CHAPTER 6
DUNDEE, MAY 1827
Mother was not so unsure about my future.
“Well now,” she said when I sobbed out my story and sat at the table in passive, damp-faced misery. “It seems as if Master Kenneth Fairweather has been leading a false life with you.”
I nodded, wordless and with no tears left in me.
“I never liked that man,” Mother said, in complete contrast to her usual declarations of Kenny’s sterling qualities.
I nodded, not caring about her inconsistencies.
“I’d like to do something about him,” Mother said. “I’d like a stern word with that sailor.”
Strangely, I was perversely pleased to hear my mother in such a taking. Ever since father had died, she had been listless, working without enthusiasm and unemotionally accepting anything that life threw at us. Now, with her daughter
