Page 120 of The Laird’s Sinful Obsession

"Many times." Something shifted in his voice, a slight change in register she had learned to listen for. "Me braither and I used tae climb up there when we were lads. We'd tell ourselves there were wolves in the hills and spend half the afternoon convincing each other we'd heard one."

She looked at him. The wind moved over the parapet between them, lifting a strand of her hair across her face. "Were there ever wolves?"

"Nay. Nae fer a long time." He smiled slightly, still looking at the settlement. "We kent that perfectly well. It didnae matter."

She leaned her forearms on the parapet and looked out where he was looking, trying to see it. Two boys on that hillside in the long summer light, inventing wolves, entirely unconcerned with everything that would come after.

He spoke about his brother simply, not braced against the subject, but careful with it, the way you were careful with something that had weight.

"He was three years younger than me. Louder than me. Better company at a table." The corner of his mouth moved. "Everyone liked him better."

"I doubt that."

"It's true. I was never particularly easy tae like." He glanced at her. "Ye can agree."

"I'm nae goin' tae agree with that," she said.

"Diplomatic."

"Accurate." She held his gaze for a moment. "Ye're nae easy at first. That's different from nae being worth the effort."

He looked at her steadily, and she had the sense, as she sometimes did, that she'd said something that landed somewhere in him that he hadn't been expecting.

He looked back at the horizon without answering, which was its own kind of answer.

Captain wedged himself between them with the complete absence of self-consciousness that was his defining characteristic, and they made room for him on either side without discussing it.

Alba put her hand on his back and felt Lachlann's fingers brush hers as he did the same.

Neither of them moved their hands.

"Did ye come up her with Eòin?" she asked.

"Aye. More times than I can count." He looked west, toward the old settlement. "He used tae run the stairs. I told him every time he'd go headfirst off a step and break his neck, and he'd dae it faster the next time just tae irritate me."

"And did he? Ever fall?"

"Once." He paused. "Broke his wrist. Told me faither he'd slipped in the yard." Another pause, quieter. "I never asked him tae cover for me. He just did."

She was quiet a moment. "Ye miss him."

"Every day." He said it simply, without apology or performance.

She understood it was the kind of grief that had been carried long enough to become part of the way he moved through the world, present, but no longer sharp enough to stop him.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Ye dinnae have tae be sorry."

"I ken I dinnae have tae be." She glanced at him sideways. "I can be sorry fer somethin' without it bein' required of me."

"Is that so." His voice had the low quality it got when she'd said something that landed.

"It is," she said. "Ye should try it sometime. Feelin' things that havenae been formally requested."

He looked at her then, and she looked back, and the wind moved between them, and she was almost certain, from the particular quality of his expression, that he was about to say something she would need to remember.

But he looked away instead, back to the water, and she let it go.