Lachlan’s gaze slid to the baby.
“Everyone has called him John because we needed to give him a name,” Violet explained. “It began as a practical thing. But perhaps it need nae remain only that.”
She looked at Lachlan. His fingers had tightened slightly around his cup.
“Would it trouble ye if we kept it?” she asked.
For a moment, Lachlan seemed to forget the cup in his hand, the food cooling in front of him, and Connor sitting close enough to hear every breath.
“John,” he said quietly. “Jane mentioned that name once.”
Violet went still. “Aye, she did.”
“Aye.” His mouth tightened. “I had forgotten.” He looked back at her. “She laughed when she said it. Told me a boy named John might have good sense, or at least sound like he did.” His voice thinned, then steadied badly. “She said it was plain and good. A name a boy could grow into without being burdened by it.”
Violet’s eyes stung. John’s small fist tightened around her finger as if he meant to hold her where she was.
“Jane would have liked it,” she said.
Lachlan looked away too quickly.
From the head of the table, Connor spoke. “Then John it is.”
His firm tone settled the matter.
John made a small, offended sound, and Moira’s mouth curved.
“He seems to approve,” she chuckled.
Alex raised his cup. “He approves of being fed. Let us nae give him wisdom too early.”
Violet almost turned to see whether Hannah had heard the dry comment, but the space beside her where Hannah would usually stand was empty.
Right.
The old instinct hurt more than she had expected.
She adjusted John’s blanket and looked at Lachlan again. “How long will ye remain?”
Lachlan glanced at Connor, before his smile returned, lighter than his eyes. “As long as I’m allowed.”
Violet tried to ease the awkwardness before it sharpened. “That is a dangerous answer in this castle.”
“A week, then,” Connor interjected, his voice calm.Toocalm. “Thank ye for visiting, Brother,” he added, rising. “Now if ye’ll excuse me.”
Lachlan’s smile flickered, and Alex went very still. Moira lowered her eyes to her hands.
Violet held John closer as Connor left the room, unsure why a moment that had reminded her of family now reminded her of stepping too close to a blade.
Connor stepped into the passage beyond the breakfast hall before his temper settled properly and back into normal.
The door closed behind him, cutting off the small sounds of breakfast—Moira’s movement near the sideboard, Alex’s low voice, John’s brief fuss, and Violet murmuring something to the baby as lightly as she possibly could. The sound of her voice made something inside him loosen. Even through oak and stone, her voice found him.
He should have been thinking of Lachlan’s stay and the incoming christening. The thought of letting his brother breathe too long inside Moore Castle without a man watching both hands and every cup he lifted made him feel a bit terrified.
Instead, he saw Violet’s face when Lachlan had spoken of Jane.
He saw the way the relief had softened her.Realrelief. The kind he had not been able to give her because he had never known Jane as anything more than a dead woman, a scandal, a wound left in a nursery.
