Leah’s heart melted. “But ye didnae.”
“I know. But the fear of it . . . I don’t know if I have it in me to risk another child. Jack may be our only one.”
She smiled at that. “Then we shall love and treasure him all the more.”
He kissed her again, and Jack finally squawked in protest, demanding his father’s attention.
“Oh! I forgot to mention that a letter came from Ethan today,” Leah said, as Fox bounced their newborn son. “He sends his congratulations.”
“Has the adulation gone to his head yet?”
“Och, o’course it has.” Leah rolled her eyes.
Ethan’s first book of poetry had been published five months prior and had become an instant success. The first edition had sold out in a matter of weeks, and it was now on itsthirdprinting. The broadsheets couldn’t get enough of the dashing Scot.
The Highland Poet, they called him.
Ethan, of course, soaked up the attention, dressing in a kilt and shamelessly matching his persona to popular opinion.
Leah supposed if anyone had been born ready for fame, it was Ethan.
“Please tell me the now-famous Ethan Penn-Leith immortalized his new nephew in verse?”
“No,” Leah said on a sigh.
Ethan had done something more poignant than that.
He had given her a final stanza for the poem he wrote her on her wedding day.
Sister—
I see your love, a patient stone,
Rubbed and worn by worshipful hands.
A pragmatic beacon of the sun,
Lighting the path from where it stands.
You created order of chaos,
Harnessed time and tamed hinterlands.
But now, you are set free.
To love . . . practically.
Your world has spun a new axis,
A different sun, your faithful gone.
You, alone, must shape a new form,
A chanting rhythm, a wild song,
Sculpting the stone of yesteryear,
Into a shape where you belong.
