He frowned at the board. From the looks of it, Cate appeared to be winning. His gaze met hers. “You play chess?”
She smiled. “A little.”
John snorted. “Don’t let her fool you, brother. She’ll take the shirt off your back if you aren’t careful. The lass is ruthless, with no mercy for a man’s pride. She’s been crushing mine for years. Padraig won’t play with her anymore. Last time he was home, she had him helping Ete with hanging the laundry after he lost.”
Their youngest brother, who fought for Bruce under their uncle Malcolm, the Chief of the MacGregors, was nearly as good a chess player as their father had been.
Cate grinned. “John exaggerates.”
His brother grunted. “The hell I do.”
Gregor shook his head. “You shouldn’t have taught her if you weren’t willing to lose.”
There was an awkward pause. John shot Cate an uncomfortable glance. For some reason, the intimacy of that silent communication bothered him.
Cate seemed to stiffen slightly, but when she responded her voice was light and breezy. Perhaps too breezy. “John has taught me many things”—Gregor didn’t like the sound of that—“but not this. I learned chess from my father.”
Chess was a nobleman’s game. Though it wouldn’t be unheard of for a man of Kirkpatrick’s birth to learn the game, it wasn’t usual. Something about it pricked. But the subject of her father wasn’t one she wished to discuss. Ever. Gregor had broached the subject a few times over the years, but Cate shut down so completely, he’d stopped. He hated seeing her upset.
She stood. “I think I shall retire.” She looked at John. “We can finish the game tomorrow.”
“It shouldn’t take long,” John said wryly.
Both men watched her cross the Hall and slip into the darkness beyond the partition. The Hall seemed suddenly…less.
John was watching him. “The lass has grown up.”
Sensing there was more to the statement than there appeared, Gregor gave an inconsequential, “Aye.”
“I didn’t think you noticed.”
He shot his brother a withering glare. “I noticed.” When she’d stuck out her chest earlier, he’d nearly swallowed his tongue.
“Then why didn’t you say anything about the gown? It isn’t like you to be so ungallant around a lady.”
“What gown?”
John’s face darkened. “Don’t be an arse, Gregor. I saw your reaction, even if she didn’t. You noticed. The question is, what the hell are you going to do about it?”
“Find her a husband.”
The blunt response took his brother aback. John thought for a moment, and then shook his head. “She’ll never agree. She loves it here and belongs here, maybe even more than you or I. This is her home. You can’t send her away.”
Gregor steeled himself against the guilt, but it came anyway. “What would you have me do? With Mother gone, she can’t stay here. She’s not our sister.”
“No,” John said evenly. “No, she’s not.”
There was something in John’s voice that set Gregor’s already frayed nerve endings on edge. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
John returned the hard stare. “I don’t know. Maybe I should ask you?”
The two brothers gazed at one another in the firelight in some kind of challenge neither one of them wanted to acknowledge. But feeling as if he were wading damned close to something he didn’t want to step in—a mess he’d been in before—Gregor was the one to look away.
“What about the children?” John asked.
“They aren’t mine.”
“You are certain?”
