Page 79 of The Scottish Duke
“Oh, Alex,” she said, walking to him. She grabbed his arm and pulled him into her sitting room, leading him to the settee. “What’s brought this on? Robbie’s birth?”
He didn’t know. He only knew that this morning, sitting on the edge of the bed and watching Lorna and Robbie, he’d been hit with a knowledge he’d never before had: pain was waiting for him. Pain of such magnitude that he wasn’t sure he could bear it.
“What choice did I have, my dear Alex?” She sat beside him, holding his hand between hers. “I used to pray for death,” she confessed.
At his frown, she smiled. “That only lasted for a week or so. Until I realized that you still needed me. I couldn’t go to my bed and stay there. But there were times in the next few months when it was too tempting to do exactly that.”
He never wanted to cause her pain and shouldn’t have asked the question. He should have dealt with his feelings the best he could rather than bothering her.
Nothing was the same. Up was down and left was right. His world had been turned inside out, but the worst of it was the hint of something terrible just beyond the horizon.
“I once had a dream,” she said. “Your father was alive. He was sitting on that bench near the conservatory.”
“I know the one,” he said.
“He asked me what I was doing with my life. I didn’t get a chance to answer before he vanished. Or I woke up. I can’t remember which.” She smiled. “That dream made me think. I knew I was going to mourn him for the rest of my life, but what else was I going to do with the time?”
She studied the windows and the bright sun streaming into the room. Ever since he was a little boy he’d equated sunlight with his mother. She liked sunny rooms. She loved taking walks on a bright summer day. She smiled and the room lit up.
“I’ve often wondered if gloaming is similar to how ghosts view the world,” she said.
Alex turned and studied the view through the mullioned windows of her sitting room. Night came late in the Highlands in the late spring and full summer. Even in the winter months the gloaming lingered, stretching out its gray fingers to encompass Blackhall and soften the world. Now, however, there was only bright sunlight, the morning still in its infancy.
“Ghosts?” His mother’s words surprised him. “Do you believe in ghosts?”
“We live in Blackhall Castle, my dear son. How can I not believe in ghosts? There’s the Green Lady in the west tower and the Sad Priest in the chapel, to mention only two.”
“The result of hysterical servants,” he said. “I believe some of those stories were gleefully spread by previous occupants of the castle. If everyone who died at Blackhall became a ghost, we’d be overrun.”
“Not everyone becomes a ghost,” she said, her tone perfectly reasonable, as if their conversation were based on a rational idea.
“What’s the criterion for becoming a ghost?”
“Perhaps they were unhappy in life,” she finally said. “Or desperately wish to communicate with the living for some reason.”
“Why? To say good-bye?”
“Perhaps.”
For a moment he wondered if she’d consulted one of those charlatans who promise to contact the dearly departed.
“Do you think my father is a ghost?” he asked gently. “Or Moira or Douglas?”
“No,” she said, “I don’t. Sometimes, though, I wish they were. Each one of them. Isn’t that selfish of me? I should wish them everlasting happiness in Heaven. The truth is, I’d welcome being haunted by my darling Craig and my children.” She turned and stared directly at him. “But I can’t live in the gloaming, Alex. Not like you have.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ever since you were sixteen, my darling son, you’ve been holding yourself aloof from everyone and everything. You’ve been trapped between the living and the dead. As if you were afraid to completely give yourself up to life. As if having feelings of any kind terrified you.”
He started to say something but she raised her hand to silence him.
“I’m not calling you a coward, Alex. Your reaction was understandable, but now I suspect you’re thawing. The sensation is not unlike when your toes go numb from cold. The first feeling is a burning pain.”
“And if I don’t want to feel that much?”
Her smile was tender. “That’s your decision, son. I would hope you choose not to live in the gloaming, but to choose the daylight. To love, fully, completely, and absolutely. You will be hurt. You will feel pain. But, oh, the rewards are worth it.”
She left him without anything to say.
