Leah watched him pour the amber liquid, empathy constricting her heart. Was this how Fox had begun his slide into drunkenness—grief blinding him to the dangers lurking at the bottom of a bottle?
It had certainly loosened her brother’s tongue.
Malcolm stared down into his whisky. “I regret every second of every day that I didnae tell Aileen how much I love her.”
Oh.The words stole Leah’s breath.
“But ye did tell her. Often.”
“I dinnae know if I could ever have said it enough.” He tilted the tumbler, watching the amber liquid swirl around the cup. “That’s why it hurts me tae see misunderstanding and miscommunication come between Fox and yourself.”
“There is no miscommunication, Malcolm. He knows that I love him. He simply doesnae love me in return.”
Malcolm placed an elbow on the desk and rested his heavy head in his palm.
“Give him time, then,” he finally said.
“I am. But I would rather spend that time here with yourself—eating strawberries, as it were—giving my heart tae one I know loves me in return.”
He smiled then, a wan, orphaned-waif of a smile. “That I do, sister. That I do. It’s just . . .”
Malcolm paused, his voice trailing off.
Leah waited.
“Death is an amputation.” He fixed her with haunted eyes. “A violent severing of a vital part of ye. It throbs like a phantom limb, pulsing with a pain that nothing can soothe.”
Emotion clogged Leah’s throat; she swallowed it back.
Yes, she understood missing someone like that. Amputation seemed an apt comparison.
“Your point?” she whispered.
Malcolm looked at the whisky bottle for a long moment before gently nudging it away.
“Just this. Only a fool cuts off his own arm out of spite. Dinnae be an eejit and let a lack of words amputate a man from your life while he is yet living.” He rested his head back in his arms, eyes closing. “Life is short, sister. Love hard and true . . . while ye still have time.”
24
Laverloch echoed like a mausoleum.
Or, perhaps, Fox simply felt like a wraith, haunting its halls.
Regardless, a pall of gloom hung over the castle.
It was more than Aileen’s passing, though Fox had ordered black crepe hung on the windows and laurel placed on Laverloch’s front door in solidarity with Leah’s grief. He himself sported a black armband.
Not that Leah would likely ever see his attempts at empathy.
But it didn’t matter. He made them anyway.
She had sent him away, and he . . . had left her.
But as he wandered the gloom of Laverloch, Fox doubted his reasoning.
He had lived just one week without his Leah. A long, hellish sort of week.
Of a surety, the house ran like a well-oiled clock. His wife had seen to that.
