There had been other conversations as well. Sir Avery Stanton had approached Brodie about joining the Agency. He had discussed it with me. The decision seemed to be his, not mine. Though, he insisted otherwise.
He preferred to maintain the office for the time being, and I was pleased with that. I couldn’t imagine not having Mr. Cavendish to greet me, or the welcome nuzzle of the hound, foul smelling beast that he was.
Then there wasthe conversation’, difficult as it was. Something that I shared with him earlier. “There is something, I’ve spoken of it before,” I had said, during one of those moments when our private car was warm inside with frost on the window and the passing countryside.
He had listened, in that way that I had come to know him and trust him. When I stopped to think about that, I wasn’t at all certain when it had happened. Only that it had, when I had convinced myself there wasn’t anyone for me like that.
And a bloody Scot as well!
He continued to listen as I spoke again of things I had already spoken of in the past at one time or another— my mother’s death, the loss of our family home, then my father’s death by his own hand.
Other things he had learned from my great aunt; there was that adventure on the Isle of Crete, one of my first adventures where she had me retrieved as it were. And other things, of course.
“There is something rather important to some people,” I had begun then. “Important to most men it seems… That whole passing on the family name, titles, the family jewels, sort of thing.”
He had not spoken and I looked over to find him watching me with that dark gaze that I found so very fascinating and more than a little disconcerting the way it softened. A reminder of other things…
And I had just blurted it out. Get it over with, and then if he chose otherwise, there was always the return train to London. Perfectly understandable…
“I’ve spoken before of the fever going round when Linnie and I were quite young. She avoided it entirely, but I came down with the miserable thing. Afterward, the physician told my aunt that I would very likely be unable to have children. I would certainly understand if you changed your mind.”
And certainly proof enough of it what with our relationship of the past year, even with certain precautions.
Then absolute silence except for the sound of the train, a passing attendant in the passageway, the wheels beneath, the rocking motion of our private compartment. And Brodie.
I looked up once more to find him staring out the window, chin propped on his hand and for a moment I was certain he hadn’t heard me…
“Ye know well enough that I grew up on the streets. I only know me name from me mother. My father was… not there. As for a title, there is none, nor family fortune, unless ye consider the hound or Mr. Cavendish.”
He turned then and looked at me. “I asked ye because it’s yerself I want, and I accept ye as ye are, Mikaela Forsythe, verra possibly the better part of meself. You.
“That’s the way of it. But have ye considered that ye already have a family? I think it’s not always a matter of having given birth to a child yerself, but those who need ye and those ye care for.”
“Lily.”
“Aye. Ye’ve made a commitment to the girl, no different than if she was blood relation, and more a mother, or older sister, than she’s ever had.”
He was right, of course. I simply hadn’t thought of it that way.
“And that would make you… her father?” I asked.
“It’s more than I ever expected, although two of ye will probably be the death of me.”
So there we were, a different sort of family but a family nevertheless. Not unlike the one my great aunt had created with me and my sister.
Now that it was done, I looked down at the ring Brodie had placed on my hand after the eighteenth day and our appearance at the local magistrate’s office.
It was a simple circlet made of bronze and fit my right hand perfectly. It matched the medallion that had once been his mother’s.
“She would come back to haunt me if I didna give ye a ring, though there are no stones. I didna know what ye would prefer,” he had said that day.
Now, I heard the cottage door slam and the sound of Brodie stamping his boots.
Mr. Hutton, caretaker at Old Lodge with his wife, had brought supper over earlier and I had lit the fire in the fireplace. As I had reminded Brodie, I did not cook. It was one of those details we had yet to navigate.
He dropped an armful of wood at the hearth.
“It’s bloody cold outside,” he said as he placed more wood on the fire.
