Page 41

“Aye, as soon as she agrees.” Resting his hip on the edge of his untidy desk, Keane asked, “Why, exactly, is Lorne in a frothin’ dudgeon if ’tis no’ because I cast him from Trentwick?”

Bothan’s bluster evaporated and his shoulders sagged. He looked every bit his seven and sixty years. Older, in truth. “I fear his rage is the result of somethin’ I accidentally let slip.”

Expression hard, he surveyed the study, his gaze lingering on the piles of discarded journals and documents. A muscle ticked in his jaw, revealing his agitation.

Now it was Keane’s turn to be flummoxed. Bothan tended to pacify Lorne’s childish outbursts rather than cause them. And he never apologized for his son’s conduct, but rather made excuses or justified his behavior and actions.

“And ye felt ye needed to warn me, because…?” Keane’s patience had worn dangerously thin. He had a castle full of guests, and several things demanded his attention before tonight’s festivities.

Again, Bothan eyed the whisky decanter wistfully as he tugged one earlobe. “I… I may have revealed that ye are…”

“I am what?” Keane snapped, done with the verbal dancing.

Gulping, Bothan clawed at his soiled, wrinkled neckcloth. His troubled gaze darted back and forth, looking everywhere but at Keane. “Erm, my...son.”

Keane went perfectly still, all of the air whooshing from his lungs, his blood frozen in his veins.

Shite. Shite. Shite.

He wanted to smash something. Break every pane of glass in the windows. Hurl the furniture across the room.

God. God dammit!

It had been repugnant when he believed Gordan his sire, but the knowledge that this… This… Whoreson of a man, a man with no honor or courage or even a smidgeon of decency had sired him. Christ.

He despised the very thought, loathed that he was the spawn of such a devil.

His gaze drilled into his uncle, offering no quarter or mercy, and he recognized the undeniable truth in his contrite expression. Keane flexed his fingers against the urge to throttle this cowardly, craven, despicable bastard of a man. The vile whoremonger who’d raped his mother and kept silent while his twin was forced at blade point to marry her.

Odin’s teeth.

Everything made perfect sense now.

Gordan’s continued denial of despoiling Winifred Kennedy. The ongoing feud between the Buchannan twins. All of it.

Gut-wrenching wrath enveloped him, and, through gritted teeth, Keane managed, “Pray tell, precisely how did that conversation come about?”

Ashen, his face damp, Bothan stumbled to a chair and collapsed into it. He buried his head in his hands, his breathing harsh and irregular. “Lorne was threatenin’ to kill ye for humiliatin’ him. Vowed he’d make yer death look like an accident. He gloated that the duchy would be his since ye werena Gordan’s son after all.”

Lorne had always coveted the dukedom and all that went with it. No doubt in his twisted mind, the dukedom did indeed belong to him. And Keane supposed it did since Gordan hadn’t sired a son. Bothan would’ve inherited and, as his eldest son, Lorne was next in line.

Except, Bothan’s spinelessness and deception had cheated Lorne of what he deemed his right.

“Heartily sick of his envy of ye and his mad ravin’s, I… I snapped. Lost my temper.” His expression defeated and bleak, Bothan lifted his head. “Ye, Keane, are the son I’m proud of, no’ that weak-willed, spoiled piece of horseshite. I was well into my cups, pished in truth, and I told him as much.”

Was the confession supposed to mean something?

Bothan was proud of him?

Keane cursed beneath his breath and, spying his unfinished drink, quaffed back the whisky. “I assume my brother is responsible for this?” He waved his hand in a circle to indicate the wrecked room. “Why?”

He had no doubt Bothan knew the reason.

What had he omitted from his overdue confession?

Bothan didn’t even attempt to misunderstand. Slouching into the chair, he kicked his legs out before him and shut his eyes.

Even now, he took the coward’s way out and didn’t face Keane with his admission. Such disgust riddled him that he couldn’t prevent his lip from curling. The revolting sack of dung slumped before him was his father. My father!