Chapter Four #2
Cullen ignored him. ‘Whatever your plan for that lass, father, you should think twice. Trust me. Lowri Strachan is not going to do anything you want her to do, and her brother will take your head for kidnapping his sister.’
‘Kidnapping! That lass stole from me, her and those two Strachan lads, and she’ll pay for it tomorrow when she will go to the magistrate and be tried and punished for her crime.’
‘You cannot be in earnest. Let it go. If you swallow your pride and send her back to her brother, he will owe you a debt. That is something you can use. Perhaps you can build an alliance in time.’
Griffin stood and bellowed, ‘I don’t want a bloody alliance with that cur.
I want him to suffer, as he has made me suffer.
I want to ruin what he loves, turn his happiness to bitterness in his throat until it chokes him.
I told all and sundry about that marriage to Catherine.
Strachan humiliated Clan Macaulay, made me a laughing stock, and I’ll not let it lie, not when his sister has dropped in my lap like a ripe apple falling from a tree. ’
‘She didn’t drop into your lap. You stole her. And he’ll come looking for her.’
‘He doesn’t know she’s here,’ said Allard.
‘The man is resourceful. When his sister goes missing, he will scour the West March looking for her.’
Allard sneered, ‘That slattern has a reputation of scampering about the Marches as she pleases. So she’ll not be missed for a while.
And she’s so wild that Strachan had to send her to a convent to tame her, and it did nought.
She ran away and has been reiving for her brother ever since.
There is even talk that she whored herself for Black Eaden. ’
That gave Cullen pause. Black Eaden was a distant cousin to the Strachans, and his violence was only matched by his appetite for flesh and pleasure.
Could that lass have succumbed, as so many others had?
Perhaps she was not as innocent as he thought.
Despite this, Cullen had a strange urge to protect Lowri Strachan’s reputation, if only to annoy Allard.
‘Half the lasses of the Marches whored themselves for Black Eaden, and it is probably a vicious rumour.’
‘Well, we can’t ask Eaden. He met the end of a noose in the East March, but a few weeks ago.’
‘Good. No one will lament that bastard’s passing.’
‘All Strachans should meet such an end,’ said Allard. ‘That bitch’s brother will not come looking if he thinks she has run off. And if he set her to stealing from us, he would have been beating down our door by now. So Strachan is ignorant of his sister being our guest.’
‘Guest! Have you no shame? People talk. He will find out.’
‘Then maybe we should just get rid of her, bury her deep,’ snarled Allard.
‘Over my dead body,’ said Cullen.
‘Gladly,’ spat his brother.
Cullen turned to his father. ‘Why not punish those lads in her stead and heal the breach?’
‘Send them to the magistrate so they can hang? A little cruel, brother,’ sneered Allard.
‘I meant take the skin off their backs and send them packing.’
‘They will come back to steal from me again,’ howled Griffin.
‘I’ll not free them, for they are the means to control that hoyden, Lowri.
I gave them a choice between a noose and spilling their tale, and they chose life.
They said that lass told no one she was reiving, so no one knows they are here. ’
Griffin would not meet Cullen’s gaze, a sure sign he was lying. ‘I don’t believe you. Have you had them killed?’
‘And damn my soul with murder? I have them nice and snug, where no one will find them.’
‘Then stop this madness and show you are the better man than Strachan. Show mercy.’
‘No,’ spat Griffin. ‘A man’s name is everything, and if Peyton Strachan can spit on mine, then so can others. There has to be retribution. I will send the lass before the magistrate tomorrow and let the King’s law judge her.’
‘And what if she gets off? A bonnie lass like that reiving. They may not believe you, Father. I’m not sure I do, and then all the wrath of Strachan will be for nothing.’
‘She’ll not get off,’ said Allard. ‘Our father has the magistrate by the balls.’
‘Aye. Barbridge wants our Catherine’s hand in marriage, so he’ll do our bidding, and that Strachan bitch will get what’s coming to her.’
‘So you’ll sacrifice the bonniest of your nieces to that old lecher for the sake of striking at Peyton Strachan, and then retribution will follow, and it will be bloody.’
‘The man hates me anyway, Cullen, so what’s the difference?
We are barely hanging on here. The crops failed, and our clan is starving.
We are harried endlessly by the English Warden, livestock stolen on his orders, and farmers threatened.
And I have debts, son. We needed that alliance with the Strachans, and he cut me loose, so he must pay. ’
Cullen stifled a sigh. ‘I don’t know why I bothered to come home. You can both die well enough without my help.’
‘You don’t know how it is, gallivanting off to Ireland,’ said Griffin.
‘Where you sent me, Father, remember?’
‘Times are hard. We took that bitch and damn the consequences, for we are already at war with Strachan. He humiliated us before all the clans of the West March because he thinks us of no importance, something to be brushed aside and spat on. He is our enemy and always has been.’
‘We are in danger,’ said Allard. ‘Our wee sisters will suffer.’
Cullen glanced at Mabel, but she just stared into the fire as if she was alone in the room. She was mother to Cullen’s four half-sisters, sweet, gentle lasses. He could not let them suffer his father’s feud.
‘We need every sword we have, if this goes awry,’ whined Griffin. ‘Scarcross is your birthright. It must be protected.
‘Not mine, Allard’s. I am your bastard, not a true son, nor have you ever treated me like one.’
Griffin rose and bellowed, ‘If you had ever behaved like one, I would have. But, no. You insist on defying me at every turn, carousing and whoring and brawling your way through life.’
‘Aye, just like my father.’
‘Even now, all I get is defiance. You never yield an inch, do you?’
‘In that, I take after my mother.’ Mentioning his mother was like putting a spark to gunpowder. The dogs whimpered and tucked their tails between their legs, and Mabel got up and quickly scurried out.
Griffin bellowed like an angry bull. ‘I will not have her name mentioned in my house. She was a blight on my soul, riven with madness and spite, and you have that taint in you, lad. Her malice runs through you like a black river.’
‘Careful, old man, lest that malice turns on you,’ snarled Cullen.
Cullen rushed from the hall before he did murder, but Griffin’s words followed him. ‘I will do as I please with that lass. Make your choice, stand by Clan Macaulay, or I will never see you again.’
Cullen’s mind raced, his every breath heavy with impotent rage.
This could only end with blood being shed.
Would some of it be Lowri Strachan’s? She would face a brutal reckoning at his father’s hands.
He despised the pity that twisted his gut, for he held no love for the Strachans.
When last they were allies, the Macaulays had been dragged into a fight against the Glendennings and Bannermans.
The Strachans and Macaulays had been humiliated and defeated, and that resentment still burned bright.
But that young lass was not part of that fight, and when Cullen had first seen her in her miserable prison, he had seen himself, mirrored in her eyes – an animal in a trap.
Someone needed to take her part, and why not him? It would irritate his father, enrage Allard, which was always gratifying, and maybe he could avert a disastrous clan feud, which, in the unforgiving Marches, could last for generations.
His father had put him between Lowri Strachan and her doom. And Cullen could not shake the nagging feeling that there was more to his father’s plotting than blind revenge.