Wasn’t a secret its own kind of burden? He laid a hand against the wooden box, and recalled how heavy it was.
Heavy with secrets and lies…
Tears stood in his mother’s eyes. “Promise me, Lachlan.”
Promise her, when she’d broken every promise she’d ever made to him, and to Ciaran and Isla, by keeping the truth hidden away in her dressing closet, locked inside a wooden box.
But she was his mother, and she was dying, so in the end, Lachlan gave her the promise she demanded. Not only because she’d begged him to, and because he loved her still, no matter what she’d done, but because he couldn’t deny the truth of her words.
He couldn’t trust anyone. Not those you believed to be your friends, or the man you’d called your father, and not your mother, who had secrets of her own, and would have seen them buried along with her, if she could have.
By the time the sun rose the following morning, Elizabeth Ramsey was dead. By the end of the week, they buried her. The flowers they placed on her grave were still fresh when Lachlan, Ciaran and Isla left for Buckinghamshire.
Their mother had warned them to forget their past, and they heeded her words. They left the only home they’d ever known, the only friends they’d ever had, and two cold, silent graves behind them.
Not a single one of them looked back.
There was no reason to. There was nothing left to see.
Chapter One
Aylesbury, England
Late January, 1818
Blood oozed from the corner of Lachlan’s lip, trickled down his chin, and dripped onto the snowy white folds of his perfectly knotted cravat.
Damn it. Another night, another brawl, and another ruined cravat. “Damn you to hell, Ciaran. Why do you always have to strike me in the mouth?”
Lachlan seized his younger brother by the neck of his shirt and shoved him backwards, and the two huge hands squeezing Lachlan’s neck fell away as Ciaran stumbled against the railing behind him. He and Ciaran were of a similar size, so it was no easy feat to send his brother sprawling, but then Ciaran was already staggering before Lachlan laid a finger on him.
Drinking the better part of a bottle of whiskey could do that to a man.
Ciaran, who was far too drunk to know any better, staggered to his feet and lurched forward again. “It’s not a proper brawl without blood, brother, and mouths bleed.”
As if to prove his point, one of Ciaran’s enormous fists came barreling straight for Lachlan’s face, but before he could land the blow, Lachlan grabbed his hand, threw him off balance with a twist of his arm, and slammed his foot into the side of Ciaran’s shin.
Ciaran dropped to his knees, and Lachlan was over him in a flash, his fingers gripping Ciaran’s hair to keep him still as he lowered his nose to within an inch of his brother’s. “Noses bleed, too. You’re begging for my fist in yours, but I’ve no wish to spill your blood tonight.”
He’d spilled Ciaran’s blood the night before, and the one before that, but any hopes Lachlan had he wouldn’t have to spill it again tonight vanished when a sudden blow to his ribs ripped the breath from his lungs.
“Oof!” He toppled sideways, and landed on the ground next to his brother, gasping for air. He rolled onto his back, but before he could scramble to his feet, Ciaran’s knee landed in the center of his chest and pinned him to the ground.
“Aw, come on, Lach, you should have seen that one coming.”
Lachlan only grunted in reply. He didn’t have the breath to argue, and besides, it was true enough. Heshouldhave seen it coming. Even when they were boys Ciaran had always gone for the mouth first, then the ribs, and then—
Oh, Christ.
He didn’t have time to spit the curse out before Ciaran’s knuckles crashed into his jaw.
Mouth, ribs, jaw. Always the jaw.
“You’re not even trying,” Ciaran complained. He grabbed a fistful of Lachlan’s hair, jerked his head up, and then dropped it back into the dirt with a hard thump. “It’s no fun if you don’t eventry.”
Lachlanwastrying—trying to end this brawl without having to hurt his brother, but he’d relied too heavily on the whiskey to do the job he didn’t want to do with his fists. “Damn it, how the devil are you still conscious, Ciaran?”
Ciaran grinned. “No bloody idea, but here we are, brother, and I doubt your face will be as pretty tomorrow as it was today.”
