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She didn’t belong to him.

The thought was like a dagger that someone drove right into his heart.

She’d soon leave. She did have her own duty she had to attend to, and he understood duty all too well. He was about to make himself a prisoner of a hard choice, following his own duty.

“How so?” she asked. “How can you relate? Is it because of your father?”

He nodded. “Aye.”

Gathering his thoughts, he lay back on the bed and put his hands behind his head.

“My father was someone who demanded a lot of attention,” he started. He felt her shift and sit against the pillows next to him. The soft warmth of her hip brushed against his side. He stared at the dark wooden canopy above them. He remembered one particular night, after Raghnall had angered their father so much that Father had chased him away and banned him from the clan.

Raghnall was gone, and there was nothing Angus could have done. He remembered lying in this same bed, staring at the canopy boards with a grave intensity, feeling acutely that his brother’s bed, which had been here, too, was empty. Despite his anger and distress, he’d breathed lightly as his cracked rib hurt him. Studying the dark paneling above his head, he’d wished that he’d had the strength in him to rebel against his father and chase him away from the clan instead of Raghnall. That he’d followed his heart and not his duty to his father and his laird, to be loyal no matter what.

He could have been the laird himself then. He could have spared his mother and his siblings the pain and grief and emotional suffering as deep as physical wounds.

“He’d always been a difficult man,” Angus continued. “He liked to talk of himself a lot. He’d always been the best landowner, the best warrior, the best father… There was no one better than him. And if someone contradicted that… If Raghnall said that he’d shot an arrow right into the target three consecutive times, Father would say that it must have been a coincidence and that it was hard to be as good an archer as himself. If my mother said she admired the sermon of the priest in Dornie, he’d say that the priest had obviously missed the correct Latin pronunciation of this and that word. No one could be more perfect than he was, and if they tried…” He chuckled. “His fists, his knees, and his feet weren’t the worst of what he could do. His words wounded more deeply.”

Rogene blinked. “He sounds like a narcissist.”

Angus frowned. Her head was above him, and her eyelashes looked especially long from this perspective. “A narcissist?”

“Yeah. People with a narcissistic personality disorder have a huge sense of self-importance. They don’t feel empathy for others and demand attention and admiration.”

He rose on his elbows and sat up, leaning on the headboard. “Disorder? Like a sickness?”

“Well…in a way, yes. Only a mental one. I’m not a psychologist, of course, but I know that usually people who suffer from it have very low self-esteem deep inside, and they guard it in their perverse ways.”

Low self-esteem? It seemed that there was no one with a higher regard for himself than his father. Anger roared in Angus. How could this be possible? She couldn’t be right. He shook his head once and ran his fingers through his hair to calm himself down.

“I doubt that, lass,” he said as he leaned on his elbows, which rested against his knees. “And even if ’tis, it doesna change anything. It doesna give me back the years of living in a twisted family where there was just one rule: whatever Kenneth Og said was law. And that law changed every day like the wind.”

He shook his head, the middle of his chest tightening as the memory clawed at his mind.

“The night I realized I had to stand up to him was deep winter, the time when the wind wails in the through the windows and the snow melts on their sills. I was thirteen then. Father sat in the warmest spot by the fireplace, and I remember a golden glow around his dark, graying hair like a crown. I thought if Father could see himself, he’d be very pleased. Despite the puffiness of his face and a belly as big as a barrel, he was a handsome and strong man.”

Oh, so strong. Angus knew it well. The bump on his nose hadn’t gone away after being broken twice. Once, he’d had a broken rib, but he’d still had to work in the smithy and train on swords.

“Mother sat by Father’s side,” he continued, “working on another embroidery, squinting and wincing as she brought the fabric closer to her eyes. If Father told you to do something, you did it, no matter how little light. It was so quiet in the great hall. In winter, and especially in such a storm, there’s nothing to do except huddle by the fire. Father sat on a great chair, Mother on a small chair next to him. Laomann was carving something, sitting by his side. Ever Father’s pleaser, he was always near, but Father found even that irritating from time to time.

“‘Stop with yer constant arse-licking,’ he’d boom. ‘Ye will be the chief after me. Ye need to grow a spine.’

“Raghnall, who was eleven, was playing with a puppy in the other side of the hall. Six-year-old Catrìona was sitting by my mother’s side and working on a small embroidery of her own—a cross. Mother prayed with Catrìona every morning and night, and my sister thought God was one of the family members—though invisible—but kind and protective.

“Sadly, God didn’t manage to protect her from the wrath of Kenneth Og Mackenzie.

“And I…I eyed the chess table. I’d always wanted to play chess, but Father had called me stupid and said that all my huge body was good for would be to become the first meat in a battle. I was unworthy of knowledge, he’d said.”

Rogene shook her head. “That’s such an awful thing to say.”

“He’d done worse. I was so lost in my own thoughts that I wasn’t aware of a heavy glance that landed on me.

“‘Tired of sitting like a log, Angus? Doing nothing?’

“No one looked directly at me or at Father, and yet everyone stilled

“‘What do ye want me to do, Father?’ I asked.