother, ye have left us!Ochone!”
He paused and looked at Trick, his golden eyes expectant.
“Ochone?Is that some pagan god?”
“Nay, it’s Gaelic. Nothing more than an expression of sorrow or regret.”
“Ochone,”Trick said softly, expecting to feel silly. But he didn’t. Sharing the sitting duty with his brother, keening their mother together, felt right.
“Why did ye leave us?Ochone!What did we do to ye?Ochone!That ye went away from us?”
“Ochone!”Trick sang for him.
“’Tis ye that had plenty!”
“Ochone!”
“And why did ye leave us?”
“Ochone! Ochone! Ochone!”The ancient syllables slipped through Trick’s lips, and some of the pain along with them.
Thirty-Nine
WHEN DAWN HADbroken, Trick made his way upstairs to find a gray-garbed woman in his room, her back to him as she stoked the fire on the ancient, blackened stone hearth. At the sound of him entering, she slowly straightened and turned.
He gasped. “Mrs. Ross?”
“Aye, it be me,” the tiny woman said in a reedy voice, coming closer. She was shorter than he remembered, but of course he’d last seen her through the eyes of a child. Her face was even more wrinkled, if that were possible, her blue eyes faded but glittering the same as they always had. “Why, I’d recognize you anywhere, even after all these years. Patrick, dear, how fare you?”
“I’m well.” The door banged louder than he would have liked when he shut it behind him, and in the bed, Kendra stirred. “How areyou?” he asked Mrs. Ross. Sweet Mary, the woman had to be eighty years old.
“No complaints. But your mam…” The blue eyes flooded with tears. “I don’t know what happened. She went so fast…”
“Trick?” Kendra blinked herself awake. At the sight of a stranger in the room, she clutched the blanket over her naked shoulders and tucked it beneath her chin.
“My wife, the Duchess of Amberley,” Trick introduced her. Smiling to himself, he walked over to smooth her sleep-mussed hair. “Good morning,leannan. No need to blush—it’s only Mrs. Ross, my old nurse.”
“And his mam’s before him,” the older woman added.
“I haven’t thought of her as Mam in eighteen years,” he murmured. “She’s Mother to me now.”
Mrs. Ross’s thin, bluish lips straightened into a disapproving line. “She was never Mother to you, and well you know it. She was much warmer than that. And why did you not write her, aye?” Her expression hardening, the bird-like woman came near and whacked him on the shoulder, although not without a modicum of affection. “Eighteen years and you never once answered one of that poor woman’s letters.”
Trick rubbed his shoulder. “What the hell are you talking about? She never sent me a letter.”
“The devil she didn’t. She cried for weeks after your father dragged you away. Then she started writing the letters—”
“I never received any letters,” Trick insisted.
But Mrs. Ross wasn’t listening. “—every week at first, then every month, and then, when she never heard back, once a year. Until finally she gave up. You broke her heart, Patrick Iain. I knew you were a bairn yet, but I thought I’d taught you better—”
“Mrs. Ross!”
The woman jumped and began twittering, and Kendra clapped her hands over her ears, her eyes wide as round portholes.
