Something caught in Leah’s chest at that.
My father was. Past tense.
She understood something about a past-tense parent.
“Do ye share your father’s views then?” she asked, looking pointedly at the brass buttons on his regimental waistcoat, at the monarchy and imperialism they represented.
He followed her gaze, plucking at the sturdy red wool.
“It hardly matters now, I suppose.” He shrugged and looked away, the lamplight casting his profile in stark shadow upon the wall behind.
Footsteps echoed down the hallway, drifting away from her door. Lord Dennis muttered in his sleep.
“How did ye end up as a commissioned officer then, if I may ask?”
Mr. Carnegie rested his head against the wall with a softthump, as if the question troubled him. “I was orphaned last autumn, but I will not reach my majority for another two years. Worse, my father lost most of his fortune due to poor speculation, leaving me with little.”
Leah’s heart gave another wee lurch. So hewasyoung . . . only nineteen.
“My uncle became my guardian after my father’s death,” he continued. “Unlike my pacifistic father, my uncle believes a man must do his duty and go to war when needed. I cannot say I relish the thought, but I must provide for myself and I have no interest in the Church. Therefore, the military is the only choice left. Uncle purchased me a commission in the 64th Foot, and here I am.”
Living a life I never really wanted.
He didn’t say the words, but she heard them nonetheless.
Leah knew that in-between feeling. When the smooth sailing of life crashed into a hard, unforgiving calamity.
“I ken a bit about change. My mother died two years past when my youngest brother was born—” She blink, blink, blinked before swallowing back her grief. “—and my father is still heartbroken over her loss. My younger brothers are too wee tae be without a mother, so I’ve had tae become their mamma.”
Leah let out a slow breath, thinking about Malcolm and Ethan back home at Thistle Muir. How Malcolm, barely five, hadgreitedand clung to her skirts as she walked to Uncle Leith’s waiting carriage. How Ethan, scarcely two, had wailed his distress, reaching for her, fighting to get out of Cousin Elspeth’s arms.
It had been too much. Leah had nearly turned back and stayed.
“Get on with ye. Go tae London,” Elspeth had urged, holding Ethan tighter. As a lifelong spinster, her father’s cousin had spent her years being passed like a parcel between relatives. “Get yourself a husband, lass.”
Leah’s father had stepped forward and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead.
“Aye,” he said, voice gruff and eyes suspiciously bright. “Your mother wouldnae want ye tae be here. Go have a wee adventure. And if ye come back tae us married to some braw, young gentleman, so much the better.”
Well, Fox Carnegie certainly fit the definition of a ‘braw, young gentleman.’
“How challenging for you, to be raising your brothers,” Mr. Carnegie replied, hair glinting in the firelight. “To take on so much, so young.”
“You are kind tae say so, but we do what we must.”
He sighed, a weary, body-worn sound. “You speak truth.”
Silence descended.
A silence of kinship this time. A sense that, despite the differences in their upbringing and experiences, she and Fox Carnegie saw the world through a similar lens.
That they were, perhaps, cut from the same cloth.
He angled his head toward the door, listening intently. “We might finally be in the clear.”
“Let me check.”
Leah approached the door on light feet, pressing her ear against the dark oak.
