The MacKinnon’s Bride(33)

“Da... will ye leave her to sing,” Malcom whispered.

Shocked by the request, Iain stared down at his son through the shadows, thinking that surely the bug had addled his brains, or he must have imagined the soft plea. Malcom had never favored coddling. Ever. He’d been a wee man from the first day he could walk and talk.

“I dinna want her to stop,” his son said somewhat desperately.

Though nothing else had managed to accomplish the feat, Malcom’s uncertain request hushed the lass abruptly.

The glade turned silent, his men mute.

“’Tis a verra pretty song,” Malcom said. “Will ye sing me another, Page?”

Shocked by his son’s entreaty, Iain felt her swallow and he dropped his hand to allow her to reply, his heart twisting at the innocent request. The glade seemed to become quieter still as everyone awaited her reply.

For a long instant, she didn’t answer, and Iain held his breath as his son added, a little aggrievedly, “My mammy never sung to me. She went to be wi’ God when I was born. Will ye sing to me, please?”

Iain’s heart twisted and his eyes burned with tears he’d never shed for a wife who had never loved him. “Malcom,” he began, anticipating her refusal.

“Iain, ye heartless cur!” Angus’s gruff voice interjected. “Let the lass—” The old man’s voice broke with emotion, and Iain knew that his eyes stung, as did his own. “Let the lass sing to the wee laddie, will ye?” he finished, his voice sounding more tender than the old coot would surely have liked.

“Aye,” added Dougal. “Let her sing to the wee lad! Malcom never had him someone to sing him a lullai bye.”

Iain swallowed his grief for his son and felt a leaden weight in his heart. “’Tis a fickle lot, ye are,” he groused.

“Can she, da?” Malcom begged. “Can she sing to me?”

“Will she?” Iain amended, frowning. Bloody hell, but he couldn’t make the lass sing if she didn’t wish to—no more than he could have made her stop when she would not.

“Aye,” she answered abruptly, surprising him. Iain’s gaze tried to reach her through the shadows, but she was staring down at his son. “I’ll sing,” she said softly, and there were murmurs of approval from his men.

“What is it you wish me to sing?” she asked Malcom after a moment.

“Och, ye can sing anythin’!” his son declared excitedly, and then crawled over Iain to lie between them, as though it were a perfectly natural thing for him to do.

Iain sat speechless.

For an instant there was no movement from her side of the breacan, and then she lay down next to his son, jerking Iain’s arm out from under him and tugging him down to lie beside them. Iain thought she might have done it on purpose—her way of letting him know that while she’d given in to the son’s request, she didn’t like the father any better for it. He would have grinned over her pique, save that he was too stunned by the turn of events even to think clearly.

“D’ ye know anythin’ Scots?” Malcom asked hopefully, facing her.

“I know one,” she answered, “but not the words.”

“Oh,” Malcom answered, sounding a little disappointed. As he watched the two of them together, Iain’s heart ached for all the things Mairi had deprived him of. Six years old and his son still craved a gentle voice to lull him to sleep. He couldn’t help but wonder what else Malcom craved.

What had he missed? And had he done things right? No one had been there to tell him otherwise, and he’d just done what he could—what he knew to do. What if he’d not been a good father to Malcom all these years?

He coughed lightly, telling himself it was the bug that still scratched his throat, and not grief that strangled him.

“I-I can hum it,” the lass said, and began, a little hesitantly.

For an instant Iain was too benumbed to make out the voice, and less the melody. And then it became clearer, and the ballad penetrated the fog of his brain.

His heartbeat quickened.

From where did he know that song?

Hauntingly familiar, and yet so strange coming from the lass’s English lips, he couldn’t make it out, though he tried.

As she continued to hum, the memory tried to surface from the blackness of his mind, achingly dulcet, and yet so hazy and indistinct, he couldn’t bring it fully to light; a woman’s voice... so familiar and soothing...

Not Mairi’s voice, for he’d never heard her sing a note in her life.

Not Glenna either.

Whose voice?

His heartbeat thundered in his ears, as the words of a forgotten verse came to him.

Hush ye, my bairnie, my bonny wee laddie... when you’re a man, ye shall follow your daddy...