“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “He will be angry and likely retaliatory. Regardless, we must tell Ethan. It is cruel to allow him to go on like this.”
“Aye. Ethan needs to know. It pains me to keep this from him. We can speak to him when he returns tomorrow. Will ye be attending the dinner at Muirford House tomorrow evening?”
Viola nodded.
Lord and Lady Hadley had returned from England and made good on their promise to have Dr. Brodure and Viola dine at Muirford House. Malcolm and Ethan were to join them tomorrow night, along with Kendall, Dr. and Mrs. Ruxton, as well as Captain Carnegie and Leah, if the weather proved favorable for a drive down the glen from Laverloch. Malcolm had even mentioned that Sir Rafe Gordon and his wife would likely be in attendance. Sir Rafe was a close friend of Hadley’s, so the men regularly visited one another. Though who knew how Kendall would react when faced with his half-brother.
The evening certainly wouldn’t be boring, at least.
Viola and Malcolm passed onto the lane that approached the house from the main road. Trees lined the left side, while a fenced pasture bordered the right.
Malcolm looked toward the field beside them and then slowed to a stop.
“That is a reminder of our problem.” He pointed toward a boulder-ish thing sitting in the middle of the pasture.
“What is it?” Viola squinted, shading her eyes.
“Come.” He turned them toward a small gate in the fence leading into the field. “Permit me tae show ye.”
Opening the gate, he motioned Viola to pass through in front of him before offering her his arm once more. They strolled, arm in arm, through the grass, and the details of the boulder-ish thing slowly came into focus.
“To be honest, it looks . . .” Viola frowned. “It looks like a stone wrapped in chains and resting atop a much larger rock.”
“Aye. That is exactly what it is.”
She jerked her gaze to his in surprise, a startled laugh on her lips. “Truly?”
“Aye,” he repeated.
And indeed, when they stopped before the lot, that was precisely what Viola found: a roundish rock—wrapped round and round in a length of metal chain—resting on top of a much larger boulder embedded in the soft grass.
Malcolm nudged the chained stone with a booted foot. “This rock is a symbol of why I should be more guilt-ridden over keeping Ethan in the dark with regards tae yourself.”
In all of this, Viola had never really pondered the brothers’ close relationship. How much her presence was perhaps driving a wedge between them.
Though how a stone wrapped in chains relayed to guilt . . .
“Tell me about the stone then,” she said. “At the moment, it only seems rather . . . whimsical.”
He smiled faintly, just as she intended. “Ethan wrote that poem about me . . . about my grief . . .”
“I carry with me always a weight,” she murmured.
“Precisely. And I did. I still do some days, if I’m truthful.” He looked out over the field, crossing his arms over his chest. “But it was much worse in the year after Aileen’s loss. On the first anniversary of her death, Ethan dragged me out here and presented me with this chained stone.”
“So . . . as I was saying . . . whimsical.”
His smile broadened, touching his eyes with gentle humor. “Aye, we Scots can be abampotlot. Anyway, that’s how it started.”
“How what started?”
“The truth throwing.” Taking a step away from her, Malcolm mimed picking up the end of the chain, twirling it over his head, and releasing it. “Ethan made me throw the stone—which is right heavy, mind ye—over and over. Initially, he said it was tae literally cast off the metaphorical weight I carried. And a contest, of course, tae see who could throw the stone the farthest . . . because we’re Scots and that’s what we do.
“But he and I rapidly began adding words to each toss. A truth or confession or something that we needed tae set free along with the stone. A metaphorical weight that had tae be cast off before we could throw the physical one.”
“What a beautiful sentiment.” Viola touched her breastbone. “So what would you confess? What were your truths?”
Malcolm shrugged. “Everything. My anger and pain over losing Aileen so young. The grief of all the living she and our stillborn babe would never experience. My fury at the sheer unfairness of it, that something so vital could have been torn from me in one single afternoon. The truth-telling, more than anything, started me on the road tae true healing. Grief, when contained, only turns gangrenous and festering. Ethan was right on all counts; it needed tae be set free.”
