‘Rory, who named you?’ she said.
‘My mother.’ Rory walked to a table, sat and within moments drummed his fingers against it. Each finger was deliberate as if he was counting points or facts in his head. ‘I can’t see my father... I would assume my mother. But my name isn’t important and not the reason I came here.
‘I want you to know, I’m not usually curt with my family, it’s just...you can’t help but notice my relationship isn’t the same as yours with your family. My mother’s recent questions aside, she’susually polite and kind. I need to talk to you about my father.’
She wanted to ask him so many questions regarding his relationship with his father, but now wasn’t the time. ‘I think we need to talk of your name,’ she said firmly.
He opened his mouth to protest, but she pleaded with him. She needed to tell him the truth, or what she knew was the truth. He’d defended and announced he cared for her, she couldn’t deceive him any more.
At his nod, she continued. ‘With your name, do you think...’ Ailsa swallowed ‘...do you think your mother was telling you something?’
‘I used to believe that she was telling me that she wanted me to be like the nephew who tried to stop the fight between the McCrieffs and Lochmores.’ He stopped his drumming. ‘You think she named me after the baby?’
She pointed to the journals. ‘Look. Your records say the baby’s name was Rory. Could she have read the journals?’
He’d always thought his mother would have been better placed in an Abbey than as a warrior’s wife. Would she have read the old tomes? With certainty. ‘Even if she did know the name of the nephew was John and not Rory, whatcould she possibly be telling me by naming me Rory?’
‘How long have you known you were left-handed?’ she said.
Rory closed his eyes on those soft, but precise words and ran his hand through his hair. His left hand. What his mother named him, he didn’t care. He felt her affection for him, faint and removed though it was. It was his father for whom he feared he didn’t belong. ‘When I entered the lists with my father and held up my wooden sword to face him.’
‘So you were a mere child. Five, six?’ Ailsa said. ‘I followed Rhona the moment I could walk without assistance. She always smelled so good to me. The lavender and mint, the rosemary and smoke.
‘I watched what she did and listened to the many questions she asked. She was very observant so I learned to be as well. The McCrieff clan is large, but with healing you notice family traits and patterns. How red hair crops up in one family and deafness in another. How most families use their right hands and a few, a rare few, use their left.
‘Your mother or father don’t use their left hands, do they?’
‘Ailsa,’ he choked out. He hadn’t been thisvulnerable, this exposed, this weak since he was a babe. He’d trained and fought and educated himself so it would never come to pass and this woman, his wife, felled him. He’d always thought his height was the reason he didn’t match his father—was it his left hand as well? If so, did Ailsa know Finley wasn’t his father? ‘You’re as direct as ever, lass.’
‘At what point will you admit you like my directness?’
He’d never get used to it, but he was realising he’d always want her words. Even now when she was hammering her point until he couldn’t avoid the truth. He had no defence against it since he wasn’t all that sure he wanted to hide the truth from her any more.
Still, he couldn’t lie to her. Since childhood he’d been kept at a distance and all he could do was study his father. The way he walked, talked, ate, trained. His mannerisms as he ordered his edicts, the way he turned his back if Rory entered the room. His father used his right hand for everything, so Rory taught himself to use his right hand as well.
‘Neither my father nor my mother used their left hands,’ he said.
‘You force yourself to use your right. It’s amazing what you can do with your right hand,Rory, but I can’t help but think how much greater you’d be with your left.’
‘I’m better,’ he said. Since the time he was a child, with a wooden sword in his hand, he’d known he was different. ‘I fight Paiden with my left. Ever up for a challenge, he asks me to. He asked me to train him with his left as well, thinking it was something I taught myself, but...he was terrible at it.Isterrible at it.
‘So terrible at it, I did some observing myself and tried to find someone else in my clan with a strong left hand.’
‘There was no one?’
He shook his head.
‘It’s rare.’
He glanced over at his very direct wife, who looked mired in indecision and doubt. ‘What are you not telling me?’
She fingered the straps of her healing pouch.
‘You won’t like what I have to say.’
‘Ailsa, we’re already talking about me not being the legitimate son of Finley, Chief of Lochmore. That I have no political right to marry you.’
‘Now who is blunt?’ She smiled, but it was weak, her gaze softening at every moment.
