Each side detested the other.
Isla knew this history, yet . . .
As Tavish Balfour straightened beside his mother’s grave, she was hard pressed to see him as an enemy.
No.
He looked like a person just as lost and solitary as herself.
“Hallo,” she said, Scotland making an unwelcome appearance in her vowels. As a rule, the Kinseys did not tolerate even a whiff of a brogue. Miss Farnsworth, with her dulcet English tones, would have a fit of the vapors if she heard Isla at the moment.
Mr. Balfour said nothing. Merely stared.
Swallowing, Isla soldiered on, wincing as that trace of Scotland remained. “I couldn’t help but notice ye here, uhm . . .” She drifted off, glancing at the grave beyond his shoulder. Heat climbed her cheeks at an alarming pace. “Anyhow, today is my birthday, and I’ve come to visit my own mamma, over there.” She pointed in the direction of her mother’s tomb. “And I brought a wee bit of cake. Enough to share, if ye’d like.”
She held out the cake in its bit of muslin, hating the tremble in her fingers.
His gaze left her face, dropped to the cake, and then lifted back to her eyes.
“’Tis your birthday?” he asked.
He did not ask her identity. Like herself, he surely knew she was a Kinsey, even if they had never spoken a word to one another. Unlike herself, Scotland sang unapologetically through every syllable of his words.
“Yes.”
“Today?”
“Yes.”
This gave him pause. He blinked.
“The twelfth of August?”
“Yes. That is the date today.” She smiled brightly. Was he a bit addled in the head?
He blinked again. “Today is my birthday, too.”
A laugh startled out of her. “Truly?”
“Aye.”
“We are birthday twins!” She grinned. “How old are ye today?”
“Sixteen.”
“Hah! I turned fifteen. Well then, we shall definitely be sharing this cake.” She lifted the bundle in her hand. “Birthdays should not go uncelebrated, I say, regardless of circumstance.”
Without waiting for an invite, Isla sank into the grass beside his mother’s grave and patted the ground.
He glanced around the kirkyard, as if nervous their clandestine meeting might be observed, before folding his long legs and sitting beside her.
He looked at the cake in eager invitation.
Isla opened the handkerchief and broke the slice of cake in two, handing him the larger half.
“Thank ye.” He smiled—a tentative, quiet thing.
And then, he promptly unhinged his jaw and took an enormous bite of the cake. It was a bit like watching a grass snake devour a mouse.
