He didn’t move, just looked at Rory.
“I never meant to hurt you or Maddie. Never meant to leave you, but after the ship….” The words fell away. “I’m sorry. It was my job to protect you, and I didn’t.”
“Not your job. I could look after myself even then, and Maddie.”
“And yet you were hurt, your back tells me that, and so young. Your innocence, like mine, destroyed.”
“I’ve spent many years resenting and, yes, hating you, Max.” Rory tried to put his thoughts into words.
“I understand that, but I would ask that you at least allow me back into your life.”
“I will think about it.”
“That is better than no.” Max smiled, and there was the brother he’d known as a child. The boy who’d always had a smile for him.
Closing his eyes, he inhaled a deep, steadying breath, then let it go.
“I watched you leave.”
“What?” Max had turned away, but now he was back.
“I stood on that dock and watched you sail away from us.”
“Christ, really?”
“I wanted to climb on board and stow away but knew then Maddie would be alone. But the urge was there.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.” Rory held out his hand, and Max shook it, and for now that was enough.
“Come along, you two,” Essie said from the doorway. “Luke is waiting in the carriage.”
His brother urged him from the room behind his wife, and the hand he felt settle on his shoulder did not seem as heavy and uncomfortable as it once was.
Chapter Eleven
Snow flurries accompanied them up the winding climb to Raven Castle. The carriage was well sprung and comfortable but still jarred his shoulder as it hit a hole in the road.
Max did not speak, instead held Essie’s hand and looked out the window, and Rory couldn’t stop the thoughts whirling around inside his head.
His brother had suffered just as he had. Rory understood anger. He’d loathed his mother and others, including the man seated across from him. He also understood the need to run.
“The castle is hundreds of years old, Uncle Rory.”
“Is it?” Luke dragged him from his thoughts.
“It has many rooms, so many we’ve not found all of them.”
“We?”
“My cousins, we spend time investigating the castle.”
“And getting into trouble,” Essie added.
His nephew’s smile was pure menace. He couldn’t deny that he felt something as he looked at Luke. No one had called him uncle before, and it felt foreign, but also good. A connection, Rory realized, to add to all the others he was collecting. Not that he wanted them, he reminded himself, but still….
He’d see Kate soon, along with the others, and braced himself to do so as they passed a small church where the wedding would take place. And then there it was. Raven Castle, sitting as it had been for hundreds of years, perched above the town, overlooking the cliffs and sea. He saw turrets, and flags flying. This was part of his history now, and Rory wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that as they clattered past the gatehouse and over the narrow bridge into the courtyard.
