She shook her head. “You know I cannot, my lord.”
“My lord?” he mocked, his dark brows arched high. He reached a hand out and traced her jaw softly. She shivered in response, her eyelids lowering. The merest touch from him set her body humming.
He dropped his hand. “That’s because he was not my father.”
Gillian blinked at this astounding news. If the previous earl of Kincreag was not Nicholas’s father, then how was it possible he was the earl?
He smiled, thin and humorless. “I see you understand the implications—but fear not. We’ll not be stripped of lands and titles, and left to starve.” He turned back to the portraits. “My father claimed me until the very end. Swore on several statements that I was his true and natural son.”
Gillian touched his sleeve hesitantly. “I don’t understand. If he swore to it, then it must be true?”
He folded his hands behind his back. “Thirty-six years ago my father took my mother to Rome. She wanted to see all of Italy. She was quite pious. There was some kirk or relic on an island several miles off the coast. My mother had to see it, and my father refusedher nothing. The ship they took was attacked by pirates.” He glanced at her, a brow arched slightly. “They’re called corsairs on the Mediterranean—and they’re often Turks, or Moors.”
Gillian’s hand covered her mouth as she began to understand the direction of this story.
“My mother was taken to be sold as a slave, and my father was wounded. He began searching for her as soon as he was able. She was found a few weeks later—alive but weak and ill-treated. They returned to Scotland immediately.” He turned to her, black eyes intent. “Nine months later, I was born.”
Gillian shook her head, eyes wide. “But no one can know for certain—”
“My parents were married for ten years before I was born. My mother never became pregnant. Not once. Nor did she get with child again after I was born. And when she died, my father remarried. My stepmother did not bear him a child. No miscarriages, either. She did not become pregnant. But after my father died, she remarried and now has four sons and two daughters.”
“But your father swore—”
He stuck his hand in her face, right beneath her nose. “Look at this, Gillian. What more proof do you need? This is not the skin of a Scot.”
She bit her lip, looking down at the dark skin before her. His hand was strong and well made, dusted with black hair. She lifted her hand and placed it in his, lowering it so it was between their bodies. He did not grip her hand back. He stared down at her hand, resting against his open palm, her skin pale and fragile against his.
Then his hand curled closed over hers.
“Why did you show me this?” she asked.
“You’re my wife. I thought you should know.”
“Did you think it would change anything?”
He did not look at her but at the picture of his mother. He did not reply.
“Does anyone else know?”
“Not . . . anymore.”
“Your first wife knew?”
He nodded.
Something powerful shifted in her chest, at once painful and sweet. He’d trusted her with a very sensitive secret, making himself vulnerable to her. And she fell in love with him for it.
Emboldened, she stepped closer, so their bodies almost touched, their joined hands pressed against her belly. His head tipped down, smoldering eyes on her.
This whole evening seemed unreal, a dream—his warm hand holding hers, his thumb moving now, slowly, softly across her skin. Her heart quickened, and her thoughts flowed thick and languorous. Itwasa dream, she supposed, given to her by Old Hazel.
“Did you think I would care?” she whispered.
“I thought it better that you know in the beginning, rather than find out later and feel . . . disillusioned.”
She thought it rather ironic that she had speculated with her sisters on his heritage, wondering with fascination if he had Spanish Moor in him. She had found it rather exciting to think about then. But regardless of his father’s heritage, his mother had been a Scot. He’d been raised in Scotland, as a Scot—his Scots burr was proofof that, as well as his command of Gaelic. Surely he was more Scottish than aught else, despite his paternity or the color of his skin.
“I’m sorry for what your mother suffered. But as it resulted in you, I cannot be truly sorry it happened.”
