“Because he isna yer brother,” Stellan told her, sure of the feeling in his gut. MacKay would have acknowledged a son, and he called Alber someone else’s son. “There’s something else going on.”
“But what?” Mariota’s frustration was evident in her tone and her clenched fists. “What could Da have promised to a woman about Alber?”
“None of those things may be connected, lass,” Stellan told her. “He’s injured and dreaming, talking in his sleep. They may be as random as?—”
“As a lass fleeing her home running into the only honorable group of hunters in the Highlands?”
After the lies he’d told her, she could still say that? Her words warmed his heart and he smiled. “I’m glad ye think so.”
“So we wait. And when he does wake up, it will be time for him to tell his heir the truth.”
Stellan’s chest twinged. The MacKay wasn’t the only one keeping secrets, and though Mariota now knew his, Stellan dreaded her father’s reaction when he found out.
Mariota knewone thing for certain. While her da was recovering from his injury, she had to act in his stead as laird. “I dinna want to leave him in case he says something else, but I need to get a look at his desk, at what he’s been working on, so I can carry the load for him until he’s better,” she told Stellan.
“I think that can wait a wee,” he told her, taking her hand and urging her to a seat. “At least until the healer returns, ye should stay with him. I’ll stay, too, if ye wish.”
She smiled at him and nodded. “Of course I do. While we wait, perhaps ye will tell me more about what Sutherland shares with his heir so I have a better sense of what to look for.”
“Yer da hasna trained ye as he should have to take over when he’s gone. I’m happy to help as much as I can.”
“He seems to think he’ll live forever,” Mariota said. She looked over at his sleeping form and frowned. “That, or he’s been training someone else while letting me— and the clan —believe I am his heir.”
“Do ye have any reason to think he has done that?”
She pressed her lips together, then shook her head. “Nay, no’ really. Just a sense that I will never be laird. He has hinted that he is considering others. I overheard him talking to one of his council about naming atanist, someone who could step in for me. I suppose he thinks I’d be a figurehead, nay more.”
“Ye have a sense? Do ye believe in such feelings?”
“Do ye?”
“I dinna ken. All I ken is that my twin and I know things about each other that others dinna sense or feel the way we do. ’Twas stronger when we were lads, and one reason Da fostered us apart. We think he wanted us to lose the ability. We almost did. ’Tis different than kenning the future, but ’tis…”
“Strange and wonderful? I envy ye being so close to yer twin. I—I never got that chance.”
“What do ye mean?”
Should she tell him? Explain why her da treated her with such disdain? It might not explain all, but it might help him understand, and perhaps she’d feel better by sharing the pain of the tragedy that changed so many lives.
“I had a twin brother,” she admitted and glanced at Stellan to see his reaction.
He looked surprised, but gestured for her to continue.
“He was eldest by some minutes, I was told. No matter who was eldest, he would have been the heir, and all my father’s concerns about no’ having a lad to follow him would never have happened. But I was the more adventurous twin, even at a very young age. I’d always been fascinated by birds. Their colors, their songs, their flights, the way their wings caught the sunlight, the sound of their bairns in the nest. ’Tis why I was able to climb to a hawk nest and secure eggs for the mews. Why I have Valkyrie. Over the years, I grew strong from running and climbing trees to reach the height of a hawk’s nest.” She shrugged. “We were seven when I climbed up a tree and my brother, who’d been teased by some older lads and called a bairn, decided to follow me.”
Stellan pressed his lips together, then asked, “He fell?”
“Aye. I’ve been told most of this. I dinna remember it clearly. His head hit a rock. I remember screaming at all the blood, not knowing what else to do. My twin was dead as soon as he hit the ground.” She hugged her arms around her middle. “I could see below me, people running and my da scooping his son up and running back to the keep with his body, crying out the entire way. After seeing my twin fall, I was terrified to climb out of the tree. But I think once I stopped screaming and started crying silently, everyone forgot I was there. I had to be brave and get myself down. I knew what had happened was bad, but that was all I could comprehend at that age.”
“I’m sorry, lass. I canna imagine losing my twin. How that must have felt.”
“Dinna be. Mother did her best to protect me, but she was as devastated as Da was. And a year later, she was dead of the next bairn she tried to give him— another son.” She took a breath.“I… I canna recall what she looked like. Only that I’ve been told I resemble her more than my da. So did my twin.”
“So ye remind him?—”
“Of her, aye. And of what he lost. Of how unsuitable I am to take my twin’s place. I think ’tis why he does little to protect me from Alber. I’m certain he blames me for what happened.”
“’Twas nay yer fault. Ye were a wean, like yer brother.”
