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… and love Sarah would find a new home.
Here.
Among the MacKinnears.
With Keir.
Chapter Sixteen
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Standing in his grandmother’s salon, Keir inhaled deeply of the familiar scent: cedar and pine. This chamber had been his childhood sanctuary, a place to retreat to if he wished for solitude but not loneliness, needing counsel and a kind smile. Now, it brought with it images of warmth and companionship, hot tea and fresh pastries, stories told until dawn and stargazing until his eyes fell closed.
At the memory, a smile stole onto Keir’s face before his family’s chattering voices drew him back to the present. And he blinked, finding himself to be the center of everyone’s attention. Not only his grandmother and his parents were present but also his brothers Duncan and Magnus as well as his aunt and uncle with their son, Hamish.
While Magnus also possessed the MacKinnear eyes—a deep blue like the sea surrounding the islands—and stood about as tall as Keir himself, Magnus was of a more slender build. Keir’s younger brother had never fancied the outdoors. He had always preferred to experience his adventures through the pages of a book. Therefore, most often, Magnus could be found lost somewhere in the fortress’s library or seated under a tree, his eyes glued to a page. Keir was often amazed at the knowledge his little brother had amassed, and he treasured Magnus’s gentle way of communicating what he knew without making another feel inferior.
“Welcome home, Brother,” Magnus exclaimed as he strode into the salon, not bothering to pause or stop. Long strides carried him forward, a wide smile upon his young face, before he embraced Keir tightly. “I missed ye.” He stepped back, grinning at Keir. “I heard a rumor that ye didna come home alone.” His voice rose at the end of the sentence, giving it the touch of a question.
Amusement lingered in Magnus’s gaze, and Keir chuckled. “Aye, ye and everyone else.”
“So?”
“I promise I shall explain everything.”
“We certainly hope so,” his grandmother exclaimed from where she was seated near the fireplace. “After all, we’re all bursting with curiosity, are we not?”
Everyone nodded their heads eagerly, and Keir turned to embrace his aunt Isobel and his uncle Conall as well as their son Hamish, his cousin, who was about Magnus’s age.
Keir’s grandparents had had three children: Keir’s father, Aiden, as well as two daughters, Isobel and Catriona. While Catriona had found love outside of their clan, settling on the mainland, Isobel had married a MacKinnear man and remained upon their island all her life.
Once everyone was seated near the fire, all eyes turned to Keir, the expression on their faces one of checked curiosity. Keir laughed. “I feel honored to see ye all take such interest in my life,” he remarked teasingly, then moved toward his grandmother. “Grandma Edie sends her love and asks ye to take care of her girls.”
His grandmother chortled. “That’s Edie! She never beat around the bush! Never worried for fancy words!” An almost wistful smile came to her face. “Grandma Edie,” she murmured, then shook her head, chuckling. “It is odd to hear you call her that. As old as we’ve gotten, I always think of her as the young girl who told me not to worry and trust that everything would turn out all right.” Something deeply enchanted rested in her eyes as her mind no doubt traveled back to the time she spoke of. Then, though, she blinked, and her gaze focused upon Keir, the touch of a frown creasing her forehead. “Is her hair all gray?” Rather absentmindedly, her right hand rose and touched her own, the dark, almost-black strands streaked with silver.
Everyone chuckled good-naturedly.
“More or less.” Despite his grandmother’s teasing words, Keir could tell that she missed her old friend dearly but chose to remember the good things they had shared instead of dwell upon the many moments they had been apart.
“Now,” Keir’s father began, slapping a hand upon his knee, “are we ever to hear this story? Tell us, why did the famous Grandma Edie send for ye! I must say I dunna care for her secret keeping!” He grinned, then reached out and grasped his wife’s hand, pulling her close as they all settled in to listen.
Keir could not say that he cared for Grandma Edie’s secret keeping, either; yet that had never discouraged the woman. “Well, quite frankly, Grandma Edie wanted my help in breaking an engagement.”
Rather stunned expressions met Keir. “An engagement?” his Aunt Isobel inquired, exchanging a frown with Keir’s mother. “Grandma Edie was engaged?”
Keir laughed. “No, not her engagement. Sa-Miss Mortensen’s.”
At Keir’s slip of the tongue, hushed silence fell over the room, and he could see that each and every member of his family knew or, at least, suspected the truth. “And why did Sa–Miss Mortensen,” Magnus asked with a wink, “wish to end her engagement?” He paused, then continued a second before Keir could reply. “And why on earth did she need help to do so?” He looked at their grandmother as though asking for support. “Are engagements harder to break in England than they are here?”
Their grandmother chortled. “Among theton? Most definitely! It is simply not done… except for, perhaps, in rather rare and unusual circumstances, and even then, it does leave a bitter aftertaste that might haunt those involved for the rest of their lives.”
Keir nodded in agreement with his grandmother’s words. “Sarah’s parents were severely in debt,” he explained, abandoning all attempts at concealing his close connection to her, “and so,naturally, they sought a beneficial match, seeing her betrothed to a… vile man.” Try as he might, Keir knew he failed to conceal his contempt for Lord Blackmore.
“Without her consent?” his mother demanded, the outrage upon her face suggesting quite clearly that she would never have dreamed of forcing a match upon her own children.
Keir nodded. “From what Grandma Edie explained, this was not the first match they had planned for her. There had been others, all prevented because of the Whickertons’ involvement. Yet they knew, at some point, they might not be able to interfere in time, and thus, Grandma Edie devised this plan in order to see Sarah permanently safe from her parents’ matchmaking.”
His family nodded in agreement; their eyes fixed upon him as they waited for Keir to continue. “So, what plan was this?” Magnus inquired, his blue eyes aglow with excitement, as if he were reading one of his favorite adventure stories. “And what was yer involvement?”
