But everything was muted—the gorse up the glen, the mounds of blooming heather, the cloudless blue sky overhead—as if her absence had bleached the world of color.
“When will Mamma return?” Madeline asked him at least five times a day.
His reply was always the same: “When she can, poppet. When she can.”
He didn’t tell his niece the truth:
Leah will return when she feels strong enough to deal with me.
Or worse . . .
I cannot say that she will return at all.
The thought ached. A loss that felt formless and slippery, but no less painful.
Fox had even contemplated ordering William down the glen for a cart of whisky, anything to fill the thudding emptiness in his chest.
But the words wouldn’t come.
He could not betray Leah’s good faith in him.
Why was that?
Was it love?
In his experience, romantic love was a jealous, frenetic emotion.
He thought back to his courtship of Honoria. How she would smile and flirt with other men, knowing full-well that such actions kept him tethered, desperate for her attention. She would make demands to test his love—sell your officer’s commission, take me to India—and he would race to obey.
What a bloody fool he had been.
Leah could not be more opposite. She played no games. She required little of him.
Well, that was not precisely true. She asked for his secrets, the bits and pieces of him that no one else had ever noticed, much less requested. She asked him to stow his heart and trust in her gentle hands.
That was the most harrowing request of all. To entrust her with the softest, most fragile part of himself.
And though she never said so outright, her own goodness inspired him to become a better man.
Fox found himself climbing the narrow spiral stairs up, up, up until they opened onto the turreted tower. From there, he walked the castle roof, edging along the flat space between the peaked tiles and the crenelated ramparts.
Atop the castle, he could see for miles around—the misty peaks of Ben Tirran to the west and Ben Gulabin to the east. The green grass of Glen Laver hugging the riverbanks, giving way to heather and gorse as the mountains rose. The round bowl of Corrie Finn curving to the north and barring any who would think to travel that way.
And as it had for hundreds of years, Laverloch stood in the intersection of it all. A bastion of civilization, a fortress guarding against marauders, whether nature or man.
Like Laverloch itself, Fox had been a wreck when he arrived.
A drunk.
Broken-hearted.
Exhausted in body and soul.
And lonely. So damn lonely.
He had required support and healing.
And just like she had done for the castle, Leah had provided that for him.
