Gregor glanced back, toward Balfour Hall.
It was still too early, so he went inside.
The gloomy interior of Margaret Mackie’s cottage was just as he remembered it, uncannily so. A fire burned in the grate, shedding enough light to see that her low wooden chair was in the same position, to one side of the fire, where she would be able to see the window from her seat. Next to it was the wooden stool he’d sat on as a young lad when he visited.
Margaret made him take the chair, while she continued informing him about everyone in the village. All the while Gregor yearned to be on his way to Balfour Hall—to Jessie.
Eventually the old woman sat on the stool, and studied him quietly. “You have a scar.”
With a wry smile, he nodded. “I do.”
“You’ve not come home to stay, have you, lad?”
“I think not, Cousin Margaret. I have a worthwhile life as a mariner.”
“Why did you come back now?”
Lord, she was an inquisitive type. But now that she had started on him, he recalled that about her.
What could he say? “It was time for me to see the place again and stare it in the face.” It was partly the truth, and he realized that now because Jessie had forced him to it. He regretted the way he had treated her afterward.
“After Da’s death I fled. I thought I had to leave or I would continue to see that image of him…hanging there, every day of my life. As it turned out, the memory of it traveled with me.”
“There’s no escaping something like that.”
They sat in silence for a moment, both of them remembering Hugh Ramsay and his untimely death.
“Now, Gregor, before you take your leave and disappear once more, there is something I need to say. Your mother would never forgive me if I did not take this opportunity to tell you something that she wished you to know when you reached the age of twenty-one.”
Gregor glanced at the door yet again, eager to be on his way to Jessie. What nonsense was this that Margaret had to tell him? No doubt some sentimental message that his mother had left on her deathbed, something his father would have frowned upon. “Were you with her when she died?” he asked, humoring her.
“Aye, but I’d known this since before you were born.”
Her cryptic comments barely distracted him from his need to get up to Balfour Hall and ensure that Jessie was safe. This was not what he’d expected to transpire this night, and he was beginning to grow impatient. Yet he knew that he owed his relative this time. Even so, he felt sure that any messages from his mother would be e
mbellished by the romantic reflections of a weary spinster over the intervening years.
She reached for his hand and held it tightly. “This will come as a dreadful shock to you, but I believe that I am the only living person who knows this, so I must tell you now while I have the chance. Hugh Ramsay was a good man, and he brought you up well, but it was not him who was responsible for you coming into this world.”
Her words made no sense. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Gregor, Hugh Ramsay was not your father.”
Gregor shook his head dismissively. “Surely you are mistaken?”
She seemed put out and even insulted by that remark. “No, I am not. Don’t forget that your mother and I lived together as sisters, before she was wed. When she fell pregnant, it was meself she turned to.”
Margaret reached for her flask of whisky and poured another dram into the mug he held in his hand. “Your real father…well, he was off in Edinburgh plotting against the English by the time she found out. It would be weeks, even months before he returned.”
She shook her head and the look in her eyes was distant, as if she had traveled back to that moment. “It was a dreadful time for your mother, God rest her soul. She didn’t sleep or eat, fretting over it. I feared she would lose the child.” Awkwardly, Margaret glanced his way, returning from her memories. “Hugh Ramsay had been attempting to court her for a long while.”
Gregor’s mind raced as he tried to come to terms with the news. He wanted to deny it, but at the same time he remembered how people would joke about the fact he stood a good head higher than his father by the time he was fourteen. They were close—no son could wish to be closer to his father—but physically they were very different. Hugh had told him to ignore it, and he had. Gregor had always assumed his characteristics were inherited from his mother’s line.
“A young woman with a child has no other option, Gregor. She married Hugh, and she and I vowed that we would be the only ones who ever knew any different.”
“Da did not know?”
“I think he may have guessed, but he was a good man.” His cousin rested her hand on Gregor’s arm. “He brought you up as his own.” She considered him quietly for a long moment. “Sadly for him, your real father still wanted your mother, and he was a jealous man…a cruel man.”