Page 10 of Somewhere Along The Way (Mackinnon #3)

It occurred to him what a good feeling it was to know a sense of family, something he had not felt for a long, long time.

He didn’t say anything, but simply stood there, looking at the lordly old man, trying to put out all the little fires of feeling that seemed to be erupting all over his insides.

Ross couldn’t remember the last time something had twisted his guts with emotion the way being ushered into this man’s presence had.

He was so excited he couldn’t think of anything to say.

Maybe the old man felt that way as well.

Maybe that was why he didn’t say anything either.

All Ross knew was he was being stared at with such intent that it made him feel plumb stupid, like a big lumbering ox, clumsy as all get-out.

All of a sudden he had two hands and two feet that he couldn’t seem to find a place for.

He was afraid to move, afraid of his legs that had gone weak and trembling on him, yet he felt awkward as the dickens just standing there.

“Are you the Mackinnon?” he asked, knowing he sounded a bit simpleminded, the way his voice broke just as he said “ the ” giving it more emphasis than he intended.

The old man’s brows lifted in amusement. “Aye,” he said in a voice that crackled like dry paper. “I’m the Mackinnon, although it surprises and pleases me to hear you address me so.”

He had pleased the old man, and hearing those words sent a whisky warmth shooting throughout his body. “I wish I could claim it was all my doing,” he said, “but the truth is, your friend in New Orleans set me straight about a few things before I left there.”

“I ken advice given isn’t always heeded. The light in which a man receives advice tells a lot about him.”

The two of them were still staring at each other across the distance that separated them.

Ross couldn’t tell too much about his grandfather’s features from this distance, but he was impressed with his height and all-around physical shape.

He was still a formidable-looking figure of a man, and Ross had an inkling he was as feisty as they came.

“Come over here, lad,” the Mackinnon said. “Here. In the light of this window, so I can have a better look at you.”

Ross went to the window and stopped, feeling suddenly breathless and at a loss for anything to say.

The Mackinnon was tall and lanky, with a face as bleak and weathered as the alkali flats that ran along the Rio Grande, but there was something proud and yet touching about him that reminded Ross of a sad song.

Only one word could he use to describe the old man and that was noble , the way a seasoned bear could be called noble, or a wise old buck that had seen too many long winters and survived too many duels for dominance.

Ross might have continued his thinking along those lines, if it hadn’t suddenly struck him that something mighty peculiar was going on here.

Something was happening, something so unbelievable, he couldn’t help wondering if the Mackinnon had been touched and left as speechless by the discovery as he was.

Ross was seldom moved by uncanny things, but looking at the man who he knew now, without a doubt, was his grandfather, it was as if he were looking into some sort of ghostly mirror that shimmered and grew cloudy and gray.

Then he seemed to see the image of himself fifty years into the future.

The grayness shifted and the image began to clear, and he saw that he wasn’t looking at himself, but at his grandfather, and then he understood.

It was his grandfather, but it was also his own face fifty years hence.

The resemblance between the two of them was as amazing as it was surprising—even to a man accustomed to surprises.

The Mackinnon was about the same size and build as Ross, and unless he missed his guess, the old man’s eyes, like his, were such a dark blue they looked almost violet.

Ross felt both dazed and foolish, knowing how intently he stared, yet unable to do anything about it.

He had known only one other person who shared his cleft chin, and that was his brother Nicholas.

He knew now just where it had come from.

Ross swallowed as dryness was sucking the residue of moisture from his throat.

The Mackinnon’s eyes were piercing and direct and they stared hard into his. Ross could see in his grandfather’s face that the striking resemblance between the two of them had touched him and left him shaken.

“He…” The Mackinnon’s voice, overflowing with emotion, broke, but he regained his composure enough that the only sign that he was moved at all was the watering of his eyes. “He is my grandson. You may leave us alone, Robert.”

“Your grandson, Your Grace? Are you sure?”

“Aye,” the duke said so brokenly that Ross wondered if he would be able to continue. “I’m sure. ‘There is little liking where there is no likeness.’ The lad is my grandson. There is no doubt of that.”

Until that moment, Ross hadn’t noticed a tall, slender man standing across the room. The man nodded and left, taking a different door from the one used by the woman called Mary.

“Sit down,” his grandfather said. “We have much to talk about.”

Ross approached the chair, but he didn’t sit down. “What makes you so certain I am your grandson?” he asked. “I could be lying.”

“Aye, you could be. I knew who you were the moment you entered, even before Mary spoke of you.”

“How? How did you know?”

“Many Mackinnons come through those doors. Their presence gives light but no heat, like the sun in winter. You gave not only light, but heat, like…” His voice faltered again.

Without thinking, Ross said, “Like the sun in summer.”

“Aye, like the sun in summer.”

The old man’s words left Ross with a tightness in his throat. He decided it was no more unusual than the absence of the thoughts that should be forming in his mind about now—thoughts that would express the way he was feeling. Thoughts he could never remember having so much difficulty collecting.

Perhaps that was because there were no words to describe the way he felt.

All these years he had been an orphan, and now he had a family, something to inherit besides poverty and no direction.

For the first time in his life he had a purpose, something to work for, something to count on besides always being on the run.

A trembling weakness enveloped him. He held the back of the chair for support, but he did not sit down.

The duke said, “I understand my son…your father…is dead.”

Ross nodded. “Several years ago.”

“And your mother and eldest brother as well.”

“They were both killed at the same time, about a year before my father.”

“And your sister—the one taken by Indians? No word of her?”

“No. Nothing.”

The Mackinnon was silent for a long time. Then he leaned back, the massive leather chair creaking. “Tell me everything you can remember about your family. Begin with your earliest recollections. Leave nothing out.”

Ross sat down. He was silently thinking, his mind going far, far back to his childhood. “This may take some time.”

“Something I am fast running out of, but as long as I’m breathing, you may keep talking.”

Ross told him as much as he knew, as many things as he could remember about his father and mother, up to the time of their deaths, and what had become of him and his brothers since that time.

“I knew most of this,” his grandfather said. “I have quite a bit of information on you and your brothers. You, for instance, because of your undisciplined ways, would have been my last choice.”

“Then we think alike,” Ross said, rising to his feet, “because coming here certainly was mine.”

“You’re honest. As well as outspoken.”

“I have no reason not to be.”

The Mackinnon nodded. “You can sit down. I said you weren’t my first choice. I didna say I was right.”

Ross sat down and his grandfather began to tell Ross the story of his three sons, Angus, Robert, and John, his three daughters, Mary, Elizabeth, and Flora. Ross stopped him. “I thought you only had two sons.”

“I had two sons who outlived the others. My firstborn, Angus, died when he was four. Robert, his wife, and four daughters all drowned when their ship ran aground during a storm. My wife Catriona and my daughter Mary died in a fire in a crofter’s cottage, where they had gone to nurse the sick.

Elizabeth died in childbirth. Flora was the youngest. She was only twenty when she was raped.

Two days later she hung herself. We never knew who violated her.

She never spoke a word after it happened, but something about it all made me think she knew the man who violated her…

knew and preferred death to facing the humiliation of what happened, the pain of revealing the name of the man.

” The Mackinnon paused, his eyes going to a miniature painting of a young woman on his desk.

“She would be thirty-one now, not too many years older than you. I see that surprises you. My wife was considerably younger than I was. Flora was born much later than my other children, and was quite a surprise to all of us. Perhaps that’s why she was so dear to me—the child of my middle years .

‘Mo nighean donn nam meall-shuilean—’ ” His eyes grew misty and he turned away.

“It’s a Gaelic song I used to sing to her: ‘My brown-haired girl with the alluring eyes.’”

“You’ve had a hard time of it,” Ross said. “That’s something I understand. It seems we have that in common, at least.”