Page 126 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
Thomas had returned to Lucilla’s side. When they reached the lawn, their party stepped out of the stream of mourners returning from the grave and halted. Thomas looked at Niniver; her head was still downbent. “You did well with the eulogy—he would have been pleased.”
Niniver drew in a breath and raised her head. Meeting Thomas’s gaze, she inclined her head. “Thank you. I know you cared for him as I did.”
Thomas’s features were hard, a rigid mask concealing his feelings. “His passing marks the end of an era—you were right in saying that there will never be a Carrick such as he.”
Niniver nodded. Her gaze shifted to Nolan where he stood in the center of the lawn, receiving the condolences of the more far-flung gentry who had yet to speak with him. “I fear that in that, you’ll be proved correct.”
Marcus had noted the direction of her gaze.
Thomas had followed it, too. “What’s the general feeling in the clan over Nolan becoming The Carrick?”
Marcus glanced at the others, but no one seemed to register that that was an odd question for Thomas to ask Niniver—Manachan’s daughter—yet from all Marcus had seen and heard from Thomas and Lucilla, it seemed that Niniver was, indeed, the Carrick most closely connected with the clan, the one to whom the rest of the clan would speak freely.
Niniver shrugged and settled the black shawl she’d worn over her hair on the long walk to the church about her shoulders. “Despite his gruff ways, everyone in the clan liked and respected Papa. I don’t know of any who liked or trusted Nigel—if he’d become The Carrick, there would have been trouble at some point. But Nolan was always in Nigel’s shadow—it was Nigel who made all the decisions no one liked—so overall, everyone is withholding judgment while they wait to see how, to use Sean’s words, Nolan shapes up.”
Like Niniver, Thomas was studying Nolan as he interacted with other local landowners.
After a moment, Thomas stirred. He looked down and caught Niniver’s gaze. “If you and the clan need help, know you have only to ask.”
Lucilla added her voice in support of that offer, as did Richard and Catriona, who had joined them in time to hear it.
As did Marcus.
Niniver cast them all a small, grave smile, at the last glancing rather shyly at Marcus, then she ducked her head. “Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.” Raising her head, she looked across the lawn, then drew in a deeper breath. “And now, if you will excuse me, I should join the others. No doubt they’ll soon be wanting to return home.”
With murmurs of farewell, they let her go. As Thomas, Lucilla, and his parents moved on to speak with others, Marcus hung back, watching Niniver as she found Norris in the crowd, linked her arm with his, and drew him to join Nolan. But Nolan she didn’t touch, not even his sleeve; it seemed to Marcus that there was a schism there, between Niniver and Norris on the one hand, and Nolan on the other.
It had been agreed—in the vague way that consensus among the families of the district was usually reached—that given the nature of Manachan’s death, his wake should be private, restricted to the clan. Feelings within the clan were unsettled and potentially difficult; best that the clan as a whole had a chance to get together and come to a consensus of their own, literally in the wake of Manachan’s passing, when his steadying influence was still fresh. No one in the district wanted to see the Carricks riven by factional disputes.
Watching Niniver, and studying Norris, and even more Nolan, most especially how Nolan seemed to struggle to find his social feet with the others of the district—and how his expression blanked and he all but withdrew when faced with members of his own clan—Marcus had to wonder, as, from her earlier repetition of Sean’s words, he suspected Niniver was wondering, too, just how Nolan would shape up.
And what would happen if he didn’t.
* * *
Four weeks later, Marcus took a small pack of his dogs out hunting.
Although he carried his gun, he wasn’t truly intent on bringing down any game; the excursion was merely an excuse to go walking in the peace and soothing silence of the forests.
With his twin married, things were changing in the Vale. Thomas was working diligently alongside Richard, learning all the details of how the estate was run. Although until Lucilla’s marriage, Marcus had stood as his father’s second in all things, from the moment of his birth, he and everyone else had known that the future management of the Vale was not a role that would ultimately fall to him.
And he didn’t begrudge Thomas the role now; indeed, he was quietly amused by how single-mindedly his new brother-in-law was throwing himself into it—into learning and understanding all and everything about it.
When Richard finally passed on the reins, the Vale would be in good hands.
That change, however, had left Marcus essentially roleless—without any defined purpose to his life.
And that, he had discovered, didn’t suit him—any more than such an existence would have suited his twin, Thomas, his parents, or any other of his kin.
He now recognized the driving need to have a role, a defined purpose, as a deep-seated trait that made Cynsters, and all like them, what they were.
He’d talked to his mother and he’d talked to Lucilla—not that he’d actually had to find many words for her; she’d understood why he’d come to her before he’d opened his mouth. Both she and his mother had “looked,” each in their own way—Catriona by scrying, Lucilla simply by closing her eyes and consulting—but neither had been able to shed any light on his fated future beyond the facts that it lay, if not in the Vale then close by, somewhere within the Lady’s lands, and that his time to claim it was not yet.
Not yet. And, courtesy of Lucilla’s discoveries, they now knew that “the Lady’s lands” extended far further than they’d previously thought.
So in reality, he didn’t know anything beyond the fact that he did, indeed, have a fated future—some role the Lady intended him to fill, presumably needed him to fill—and that it wasn’t about to find him yet.
In lieu of stepping into that role any time soon, he’d spent the last few weeks thinking, and had devised an interim plan. If he didn’t have some challenge to sink his teeth into, he would go insane; when he’d explained his idea to his father, Richard had understood and had wholeheartedly agreed.
