Amber (Jewel Trilogy, Book 3) (22 page)

Niall nodded slowly, then turned to his half-siblings and raised his voice. "Give us peace, will you? Go on to bed. We'll sit with Mam alone."

Still laughing, they staggered out, taking a bottle of spirits and their glasses along with them.

The candles surrounding Elspeth's casket flickered in their wake. "Why were they sitting with her?" Trick asked after they'd stumbled out of earshot. "It's plain as anything they held her in no esteem."

"Da wouldn't like to hear they've been shirking their duty. Mam must never be left alone—they say that a corpse left alone will find the road to hell."

Knowing his mother's history, Trick imagined Hamish and Niall
would
worry about her finding the road to hell. He went to the coffin and set the candle he was carrying beside the others, averting his gaze from his mother's waxen face. "I feel like I should be able to talk to her. I came all the way from England to talk to her."

"Then talk to her," Niall said.

Trick sighed, wishing he had some of his brother's calm confidence—wishing he knew where to start. Owing to Duncan's prank, Elspeth's hands were no longer neatly crossed on her chest. Wincing at the sight of the twine still attached, he began to reach, then stopped.

"Fix her, will you?" he asked in a voice rough with frustration. "Get that off her."

While Niall gently did as he asked, Trick dropped into a chair, staring blindly ahead. "I would think you'd rather sit by yourself than with those two. Especially considering they accord her no respect. I cannot believe what I saw when I walked in here."

"I cannot sit alone—there must always be two on guard." Niall took the seat beside him. "And a good prank at a wake is often enjoyed, even encouraged. You don't know our ways here, Patrick. Even though you were born within these walls."

"You've the right of it there." Trick sighed. He'd never felt very English, but he didn't feel Scottish, either. He only felt confused.

"What did you want to say to her?" Niall asked. "You can say it, aye? Out loud, or in your head. Either way, she'll hear you."

"Do you think so?" He turned to gaze at his brother. "You are young yet, but wise."

Niall broke into a grin—straight, white, and as familiar as the one Trick saw in the mirror every morning when he was shaving, except none of his brother's teeth were chipped. "I don't think Annag would agree."

"Nay, I expect she wouldn't. How do you put up with those two?"

The younger man gave a sheepish shrug. "They're not as bad as they seem. I grew up with them, aye? It takes two to fight."

"And you refuse to participate."

"More or less. Of course, once in a while..." The engaging grin reappeared before he sobered. "Annag...well, her husband's dead these two years past. And her with three bairns on her own. She wasn't always so bitter."

Trick hadn't realized she was widowed. "And Duncan?"

"He's never wed—no sane woman would have the bastard." Niall scrubbed his hands hard over his face, then blinked and looked at Trick. "The three days of keening have passed, but if you've no words for Mam, perhaps the traditional ones would help."

Trick knew little of this land's traditions. "I'm listening."

Now that the rowdy mourners had gone home to bed, the great hall seemed larger, yawning huge and dark, much more like Trick had remembered. Niall took a deep breath before his voice rose in song—not the mournful, haunting wail that Trick had imagined a keening would be, but a heartfelt, melodic lament that echoed off the vaulted stone ceiling.

"Oh, Mother, ye have left us!
Ochone!
"

He paused and looked at Trick, his golden eyes expectant.

"
Ochone?
Is that some pagan god?"

"Nay, it's Gaelic. Nothing more than an expression of sorrow or regret."

"Ochone,"
Trick said softly, expecting to feel silly. But he didn't. Sharing the sitting duty with his brother, keening their mother together, felt right.

"Why did ye leave us?
Ochone!
What did we do to ye?
Ochone!
That ye went away from us?"

"Ochone!"
Trick sang for him.

"'Tis ye that had plenty!"

"Ochone!"

"And why did ye leave us?"

"Ochone! Ochone! Ochone!"
The ancient syllables slipped through Trick's lips, and some of the pain along with them.

When dawn had broken, Trick made his way upstairs to find a gray-garbed woman in his room, her back to him as she stoked the fire on the ancient, blackened stone hearth. At the sound of him entering, she slowly straightened and turned.

He gasped. "Mrs. Ross?"

"Aye, it be me," the tiny woman said in a reedy voice, coming closer. She was shorter than he remembered, but of course he'd last seen her through the eyes of a child. Her face was even more wrinkled, if that were possible, her blue eyes faded but glittering the same as they always had. "Why, I'd recognize you anywhere, even after all these years. Patrick, dear, how fare you?"

"I'm well." The door banged louder than he would have liked when he shut it behind him, and in the bed, Kendra stirred. "How are
you
?" he asked Mrs. Ross. Sweet Mary, the woman must be eighty years old.

"No complaints. But your mam..." The blue eyes flooded with tears. "I don't know what happened. She went so fast..."

"Trick?" Kendra blinked herself awake. At the sight of a stranger in the room, she clutched the blanket over her naked shoulders and tucked it under her chin.

"My wife, the Duchess of Amberley," Trick introduced her. Smiling to himself, he walked over to smooth her sleep-mussed hair. "Good morning,
leannan
. No need to blush—it's only Mrs. Ross, my old nurse."

"And his mam's before him," the older woman added.

"I haven't thought of her as Mam in eighteen years," he murmured. "She's Mother to me now."

Mrs. Ross's thin, bluish lips straightened into a disapproving line. "She was never Mother to you, and well you know it. She was much warmer than that. And why did you not write her, aye?" Her expression hardening, the bird-like woman came near and whacked him on the shoulder, although not without a modicum of affection. "Eighteen years and you never once answered one of that poor woman's letters."

Trick rubbed his shoulder. "What the hell are you talking about? She never sent me a letter."

"The devil she didn't. She cried for weeks after your father dragged you away. Then she started writing the letters—"

"I never received any letters," Trick insisted.

But Mrs. Ross wasn't listening. "—every week at first, then every month, and then, when she never heard back, once a year. Until finally she gave up. You broke her heart, Patrick Iain. I knew you were a bairn yet, but I thought I'd taught you better—"

"Mrs. Ross!"

The woman jumped and started twittering, and Kendra clapped her hands over her ears, her eyes wide as round portholes.

He waited until his old nurse quieted before continuing. "I never received her letters. Did you hear me, Mrs. Ross? I
never
received her letters. Not one."

She stilled, studying him for a long moment. "Did he keep them from you, then?" she whispered and burst into tears.

He gathered her fragile frame into his arms. "There, Mrs. Ross. I know you miss her." Patting her on the back, he silently cursed his father—the blackguard—for hiding the mail. And himself for never considering the possibility. "Mother wouldn't want you to be sad."

"Your mam was like a daughter to me." She raised her tear-stained face. "A woman isn't supposed to outlive her children."

He pulled back and nodded, and they gazed at each other until Kendra shifted on the bed and cleared her throat. "What was she like, Mrs. Ross?"

The old nurse dashed the tears from her wrinkled cheeks and sat herself down. The bulky oak armchair dwarfed her. "She was good. A good woman, Elspeth. She had no easy life."

Kendra slanted Trick a glance, knowing he didn't want to hear this, but also knowing he should. "How is it she came to marry the duke?"

"Him."
The woman looked as though she wanted to spit. "King Charles—the first one—arranged the match. Part of his plan to Anglicize Scotland." She twisted her bony fingers in her lap, her voice going softer, as though it were coming from far away. "And my poor Elspeth was so in love with Hamish Munroe...but her father had never liked the lad. Too common for his tastes. A third son, and a businessman besides, buying flax for the weaving and then selling the cloth. He made a fine living, but Elspeth's father was the laird, and he expected better for his daughter. The Stuarts had made him an earl, but that didn't make him English."

"Of course not," Kendra said gently, noting that Trick seemed to be studying his bare toes. "My husband told me his grandfather signed the Covenant."

"Aye, the old earl was a bit of a rebel. It's in the blood. But still and all, he was happy enough when the king matched his daughter with a duke. He forced poor Elspeth into it."

Thinking of her own forced marriage, Kendra bit the inside of her cheek. "How?"

"You don't want to know." The nurse's lips pressed tight, and Kendra knew that her brothers' matchmaking had been nothing like Trick's grandfather's. Unlike Elspeth, deep down she knew a small part of her had
wanted
to wed Trick. And she also knew her brothers wouldn't have pushed her into the marriage if that hadn't been so.

"She was unhappy all her days," Mrs. Ross continued. "Even after the duke left her alone to reclaim her lost love, she never recovered from the loss of her son." She brushed at her gray skirts and stood. "Well, I'd best be off about my duties," she said, looking to Kendra. "Welcome to Duncraven, your grace."

"My pleasure. I hope we can talk more later."

"Aye, we can. After we bury my Elspeth." With a long, miserable sniff and a swish of her skirts, she sailed from the room.

Kendra waited until the door clicked closed behind her, then released a heartfelt sigh. "Oh, how terribly romantic. Doesn't it give you the shivers?"

"Doesn't what give me the shivers?" Trick opened a cabinet and started pulling out clean clothes.

"Thinking about Elspeth and Hamish, in love all those years. And finally getting to be together." While his back was safely turned, she slid from between the sheets and hurried into her chemise. Relieved, she made her way over to look for a suitable gown to wear to a burial. She wondered what would be an appropriate way to wear her hair. She would have to send for Jane to come up and style it. "Now that I've heard your mother and Hamish's story, I'm so glad she invited him to live with her here. Maybe they found a bit of happiness, after all."

"Maybe my mother sent me letters. But that didn't make her a good woman." He shook out a shirt, then stripped off the one he was wearing, a long pull of his muscles as he drew it over his head. Kendra watched, enjoying the view more than she'd be willing to admit. "She was still an adulteress, and a Covenanter, and she betrayed—"

"Did you not hear a word your nurse said about what happened between her and Hamish?" Pulling out a forest-green dress, she sighed and held it up. "This is the darkest thing I brought. Do you suppose I'll be scorned for not wearing black?" She turned it around and frowned at the low, scooped neckline. "What will Hamish think? I noticed yesterday that the women here wear more on top."

He blinked at her. "Your top looks fine to me. Niall knows you didn't come here expecting to attend a funeral. And I cannot imagine why you'd care what anyone else thinks. Hamish, especially." He put on the clean shirt, then began to unlace his breeches. "I feel sorry for the old man, but that doesn't mean I like him. He lived in sin with my mother—"

"I suppose, then, that you've never bedded a woman without the benefit of wedlock."

His long fingers fumbled on the laces. "Will you stop interrupting me every time I try to make a point?"

Ignoring that request, she stared at him a long moment, until he lifted his head to meet her gaze. "Well?" she pushed.

"You know very well I was experienced when I took you to my bed."

Clearly fuming, he remained silent while he hopped on one foot and then the other to remove the breeches. Half annoyed, half amused, her gaze followed the breeches down, but his long shirt covered the interesting parts.

She blushed when he caught her looking, but he only crossed his arms and leveled her with a glare so fierce that, had he been a Gorgon, she would surely have turned to stone. "I've already told you I don't hold with infidelity. I've never slept with a married woman."

"Congratulations. You're probably the only male member of Charles's court who can say so." She dropped the green gown over her head and wiggled it into place. "Hamish and your mother were victims, Trick. They shared a love that lasted decades—a love the thought of which melts me inside. A perfect love, like my own parents'." Threading the laces across her bodice, she looked up. "How can you think to deny them what little happiness they found?"

"I haven't the choice to deny or allow it, do I? What's done is done. That doesn't mean I have to like it. Or them."

A knock came at the door, and she yanked her laces tight and reached for her stomacher while he stomped over to answer it.

"What now?"

Dressed in a red kilt, Niall took a startled step back. He turned to leave, taking with him an armful of matching plaid wool.

Trick reached to grab his elbow. "Forgive me, Niall. I thought you were Mrs. Ross. Not that I should have been barking at her, either." He blew out a breath before turning to face Kendra. "And I'm sorry I was so short-tempered with you."

"I understand," she said softly. The stomacher safely attached, she smoothed her skirts and put a hand to her disheveled hair.

Niall didn't seem to notice it, however. "Patrick didn't get any sleep," he told her.

"Did you not?" She cocked her head at her husband speculatively. "Any at all?"

"Nay. Niall and I stayed up with Mam." Kendra thought she caught a look of surprise when he heard his own use of the name. "We did some keening."