“Uncle Thorne said I could keep her.” Andrew found his courage, hurling the argument from behind her shoulder.
Mena squeezed her eyes shut. It was the worst excuse he could have made. She knew what she would find when she again opened them and faced the rage that had ignited behind the laird’s eyes, watching his fists curl into white knuckles with trepidation.
“I doona give a bloody shite what Gavin told ye,” he roared, gesturing wildly. “I’m yer father, and I already told ye, nay.” He thumped his chest for emphasis.
“Some father,” Andrew muttered.
Every muscle in Mena’s body tensed.
“What did ye say?” Liam took a dangerous step forward, all his fire turning to ice as he regarded his son as though he were a stranger. An intruder.
“With a father like ye, I’d rather be an orphan,” Andrew spat, and must have clenched his grip in his anger, because the puppy let out a whimper.
“Andrew,” she gasped, though her eyes flew to the laird’s face to gauge his reaction. The rage hadn’t deserted him, but something tormented and bleak had dampened the fire there.
“That’s right.” Andrew’s voice gathered strength and volume, yet shook with anger and probably more than a little fear. “I wish all the time that ye’d never come home. Or that ye’d died at war so that all the years we spent missing ye, hating ye for leaving us, would have meant something.”
That was it. She’d had about enough of hotheaded Highlanders. It was time for cooler British sensibility to make order of this mess.
Mena whirled on Andrew, drawing herself up to her full height, which at this point was still barely taller than him. “Don’t you ever talk to your father in such a manner. How dare you?”
His mouth fell open in the exact gesticulation of shock his father had demonstrated only moments ago.
Mena wagged her finger, much as her beloved father had done the rare times he’d had to scold her. “He lives to protect your legacy. To protect you and keep you safe and happy and you simply refuse. He is a soldier—no—is a hero, and though you’ve made sacrifices as his son, he deserves your respect if not your ardent admiration.” Grief over the loss of her own father seized her so acutely, she wanted to collapse beneath the weight of it. She was able to fight the tears that threatened by seizing hold of her righteous indignation. “One day, you’ll have outlived him and, God willing, you’ll have children of your own. You’ll see what is out there in that dark, cruel world. You’ll know the horrors that people can inflict upon each other, and what dastardly things he protected you from. There will be so many words you’ll want to say. So much gratitude to express and so many questions to ask, and an understanding that you’ll want to share with him and … he won’t be there anymore. So you will take Rune and march yourself to bed, and when you wake up in the morning, you will draft the most heartfelt apology you’ve ever given in your life, do you understand me, Andrew Mackenzie?”
Silence jangled about in the hall until she planted her fists on her hips.
“Well?”
After a moment, the boy nodded mutely.
“And you.” She directed her wrath back at the Mackenzie laird, who regarded her as though she’d become an oddity he’d never before seen. Astonishment smothered his anger, before his eyes dipped to her breasts once again.
Crossing her arms, she scowled at him. “Don’t you understand that there is nothing better for a lonely child than a loving pet? Perhaps if you’d had the company and unconditional regard of such a sweet dog you wouldn’t be such an incurable ogre all the time.” His lashes flicked down, shadowing his glare with the same boyish petulance his son had conveyed.
“Now.” She stood between the two males staring at identical points on the carpet. “You are drunk.” She gestured to Ravencroft. “And you are tired.” She pointed to Andrew. “And we all need to deal with this after a good night’s sleep. So off to bed with both of you, or so help me…” She let her own threat trail off, mostly because she hadn’t the first idea what recourse she would take should one of them disagree with her.
Liam lifted his dark eyes to pin her with the most peculiar stare for a breathless moment before he about-faced with the precision of a brigadier general, and marched away.
Mena turned back to Andrew, who now regarded her with eyes as round as tea saucers.
Wordlessly, she pointed to his room, and followed him inside when he dragged the toes of his shoes with the air of a man being led to the gallows.
“I didna mean it,” he said after a long while as Mena bustled in and smoothed his rumpled bedclothes before yanking them aside, needing an active vocation as an outlet.
“I know you didn’t,” she said crisply, though her ire was beginning to cool. A part of her was astonished at her own actions. What a mouse she’d been her entire life. And here she’d stood up to not one, but two people. Men, even.
One of them who famously was wont to kill people who angered him, so she was going to count that as double.
“Do ye think he knows?” Andrew set the subdued puppy on the floor and she plunked her little bottom on the rug with a whine. “That I truly doona wish him dead.”
“I think so,” she finally soothed, fluffing the pillow on his bed. “Your words were cruel, and I think they wounded your father. But he of all people understands that we all say things we don’t mean when we’re angry.”