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“Grandfather arranged the marriage with The McPherson.” As to the boy’s age, Taran must have been too young, the same age as his son, she calculated.
“My mother left for Aberdeen soon after I was born.” His head shook from one side to the other. “They say she solely fantasised of city life.”
Aileen would never have left a child of hers behind, even less a boy like him.
“Nobody told me the details.” He lamented.
If people talked, they should have given the whole story instead of dropping bits for the boy to piece together. It must have been his father to do it properly, she accused mentally. The last person on Earth to interfere would be her. She was not part of this family and would never be.
“What I learned is she partied a lot.” He continued. “She died overrun by a carriage, too drunk to see it.”
“Oh, Sam, I am so sorry!” She spoke at last.
He lifted his gaze to her, tears in them. His sadness encountered her sympathy, and she embraced him to let him cry as much as he needed.
He sobbed as though he locked his emotions in him for a long time. No nannies or governesses would ever substitute a mother.
Her murmurs expressed encouragement and solace, caressing his red hair as if she would a child. Tears prickled her eyes at the boy’s anguish.
A long time passed before she took his face in her hands and made him meet her stare. “I am sure your mother loved you a lot, Sam.”
“I do not think so, Aileen.” He countered, smart as he would always be.
“Look, Sam, many women have a difficult period after birth.” Several cases reached her in her clan’s manor. “They need more time to recover than most of us.” Her stare firmed on him.
“She stayed in Aberdeen for years without visiting here.” He input this new piece of information as if it confirmed his feelings of rejection.
“It is not like she did not want you, Sam.” The chance to revert eighteen years of that would never be a complete task. “She was too young. Most people are not ready for marriage and children at this age.”
“Like me, you say?” Their hands held together, he straightened his spine. “I do not feel ready for those either.”
“I see.” She answered nodding to assure him. “Let us make sure it will not happen.”
“We can hope.” In his stance, so many dreams of things not remotely related to marriage and heirs.
The implacable tyrant would not make two people unhappy because of his ravings, she promised herself.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Taran hurried to the morning room, expecting to find Aileen there before she left for the fields, like she had been doing for the past days.
They had been keeping a safe—extremely safe—distance from each other. Attentive to the direction she took, he would go help works in the most distant part of the manor and they did not meet. Not even for dinner, which he skipped with the excuse of much work in his study. A study that became the very definition of hell where those clandestine memories resided. The ones his mind played over and over, tirelessly. Continued by the cravings his bed brought in the never-ending nights.
The need to speed up his plans and have her out of sight as soon as possible drove him before he went mad with her presence here.
In the morning room, he stopped short. Near the breakfast table, she stood practical dress and apron draping her curvaceous slight frame. The same his dream insisted in undraping with excruciating detail. Only the view of her threatened to put him in a revealing state.
When she turned her luminous mahogany eyes to him, it came like a cannon ball exploding in his guts. What did this woman have that destabilised him this instantaneously, he wondered? He possessed no memory of this happening ever before this day.
Their stares crashed in numberless mute communications and stayed snatched up for several seconds before he forced himself into recomposing.
“Do not go into the fields today.” Why must his voice come so hoarse?
“The reason being?” Plate on the table, she prepared for another battle with him, he guessed.
“The solicitor is coming at eleven.” He delivered nonplussed.
Her perfect brows pleated, quizzical. “I got nothing to do with your estate business.”
