“Families, weird things,” Laura sighed.
“Tell me more about yer faither,” Erskine leaned forward on the table, startling Laura enough to look up completely. “What was he like?”
Laura had never told any of her friends the true nature of her father. The only other person who had known the depths of his beatings was Miss Ava because she had seen it herself.
“I already told you he was a bully,” she explained.
“In what way?” With Erskine’s green eyes staring at her so openly, his jaw covered with a smattering of dark bristles, it was quite easy to trust him with her past.
“He was always quick to anger,” she leaned forward across the table, urging him to do the same, “and whenever he was angry, things ended the same way. Bruises were a common thing.” To this simple phrase, she saw Erskine’s face alter.
“He dinnae…” he clearly did not want to believe it possible.
“Two people stood between me and his beatings, my mother and Miss Ava, my governess.” At these words, she saw his face settle into a small smile.
“That’s why ye wanted to go back to her?”
“She was practically my family,” Laura shrugged. “A second mother after my birth mother passed. More than once did she save me from him. Once, when I was little, my mother tried to run from my father, but she did not get far. She did not even make it out of London, so when it came to my escape, I was a little more creative than she was.”
“Hence the disguise,” Erskine gestured to her. “I ken I havenae said it before, but very clever, by the way.”
Laura sat straighter at this compliment, flattered by it.
“What is your father like?”
“He would take a long time to describe,” Erskine frowned, “he’s a good man, in truth. Changed man after me maither’s death.”
“What happened to her?” Laura saw a twitch in Erskine’s jaw as he set his gaze down on the table between them.
“Huntin’ accident,” Erskine explained, his voice turning deeper than before. “Faither had taken me and Dearg along; me maither had come to watch. Nay one kens where the arrow came from that landed in her back. It was an accident, nay one kenned she had snuck off into the trees, lookin’ for me and Dearg.”
“Erskine, I am so sorry,” Laura said quickly. She yearned to reach out and take his hand, to squeeze it softly and give him some comfort with it, but in public, it was not a luxury she could afford. She dropped her hand onto the table instead, Erskine’s nearby, their fingertips but an inch apart.
“I am all right,” he looked back up to her. “Many years ago it was, but I still miss her.” He smiled, and she returned the gesture, feeling a tug in her chest with the action, as though she was being drawn toward him.
“There’s a lot more to you than I first thought, you know,” Laura said after a beat disturbing their silence.
“Ah, let me guess,” Erskine smiled, sitting back on the bench. “Ye thought me a brute? Nay much goin’ on in here,” he thumped his chest.
“I never thought that!” Laura sat straight, watching as Erskine laughed.
“Ye called me a brute once.”
“Did I?” Laura could not even remember having done so. She shook her head firmly. “I didn’t mean it, whatever I said.”
“Daenae worry, ye wouldnae be the first to think it.”
“All I meant was that you seem to wear a façade sometimes,” she tilted her head to the side, watching him closely.
“A façade?”
“Yes, as though you do not want anyone to look closer at you.”
“That would be me trainin’,” he accepted, pushing the pewter plate away. “I am to be Laird someday. A lot of pressure comes with that title.”
This sentence brought some of reality back to Laura, as though the easy atmosphere she and Erskine had together had been disturbed by a knife suddenly striking the table between them.
He is to be a Laird, and I may well have to stay a boy for many years to come. It doesn’t matter if I want him. We cannot be together.
