Page 35 of A Constant Blaze

“I’m Malcolm, the lady’s husband,” he said, and her heart seemed to jump into her throat. “Which makes me, I believe, your father.”

Gormflaith couldn’t breathe. She could only stare.

“You?” she whispered. Her legs seemed to be moving without permission, one after the other toward him. Blood sang in her ears so loudly, she wondered if she were dreaming. He hadn’t come with the boys days ago when all was prepared for him. Why had he come now? If it was even him.

He stretched out his hand quickly, almost as if he couldn’t help himself. She stared at that long, slender hand. If she touched it, she would know.

She wrenched her gaze back up to his face. She’d never seen such naked, boiling emotion. Longing was easy enough to recognize, as was the peculiarly intense joy, all shot through with doubt, even fear, and hope.

Even before she touched him, she knew.

Somehow, she was squeezing his hand between both of hers, pressing it to her lips as her tears dripped on his knuckles. His other hand reached to the back of her head, drawing her against his strong, hard chest in the gentlest embrace she’d ever imagined.

“Father,” she got out on a sob. “Father.”

*

“Where is yourmother?” The words seemed to be torn from him, even if they sounded deliberately light.

Gormflaith drew back at last, drinking in every feature of his face. Even with the tears still threatening, she couldn’t stop smiling.

“South. She should be back today or tomorrow. I was meant to be with Donald, but I was worried about her and came back.”

“Worried?” he interrupted. “Why?”

Gormflaith held his gaze. “You didn’t come.”

His eyes fell, then returned to hers. “Is she angry with me? Hurt? Are you?”

“Not visibly,” Gormflaith replied, driven to defend her mother from the stranger who was her father. She refused to discuss her own feelings, which were far too jumbled to sort out. “But you didn’t come home. She moved heaven and earth for you. All my life, she’s moved heaven and earth for you. And you couldn’t even come to your own feast. She deserves better.Visiblybetter.”

A rueful smile flickered over his face and was gone. “She always deserved better. I can acknowledge my ill behavior, to you and to her. I will even freely apologize for it as much as you like. But I can’t explain it.” His arm slid away from her, and he began to walk toward the big table on the dais. “I thought that when I got here, she would understand better than me. She usually did.”

He hadn’t expected her to have gone.

“She takes care ofallthe earldom,” Gormflaith said, following him. “Not just the bits that feed us most.” She caught up with him at the table, which was made of oak and polished to within an inch of its life. His hand slid over it, perhaps trying to remember if it was the same one he left.

“She doesn’t know you, Father,” Gormflaith blurted. “You don’t know her.”

Again, the half smile flickered and vanished. “It is back to first impressions,” he agreed. “And I have begun badly. The last time, it was she who did. Did she ever tell you about our first meeting?”

Gormflaith shook her head, her eyes widening as he began to talk, vividly conjuring up the image of the girl in men’s clothing who’d deliberately shot her betrothed. And yet Gormflaith had difficulty recognizing that defiant, turbulent girl in her stern, tranquil mother.

By the time he’d finished on Halla’s confession, he was sitting in her mother’s chair, his strong hands resting on the carved arms. There were many scars crisscrossing his right knuckles, a swordsman’s scars like Adam’s and Donald’s, and they weren’t all faint with age. Had he fought, or just trained, with his captors in Roxburgh?

“Who sits in that chair?” he asked, nodding to the other throne-like edifice beside him.

“Donald, usually. Or Adam. It is yours.”

He nodded, but it hadn’t really been what he was asking. The MacHeths ruled indisputably in Ross. But in twenty years, who could blame Halla if she had taken a lover to ease her burden? Had he?

This was not her business. It was his and her mother’s.

He stirred. “Where are your brothers?”

“Donald’s gone north to adjudicate some boundary dispute. Adam is in Tirebeck. You and I are the only family here. Oh, and little Adam!” she added, brightening. “Would you like to meet your grandson?”

“I insist upon it,” her father said promptly, springing to his feet in a manner that allowed her a glimpse of the quick, reckless young man her mother must have loved to distraction.

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