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“Ewan, my lady.” Solemn, the wee bairn.
“We need you to tell us your mother’s name, Ewan.” She probed delicately.
“Freya, my lady.”
The McKendricks exchanged an astonished look, for it was Drostan’s wife’s name. Might Ewan be the McKendrick’s heir?
It should have been his wife’s name that made her eldest brother grunt on the bed. A second later, he sprang up to a sit. “Ewan.” He boomed in an alarmed tone.
“I am here, my Laird.” The solemn boy answered, causing Drostan to expel air from his lungs.
“Drostan.” She hurried to him. “What happened to you?”
His big hand on his head, a confused expression on his handsome face. “I do not remember.”
“You will when you are better.” She assured him. She saw it before. “Do you feel any pain?”
“No.”
“What do you remember?” Lachlan forced out.
Drostan looked at the boy and at his youngest brother blankly, and shook his head, helpless.
“But he is your son.” Lachlan insisted.
“Yes, he is.” Drostan said with pride.
“But how…?” Fingal started.
“Let us not press him.” She advised.
They all left Drostan’s chambers, except for Ewan.
~.~.~
“What did the villager say exactly?” She asked to no one in particular while they took tea in the drawing room.
Lachlan came first. “Drostan lay on the road, the boy sat beside him.”
“Drostan said he ordered the boy not to move from there.” Fingal supplied.
“Ewan is his image when Drostan was the same age.” Wallace mused, a smug smile on his wrinkled face. Could it be a happy sentiment to see the next heir to the McKendricks?
“Impossible not to notice it.” Aileen interposed.
“This is too strange to absorb.” Lachlan commented.
“A woman who stayed here for one year and then vanished in thin air.” Fingal remembered.
“Drostan must not have known she was with child.” Aileen concluded.
“Or he would have kept her here, no doubt.” Wallace said.
It came as no secret to anyone her oldest brother could be very… inflexible at times. And Aileen did not discard that as a reason why her sister-in-law might have left. Did Aileen not have her hands full with her hot-tempered husband? Freya displayed a rather suave disposition but no less fibre in her, Aileen had occasion to witness.
“The man has the right to his heir.” Defended Lachlan.
“Do not come with this nonsense that women have to be at your beck and call.” Protested Aileen vehemently. “She may have left because she was not happy here.”
