“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You don’t have to apologize to me.”
Felicity dropped her head against the wall with a thud, looking up at the plastered ceiling. “Say something. Tell me something to distract me. It can be anything.”
He was silent for a beat. She feared he’d leave her there in that dark hall.
“I’m here because my brother gambled away our family home, and then he died, drinking himself to death in that very house. Mysister and brother were home when he did this, but luckily, they didn’t see him. I wasn’t there. I had... I was stationed in Dover. When I got the news, they sent me home. It wasn’t until after his funeral that I learned that he’d lost our home in a bloody game.”
Felicity held her breath before she asked, “Was it here?”
He nodded. “He hated that house and the responsibility that came with it. He hated our father, our grandfather. He thought their traditions and commitment to working the land themselves was beneath them. They fought bitterly over it, but I never thought he’d do something so reckless.”
“How could he hate them?” she whispered.
“Colin got it in his head that working the land was for common folk and not him. He wanted to dress like the dandies that came through Inverness, waste his days sleeping and his nights drinking. There was many a morn Father would wake him with a bucket of water.” He smiled as if this was a fond memory for him, and then he sobered. “Lark Hall is everything to my family. Our mother and father, grandparents, great-grandparents, are buried in that land, and if I’m half as lucky as them, I will be too. To know he could throw it all away so easily... It makes me ashamed to call him my brother.”
Felicity waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, she pushed off the wall and came to stand at his side. Her arm brushed his sleeve. He lifted her cloak, which still hung over his arm, and she straightened and turned her back to him. He draped it over her shoulders, and she snuggled into the velvet and the warmth from his body. Why was it him? What about him that made it so easy to be with him? She had barely known him before. Now she knew a little bit more and still it was not enough. What had it cost him to reveal that much of himself?
“Thank you for telling me,” she said. “What happened to your siblings?”
“They are staying with family friends in Edinburgh. One day, I hope we can all go home.”
Felicity’s eyes stung. “I had to leave my two sisters behind. I think about them—worry about them—every day.”
“They’re safe?” he asked.
Felicity nodded. “I believe so. They’re too young to marry.”
Chapter Six
Tristan stared downat the black shapes of his boots. He didn’t know what to say, but silence usually encouraged the other person to say more, and he wanted to hear it. He wanted her story, her trust, whatever she would give him. She leaned back against the wall, her arm brushing his, and it felt... intimate.
“I can take you back to your room,” he offered when she didn’t say more.
“Not yet. I like it here. I like how the world feels so far away. Like nothing can touch me. I can breathe here in the darkness where no one can see me.”
He studied her profile a moment. “I can see you, Flick.”
Her lips curved in a smile, then disappeared in shadow when she turned her head toward him.
“I think you’ve always been able to see me.”
Maybe it was the darkness, the quiet, or a trick of his eyes, but shefeltcloser. He heard her swallow and draw a breath. Was she ready to say more?
“I got scared when I couldn’t find you,” she said.
“I was always there. I never left you.”
She turned toward him, and he matched her movement. They were face-to-face now. He swore he could feel her breath on his cheek, but maybe that was wishful thinking and the darkness playing tricks on him.
“What does your farm do?”
“Malt and coos,” he said.
She was silent for a breath. “What is a coo?” She mimicked his slight burr, and he couldn’t hold back a smile.
“It’s a Highland cow. Reddish brown, white, or black, with shaggy hair and horns. We grow malt for a whisky distillery.”
