He waited just long enough for her to start again, pulling in big lungfuls of air through her nose and expelling them through her mouth.
“Ayla has always believed that we share the same maither,” Arthur explained. “It’s what me faither always told her. It’s what he told me as well, up until the day he died. He had an affair with one of our maids, and the woman died givin’ birth to Ayla. Me maither…”
He shook his head, recalling the woman who had raised him with affection.
“She was so kind. Loved everyone she came across. She kenned me faither had violated his vows, kenned all about his mistresses. But she couldnae bring herself to let the bairn suffer for the sins of her faither. So, when Ayla’s maither passed, me maither decided to step in and raise her as her own.”
As Arthur talked, he noticed the tension slowly leaving Marissa. With each word that he spoke, her muscles had started to relax. She was still breathing the way he’d taught her, but some of the panic had left her eyes, and her hands had stopped sweating.
“Me faither didnae even have the decency to tell me himself,” he said, the story coming out of him in a rush, now that he was finally telling it. “He wrote me a letter, one that he’d left in his study for me to find after he died. It explained everythin’. He’d always been distant with Ayla, which I’d always thought was because she was a daughter and nae a son. I suppose that was partly true. But it was mostly because she wasnae a legitimatechild, and he didnae care what happened to the daughter of a maid.”
Marissa had stopped the exercise. Now, she was focused on him entirely. She was still holding his hands, though. She hadn’t yet released them.
“And ye didnae tell Ayla?” she asked.
Arthur shook his head. “What good would that do? Her real maither was dead. Me maither had passed years before, and that was hard enough on her. Ayla had seemed… relieved when our faither died. And it wouldnae have done any good to dredge all of this up. Plus, she would have endured more pressure from the council if they kenned she wasnae legitimate.”
“But ye could legitimize her,” Marissa argued. “If she kenned the truth, ye could still make her claim to the family name legitimate.”
“What would be the point of it all, though?” Arthur retorted.
He understood why Marissa was arguing her point. It was something that he had struggled with for years.
Arthur had gone back and forth over whether or not to tell Ayla the truth what felt like a thousand times. But each time he landed on the same exact reason to keep the secret. And it was the same reason that he told Marissa at that moment.
“What happens if I tell her?” he asked pointedly. “What happens if I tell her that the only maither she had ever kenned wasnae actually her maither? That the woman who raised her, who loved her, lied to her for her entire life and kept this secret from her? And then, she has to fight off the sneers and the words of everyone around her, on top of all of that.”
Marissa opened her mouth to argue further, but Arthur quickly silenced her.
“I would legitimize her, aye,” he said hastily. “I would do it without a second thought. But I dinnae need to. Nae when she is already legitimate in the eyes of everyone. Because even though it isnae the truth, everyone believes that she is the daughter of me maither and that she has every right to the name that I do.”
Marissa stared at him as he shifted from foot to foot. Never in his life had he felt this nervous.
She had said that she trusted him, and to some extent, he believed her. Clearly, she trusted him enough to allow him to ease her worries around the ducks.
But this secret? It could make things incredibly difficult for him.
And had Marissa not grown close to Ayla over the last few days? Had he not seen them laughing and giggling together? What if she felt a sense of loyalty to her as well and went and told her the truth?
“Ye’re right,” Marissa said finally, prompting him to expel a sigh of relief. “The only thing tellin’ her would do is make her life more difficult. It willnae do any good for anyone.”
Arthur huffed his appreciation.
“Thank ye,” he murmured.
A weight suddenly lifted from his shoulders.
“That secret has weighed on me for a very long time,” he admitted. “I love Ayla. And it hurts, knowin’ that I’m keepin’ the truth from her.”
Marissa nodded. “If I kenned somethin’ like that about one of me sisters, I’m nae sure if I could have kept it in. Even if tellin’ them would have made everythin’ worse.”
Arthur wasn’t sure if she was agreeing that he’d done the right thing. But she had acknowledged his struggles throughout the years all the same. Which was more than he had ever thought he would get.
Marissa blinked up at him, her expression softening before, she turned her gaze back toward the loch.
In the time that he’d been talking, her posture had relaxed almost entirely. He expected her to tense up again, to start losing her cool now that she was focused on the ducks.
“They have hardly paid us any mind,” she mused. “They’ve barely even glanced at us.”
