“Och, no!” Alex rolled his eyes. “My father was livid. I may have been his youngest child—the spare, not the heir—but that didnae mean his expectations were any different. It was only Ian’s pleading that stopped my father from disinheriting me entirely. But my da cut me off financially, refusing to support my education. A wee inheritance from my mother and the occasional guinea from Ian were what saw me through my medical studies.”
Lottie could imagine it. This man with such drive to excel, living in near poverty, scrimping by on meager rations, so doggedly determined.
Did he understand how attractive she found his idealism? How it called her, a song of competence and caring?
And so, naturally, she wanted to understand the forces that had shaped him—who loved him and who he loved in return, how he had come to move through the world.
“No wonder sitting still is difficult. I’m guessing you haven’t stopped moving in decades.”
“If Catriona is to be believed, I was born running.”
Lottie smiled into the wool of her cloak.
“My father was not the most . . . understanding of men,” Alex continued. “Dinnae misunderstand me, he was a good man but very much a man of his time.” A long pause. “He took Ian’s death hard.”
Silence.
The gravel crunched underneath their feet.
They looped through the leaf-bare garden, Lottie’s hands chilly despite her fur muff. The wind cut through her cloak, the air holding a bleak reminder of winter.
And yet, here and there she could also see the very beginnings of snowdrops coming up, the faintest hint of Spring.
The promise of better things to come. A reminder that life could blossom after a winter of suffering and sorrow.
She would be wise to remember that for herself.
And perhaps remind Alex of it, too.
“I would know how he died, your brother, if you would tell me the story.” Lottie dared a brief glance his way.
Silence again.
The kind that stretched and pulled like taffy.
She should let the matter drop.
But . . . she couldfeelhis grief, his suffering. It fairly pulsated around him.
And so, she said, “I am not a doctor, but I understand that sometimes lancing a wound helps to relieve any infection that may . . . fester.”
The silence continued to lengthen.
She almost thought that he would not tell her. That she had crossed a bridge too far.
Finally, he sighed. “Ye are correct, of course, lass. All ye have to do is ask anyone who read the broadsheets seven years ago, and ye would have the whole sad tale. It isnae a secret, in the end. It’s just . . . most already know, and so I dinnae bother to repeat it.”
Ah.
“I would hear it.” She glanced at him again.
His Adam’s apple slid up and down his throat.
“It is a grim tale.” His voice held a note of warning.
“Ah, well, Imusthear it now.”
He snorted, a smile ghosting over his lips.
