“TRICK.”
Her voice was gentle, but he still startled, quickly flipping the paper facedown on the bench beside him. He’d been so entrenched in his thoughts, he hadn’t heard her approach.
Her soft sigh belied her smile. “You shouldn’t chew on your quill.”
He swept it from his mouth. “I know,” he agreed shortly, helpless to stop the annoyance he felt at being caught writing—something he’d hidden all his life. He took a calming breath. “It’s how I chipped my tooth. What are you doing out here?”
“What areyoudoing out here?”
“Nothing.” Fiddling with the quill in his hands, he looked up at the sky. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Did you try to sleep?”
He was silent a few beats before dropping his gaze to meet hers. “Not really. I…I was writing.” Silly that it seemed hard to admit, but there was no point in lying, seeing as she’d found him in the act.
Her expression seemed wary, reserved; then her gaze went to his kilt and she licked her lips. Remembering what she’d said earlier, he bit back a smile as she met his eyes.
Her cheeks flushed a delicate pink. “May I read some of what you wrote?”
His hand moved protectively to the thin stack of paper. “Why would you want to?”
“What you write is part of you, Trick.”
True, but not the best part. What spilled out onto paper was often the parts of himself he didn’t like.
“Is it poetry?” she asked.
“Aye. It’s just poetry. Pretty words that sound good together. Meaningless.”
“It wouldn’t be meaningless to me.”
Hurt dulled her eyes, and he looked away, wishing he had it in him to give her what she wanted. Rolling the sheets into a narrow tube, he tucked it into the pocketed front of his kilt. “Come, let’s walk. The garden is quite whimsical.”
He took her down a path where dozens of tiny model castles nestled in the shrubbery on either side. “The castle garden,” she said with a smile, brightening with a determination that didn’t fool him. “How very clever.”
“It was my mother’s doing. When I was a lad, she spent hours out here every summer. And when winter kept her inside, she designed and built the little castles. Sometimes she let me help.” Their footsteps crunched on the gravel path. “Of course, Father thought it was a waste of time.”
“What did he want her to be doing instead?”
“I don’t know.” He’d never wanted to know; not knowing had felt safer. “I was but a child, and I never did understand them or the way they were together.”
“Was he a difficult man to live with, your father?”
Difficultdidn’t even begin to describe the late Duke of Amberley. “I cannot say what living with him was like for her, but for me, it was a living hell.”
She slipped her hand into his. “He had high expectations for you, did he?”
“No. At least not in the way you’re thinking.” He felt as tired as he knew his voice sounded, drained and numb. “I was naught but a means to an end. A pawn in his game. It’s safer to send a child to do the dangerous work, you see. Nobody would expect a child to be smuggling goods in his clothing. Nor would they see a child alone on a hill with a lantern, night after long, cold night, and suspect he was there to signal in ships.”
“He had you do those things?”
“Those are the tamer examples.” Her question sounded so innocent, the sympathy in her eyes so acute, he couldn’t bring himself to burst her naïve bubble with any details. Besides, he didn’t have the energy to go into it. Or the will.
“And when you were older?”
“He found different ways of using me.” He stopped on the path. There were some things best left unremembered. “Must we talk about this now?”
There was a long pause while she seemed to come to a decision. “No, of course not,” she said with a smile he suspected was forced. “Your mother’s castle garden is charming. It’s quite secluded back here, isn’t it?”
