The thought of what might have been tore her apart. The bitterness she’d held for so long resurfaced for a moment before she tamped it down. Blaming Duncan would not help, and one look at the two of them together told her that his lack of trust in her had cost him far more than her broken heart. Being part of Dougall’s childhood could never be replaced.
For one moment she wanted to tell him. But she knew she could not take the chance. He would insist on claiming his son and Dougall would be the one to suffer for both their mistakes.
Duncan placed the blade flat in his hands and held it out for Dougall to examine. The enormous sword had to be at least a few inches taller than her son. “This belonged to my father and before that his father—passed down from father to son all the way back to my ancestor who fought alongside King Robert the Bruce at the great Battle of Bannockburn. It’s stained with the blood of freedom.” There was a deep, reverent tone in his voice that Jeannie had never heard before.
Dougall stared up at him, eyes wide with awe, hesitating.
“Go ahead,” Duncan said with a smile. “You can touch it.”
Dougall traced his finger over the bone carving. “What are these designs? It looks like a spider web.”
“It is,” Duncan said, but didn’t elaborate. “Maybe one day, I’ll tell you about it. Would you care to hold it?”
Would a wolf like a juicy leg of lamb?
Dougall didn’t need to be asked twice. He reached out and grasped the horn handle in his small hands. When Duncan released it, the tip of the blade dropped almost to the ground before Dougall managed to get it under control. He tried to swing it around, but it was clear that the sword was too big for him. His cheeks mottled with color. “I hope my ancestors weren’t quite so tall.”
He meant it as a joke, but Duncan must have discerned the embarrassment behind the comment. “How old are you?”
Jeannie sucked in her breath so sharply, she was glad Duncan was focused on her son. “I was nine last Michaelmas.”
Only when Duncan nodded did she exhale. “I was smaller than the other boys at that age, too,” he said.
Her moment of relief vanished in the immediate jump of her pulse. There was no reason for him to make the connection. Her son had her features and the dark auburn hair of—
His uncle.Dear God, why had she never noticed before? Dougall had the same color hair as Jamie Campbell. She felt the panic closing around her and forced herself to breathe evenly. There was no reason for him to suspect, she kept telling herself.
Then why was her heart racing as if she’d just run a marathon?
“You were?” Dougall asked, his eyes narrowing skeptically.
Jeannie didn’t blame him. She found it hard to picture Duncan as anything less than the rocky mountain of a man he was now herself.
“Aye. It made me work harder to prove myself. Find your strength here first,” he pointed to his head, “and you will know how to use the other when it comes. There are other advantages to being small.”
“Like what?”
“I can show you if you’d like.”
No! Jeannie thought with barely concealed horror.
“When?” Dougall asked, unable to hide his eagerness. He broke into a wide smile, the dimple in his cheek an exact mirror of the man standing before him. They looked nothing alike, but the signs were there if you looked close enough. She prayed no one did.
Duncan chuckled. “You’d best check with Jam”—he stopped to correct himself—“the captain first.”
“I’ll do it right now,” Dougall said and ran off toward the keep. Jeannie opened her mouth to stop him, but snapped it shut again, deciding to let her son go. The way Duncan was looking at him made her uneasy.He couldn’t guess.But saying it over and over did not stop the panic from eating at her.
In Dougall’s eagerness, he’d neglected to return the bow and arrows he’d been practicing with to the armory. Jeannie walked toward them, but Duncan cut her off. “You don’t want me around your son, why?”
The suspicion in his voice chilled her blood. He was too damned observant. She forced her gaze to his, holding it steady and unflinching.No reaction.No emotion. “What good can come of it?” she said brusquely. “In a few days you will go your way and I will go mine. It is better that way.”
“A clean break, is that it?”
There was a dark edge to his voice that made the hair on her arms stand up straight. Jeannie didn’t think of herself as a coward, but her first instinct was to turn and run. That dangerous energy she’d sensed in him on their journey was right there, just under the surface, threatening to break free.
His fingers wrapped around her wrist and brought her toward him. “Do you really think that is possible, Jeannie?”
She wrenched her arm away. “Yes.” It had to be. But her heart called her a liar. And he knew it.
