Page 72 of Lady Len and the Mysterious Mac

“It’s only me, dear boy. Tell me everything.”

He rocked back and forth, rubbing his temples, but he couldn’t find the words. “You proposed the match?”

“Aye, and as I said, I’m never wrong.”

“Well, this time you were,” Si rasped. “And I wish you’d stayed out of it.”

Auntie Alys looked at Bram and jerked her head towards the door.

“Why do I have to go? He’s the one who’s been a complete eejit.”

She lifted her eyebrows at him, and Bram dragged himself out.

Alys topped up Si’s whisky and poured one out for herself. “Tell me.”

“He’s just outside.”

“I am not,” Bram protested.

Alys gave her husband a look and another jerk of her head, and Leask followed Bram into the corridor.

Then she turned back to Si with a penetrating stare. “No more excuses.”

She wasn’t going to let it go, or probably let him out of his chair until he told her. Between her and the hoard below, he wasn’t sure which fate was worse.

“She’s too small,” he said finally.

Alys looked at him like he’d said she was a kelpie.

“Too small for what, Silas MacKenzie? To reach the top shelf of your library?”

He made a face at her, and she caught on that he meant more intimate interactions.

“Jesus, Si, is your prick so massive you can’t find any way to use it without hurting her? Thought you were more creative—”

“I can use it fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “But if I get her with child—my child—it’ll kill her as surely as it did my own mam.”

“What?”

He lifted his eyebrows at her. Did she really need it spelled out? “Big men beget big sons,” he said, nodding towards his father’s empty bed.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she breathed. “You’re tall now, I’ll grant ye—”

“Always been tall.” He stood a head above his peers, even as a toddler.

“Maybe so, lad, but yer mam didn’t give birth to all six feet of yeh.”

“She died all the same.”

“Now you listen to me, Silas Michael Wolfrick Alisdair MacKenzie, and you listen good. I dinnae ken what you’ve grown up believing, but I was there. You were born a babe, same as any other bairn. No bigger than the rest, certainly not the biggest I’ve ever held in my arms.”

“She died, Auntie. The day after I was born. You can’t try and say it wasn’t me that killed her.”

“What is it about men that ye think nothing happens in the world except by your own action? Yer mam had a fever. She was sickly for days before you finally graced us with your wee presence. She held on long enough to see you into this world so she could press her lips to your head and give you her blessing.”

Eyes burning with unshed tears, throat bursting with unwept agony, Si shook his head as he struggled to take apart and rebuild the image of himself that he’d spent decades believing to be true. Was it really possible the fault could not lie with him?

Was it true that his mother’s name would have been carved into stone whether or not he’d existed? He glanced at the window recalling his seedlings—all starting out the same small size before some grew into robust plants and others withered.