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That stopped him “What?”

“You’re going to wear a hole in ently “Come and sit down” Mary s cold”

“That excellent pot of coffee which is surely decaffeinated, as your doctor ordered Right?”

“Right,” Mary said blithely, lying through her teeth The doctor had ordered her to give up the creaive up the coffee but suggestions were only that, nothing more “Will you have a slice of Jenny’s raisin cake?”

Keir sat down in the blue velvet chair opposite hers and shook his head as he accepted the delicate porcelain cup and saucer she handed him

“Thank you, but no Coffee’s all I want”

Keir took a sip of coffee One taste, and he flashed her a look through narrowed eyes that said he suspected the breas the real stuff She returned his gaze hat she hoped was charhed and sat back in the chair, all but dwarfing it with his size Looking at him she wondered, as she so often did, how she and her Ruarch could have produced such a son Such sons, she thought, correcting herself They were all so big Not that her Ruarch hadn’t been big, too, and wonderfully brawny until almost the end, when he’d been so thin that it had broken her heart to see him…

“Mother?”

Lord, she missed him Six years, and still she reached a hand out to touch hiether, she and Ruarch You didn’t meet a man when you were barely seventeen, marry him two months later, bear him six children and not feel as if a piece had been carved out of your heart when you lost him…

“Mother?”

Mary blinked away the past and smiled at her son `Yes, love Have you decided you’d like some cake after all?”

“Don’t try to divert ain”

“What look?” Mary picked up a knife fro tray the maid had set on the low table between the two chairs “Just a little slice, to keep Jenny happy”

“Not even a crue of command “None for you, either, Mother You knohat the doctor said”