Page 87 of The Scottish Duke
“I’ve never married,” Thomas said.
“No, but you have five little Thomases around.”
“But had I married,” his uncle said, ignoring his comment, “I wouldn’t have left her the minute I married her.”
A chill raced through him. “Are they all right?” he asked, sitting up.
Thomas leaned against the door frame, arms folded. “Do you care?”
“Are they all right, Thomas?”
“Yes, no thanks to you. Your child is growing. He’ll probably have learned to walk before you return home. He knows me. He even smiles when he sees me. No doubt the first word out of his mouth will be ‘Thomas.’”
Alex grabbed his robe and put it on. “Is that why you’re here, to regale me with tales of how avuncular you are with my son? What about my wife? Do you charm her, too?”
“I’m too damn tired to hit you, but just so you know, I want to. I’ve grown to quite like your wife, which is more than you can say.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Oh, I do. You’re a damn fool, and I fault myself that I’ve never noticed it before. You were a damn fool with Ruth and you’re a damn fool with Lorna, only for a different reason.”
Alex grabbed the bottle of whiskey and poured two fingers into the glass on the table.
“You were a fool to put up with Ruth’s behavior, but I’ll bet you never said a word to her, did you?”
“What difference would it have made?”
“Who knows, since you never bothered to try? Sometimes, I wonder if she bedded anything in pants just to get a reaction from you. Something that said you weren’t a cold fish after all.”
“I’m not a cold fish, damn it.”
“Evidently not with Lorna, or you wouldn’t have become a father. Maybe you’re right. I don’t understand why you’re doing everything you can to destroy what she feels for you.”
He took a sip of the whiskey and immediately wished he hadn’t. It burned down his throat. Worse, it reminded him of too many nights of hoping for oblivion, only for it to escape him.
“She won’t hear a word spoken bad about you. She says that you and she weren’t a love match, that you married her only to give Robbie a name. That she understands why you don’t want to return to Blackhall. I’m glad she does because neither your mother nor I do.”
He didn’t have anything to say to that, and he should have. He’d expected this confrontation, in a way. Actually, he’d thought it would occur when he returned to Blackhall and that it would be his mother who lectured him. He’d never anticipated that it would be Thomas or that his uncle would seek him out in Edinburgh. That he’d done something even Thomas found reprehensible was almost laughable.
He wasn’t sure he could explain to either of them. Or even to himself.
He wasn’t the same person around Lorna that he’d always known himself to be. He had no control, witness what had happened the first time he kissed her. And he found himself wanting to kiss her whenever he saw her.
He’d lost his focus. Every time he took someone’s fingerprints, he found himself trying to recall the day Lorna had sat before him encapsulated by sunlight. He didn’t know if he was remembering or forming a picture in his mind of what it had been like, the bright rays finding the gold threads in her hair, her glorious brown eyes enlivened by humor. Her cheeks had turned pink as he regarded her and then held her hand as he’d taken her fingerprints.
No, he was certain no one would understand.
Time hadn’t made the situation easier. Nor had distance. The longer he stayed away, the worse his affliction became. Even whiskey couldn’t take her image away. Or make him stop wondering about her and Robbie.
She wasn’t the first woman he’d ever bedded, even though that one and only occasion with her had been... What could he call it? Incredible? Spectacular? Memorable? Every minute of that night was emblazoned on his memory.
Did she miss him? Had she missed him all these months? He’d counted the days, tried to keep himself occupied, took over six hundred fingerprints, studied what they’d amassed, and checked the clock at least a dozen times an hour.
No time had ever passed as slowly.
“It’s time you came home,” Thomas said.
“Yes.”
