“I did notinventit,” she said, before the opening could close. “My father did.”
Logan gave her a sidelong look. The wind pulled hair from his tie and slapped it across his cheek. He did not seem to notice. “Did he now?”
“Yes.” Emma shifted in the saddle, drawing her cloak tighter. “Whenever my brother and I argued, and he grew tired of hearing us, he would propose a game. Whoever won won the point. No shouting allowed. If we shouted, we lost.”
“A just man,” Logan said dryly. “Or a man with a sore head.”
“Both,” she answered. The memory made her mouth curve. “He would line up stones, and we would take turns knocking them over with a ball. Or he would tie a ribbon in a tree, and whoever touched it first without climbing would win. William always complained it was unfair because I was taller.”
Logan’s eyebrow rose. “Ye said he was younger.”
“Hewasyounger,” she confirmed. “But not helpless. And I was not about to let him win simply because he had smaller legs.”
That got him.
He laughed properly, a low, rough sound that seemed to come from deep in his chest. It shocked her more than the screams at the rope.
It surprised her that a picture of her as a girl chasing ribbons with her brother could make him laugh this much. She looked away quickly, back at the hills, because the sound did something strange to her heart. Her fingers tightened around the leather again. It felt like a hand had reached inside to remind her that something lived there.
“I can see ye,” he chuckled. “Little English terror, knocking yer poor braither into the dirt so ye can claim a ribbon for justice.”
“He knocked me into the dirt just as often,” Emma said. “Do not let the age difference fool you. William could be vicious when he chose.”
“Aye,” Logan murmured. “Braithers can.”
The warmth in his voice thinned on the last word, and Emma noticed it. The change was small, like a shift in wind that only a sailor would notice, but it was there.
When she turned her head this time, the line of his mouth had flattened.
She hesitated. Curiosity sat at the back of her tongue, pressing forward. It had spent weeks knocking against her teeth and only now found her soft enough to escape.
“What about your father?” she asked. “Did he ever set up games for you and your brother?”
Logan did not answer at once. Instead, his hand shifted on the reins, and his gaze stayed ahead. His horse took another twenty steps, then thirty, then long enough that she almost thought he had not heard her.
Then he exhaled. “Nay.”
For some reason, the word felt heavier than it should.
“No? Then what did he do?” she tried again, gentler.
He drew in a slow breath through his nose. She saw it. His shoulders rose and fell. The ease vanished. There was a new stiffness there, as if the weight he carried in his mind had become visible.
“Definitely nae games.” His voice no longer held any trace of that rough amusement. “Ye see, me faither had a cleaner way of dealing with problems.”
Emma waited for him to elaborate. It was clearer than anything that he had more to say.
His jaw worked once, and he kept his eyes on the road. When he spoke again, the words came out flat and blunt, cut to the bone.
“He set me up to die, so me braither didnae have competition.”
Emma blinked, and the world seemed to tilt.
What?
For a moment, she was not aware of the horse under her or the hills or the men behind them. There was only that sentence ringing in her skull, plain and terrible.
Her breath caught in her throat. The words kept replaying in her head.He set me up to die, so me braither didnae have competition.
