Burke shook his head.
“I admire that woman,” Cullen said, coming up beside him.
“So do I,” Burke agreed as they kept pace with each other and the group.
“She says you are my brother and that your ship waits to take Alaina and me to America with you.”
“Storm speaks the truth. We should be meeting up with the others shortly. Alaina is with them.”
He heard his brother gasp and felt and understood his relief.
“I never thought this possible,” Cullen said. “But then I never thought I had a brother.”
“You do,” Burke confirmed. “Shall I tell you the story?”
“Please, I am anxious to hear it.”
Burke started from the beginning when their father left Scotland, leaving his young son behind with his sister-in-law, the child’s only relative since his mother had passed. With no chance of owning land in Scotland, his father had decided to journey to America to build a life for him and his son.
Burke went on to explain how their father had returned, only to discover that his sister-in-law had died, leaving no sign of the child. He spent years searching for Cullen, but was never able to find him.
“Father’s heart broke a little more with each unsuccessful trip,” Burke said. “He’d leave America with such hope of finding you, but he never did.”
“Yet you found me,” Cullen said.
“Luck and Storm. Without either of them, I would have never located you. I also had hired men to track you down and one had given me a good place to start. Storm took it from there.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Cullen admitted with a shake of his head.
“‘Hello, brother’ would be a start.”
Cullen stopped walking and held out his hand. “Thank you, brother. You have saved my life.”
Burke reached out and gave Cullen a huge bear hug. “Damn, I’ve waited a long time to do that.”
They were quick to keep going, both realizing the importance of time and both anxious to reach safe port as soon as possible.
Burke continued to tell him about their father and the wealth that awaited him.
“I’m wealthy?” Cullen asked incredulously.
“Extremely,” Burke said with a satisfied grin.
“The news just keeps getting better.”
Burke explained more about what awaited him in America and then finally asked the question that had haunted him all these years.
“What of your life?”
“Not much to tell,” Cullen said. “I remember being passed from family to family until an old man took me in. He was a bow maker and an excellent archer. I lived with him from the time I was ten and he taught me his skills. His home was high in the Highlands, which is why Father probably had difficulty finding me. It’s a land unto itself.”
“Lady Alaina had mentioned your skills with a bow.”
Cullen’s face brightened. “How is she?”
“As eager to see you as you are to see her. She really does love you, you know.”
Cullen shook his head. “I’ve wondered time and again how a lady such as herself could love a man like me.”
