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By Root 1358 0

for this day. I felt his sword pierce my chest, and as I lay in the heather I felt my life blood slowly spilling away, draining all my strength. Ewen took a weapon from his tunic, which he’d retrieved from an earlier battle with the barbarians, and dropped it beside me, leaving me there in a pool of my own blood. The weapon, he told me, would be proof that I died at the hands of an intruder to our land. And as I took what I feared was my last breath, his parting words to me were that, since the child about to be born was not mine, there would be no one left to carry my name. Clan Kerr would die with me. His words were seared into my brain and branded on my heart, fueling the last bit of energy I needed to toss my dirk, which was tucked at my waist. It found his heart. But even that small revenge was not enough for me. Though the angel of death hovered, waiting to claim me, I resisted, determined to remain on this earth long enough to see the child born of this damnable betrayal.”

“Oh, Jamie.” Feeling his pain, Bree reached a hand to him but he stepped back.

“Nay. Ye must hear it all.” He took in a deep breath, as though each word exhausted him. “I watched my bairn being born. A maid washed him and laid him in Flora’s arms. At once Flora began weeping, and she begged the maid not to show him to Ewen when he returned from the field of battle, believing as she did that her lover was still alive.”

“But why would she choose to hide the child from its father?”

Jamie’s eyes narrowed. “Flora had lied to Ewen. The child was actually mine. She said as much to her maid. Hearing her confession, I cursed Flora so loudly, the house shook with my fury. The maids were so terrified, they all fled. And Flora, who recognized my voice, was filled with such fear and remorse, she died on the spot. Her heart simply stopped beating.”

“ And all these hundreds of years, people have believed that you killed her in a rage.”

“It matters not what others believe, Brianna. I care only that you know the truth. And the truth is this.” His voice lowered to a mere whisper. “My rage was so great, my fury so allconsuming, it became a roiling cloud, a mass of energy that refused to be extinguished. I found myself caught up in it, tossed about helplessly like debris in a raging inferno. And when it had burned to cinders, and the dust of it finally settled, I realized that I was still here, locked inside my own misery. And so it has been, for all these years.”

Bree couldn’t keep from asking. “But, Jamie, if Flora was willing to lie to you once, how do you know she didn’t lie again? How can you be certain the baby was yours?”

“I saw him.” Jamie sighed, and a strange light came into his eyes, for the moment his misery forgotten. “A strong, bonny lad. Aye, so bonny. Though Flora had thought him to be not mine, and perhaps she had hoped he was not, she knew the truth once she saw what I saw. He bore the same birthmark that has stained all the Kerr men from the beginning of time.”

He stuck out his hand and on the back of it, between thumb and index finger, Bree saw the small, port wine–colored mark that resembled a half-moon. “ ’Tis our heraldic badge since the earliest of times, when the first of our kin was born with it. It has marked each of us since then. Even some who do not bear the name, because their mothers married outside the clan, wear the mark.”

Bree nodded. “I never got to see my husband’s birthmark. He showed me where it had been, before he’d had it removed by a plastic surgeon.”

“Removed?” Jamie frowned. “Why would a man have his birthright removed?”

“Vanity. Obviously, his birthright meant little to him. Barclay saw it as a flaw.”

“ A flaw.” Jamie shook his head from side to side while muttering under his breath. He turned to fix Bree with a look. “I knew Barclay Kerr as a spoiled, willful lad when he resided here, though I chose to keep my distance from both the lad and his parents, who never came near this poor cottage, considering it beneath their station. What sort of man did this descendant of mine grow up to be?”

She sat back, willing