Chapter 8 #2
Braden could be as dangerous as Sin, but there was an aura of irrepressible humor and fun about Braden that drew her into his charisma.
He took nothing from anyone, and yet he gave so much to those who knew him.
Everyone in the clan, when they weren’t ready to kill him over a dalliance, liked the warrior.
In truth, she’d never heard a word against him unless it involved his lust.
If only she could understand what it was about men, and Braden in particular, that drove them from bed to bed. Was it ever possible for a single woman to satisfy a man? Even Anghus, as much as he had loved his wife, had slept with another woman while he was away in Ireland.
Over and over, she tried to think of one man who had never cheated on his woman. And to her dismay, she couldn’t think of any.
Surely, there must be one, somewhere?
As she pondered possible men, they walked on in silence. After a time, Sin started mumbling beneath his breath.
“What was that?” Braden asked.
“What?” Sin turned his head to look back at his brother.
“What did you just say?”
“I was again cursing your ill-bred Scotsmen and wishing myself home.”
Braden shook his head. “I swear you grumble more than an old man. Tell me, do you complain so around Henry?”
“Nay, I don’t have to. No one in England is stupid enough to try my patience.”
Braden laughed softly, then spoke to Maggie. “I wonder how many Englishmen are lying in their graves because they dared to look askance at him.”
Maggie agreed. “Your brother is a strange man.”
Braden laughed louder.
“What?” she asked, wondering what he found so amusing.
“I was just thinking how each of us has our own role in life. Lochlan is the sensible one. Ewan the serious one. Kieren was the passionate one. Sin the dangerous one, and I... I am the wicked one.”
His summation was perfect. “And you relish your role, don’t you?”
Those greenish-brown eyes sparkled. “No doubt I will one day burn for it, but aye. Life is too short to spend it moping about. Look at Sin.”
She did. With his handsome brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed, Sin looked as if he were ready to kill the next person who annoyed him.
Braden continued talking. “Sin is one of the wealthiest men in all of England, with holdings stretching from Canterbury to Scotland to the Holy Land. He is one of the few men alive who can call Henry by name to the king’s face, and yet he is brooding at best, angry at worst. He spends his entire life completely alone and isolated from everyone. ”
Braden shook his head. “I couldn’t stand to live that way. Any more than I could follow Ewan into the mountains and live like a hermit.”
Maggie understood why Ewan was withdrawn after what had happened with Isobail. But then, he had always been a shy man who preferred isolation to company.
Sin, she didn’t remember all that well. She had scarce been more than a babe when he had been taken by the English. The only real memory she had of him was when he had chased Davis off for calling her names.
“Tell me,” she said softly. “Given how Sin was taken away against his will, why is it he now prefers to dress and act English?”
Braden took a deep breath. He turned his head to look at her and she saw the trouble in his eyes. And the pain.
“When Sin turned four-and-ten, Henry was crowned King of England, and as part of the king’s coronation celebration, Henry allowed the Scottish hostages Stephen had taken to return to their families.”
Maggie frowned. She had never heard that. Nor did it make sense. If Sin could return, why hadn’t he? “Why would Sin choose not to come home?”
A tick started in Braden’s jaw. “He wanted to, but my father refused. He sent word to King Henry that he could keep Sin, as he had no use for a Sassenach son.”
Maggie’s breath caught in her throat. She couldn’t imagine such cruelty. Dear saints, the pain Sin must have felt when he had learned of his father’s response.
Suddenly, her own father’s criticism of her didn’t seem so terrible.
“Why would your father do such a thing? What did your mother have to say over it?”
Braden looked away and she saw the torment in his eyes. And a strange guilt she couldn’t fathom.
“My mother was the reason Sin didn’t return. My father refused to have him in the same house with her.”
“Why?” Maggie asked.
What could make Aisleen not want her son to return to her?
Braden sighed. “Sin’s mother was an English lady my father trysted with the one time he’d gone to London. Sin was conceived just a few short months before Lochlan.”
Maggie flinched at his words. So that was it.
Clenching her teeth, she shook her head in disbelief. Men and their unfaithfulness. How could Braden continue to carry on with women like he did after seeing the consequences of infidelity so close at hand?
Poor Sin to be cast out because Aisleen didn’t want to see the evidence of her husband’s actions.
Her heart heavy, she felt for both of them.
“What of Sin’s mother?”
Braden curled his lip in disgust. “She had no use for him. That was why she’d sent him to live with my father in the first place. She’d decided years ago that Sin was an embarrassment to her.”
“So, he was discarded by both his parents?”
“Aye. He is a bitter man, but ‘tis well understandable.”
Maggie agreed. Now she understood the hostile look Sin had directed at Aisleen when she had appeared in the kirkyard.
He must hate her passionately.
She couldn’t imagine the way he must have felt when both his parents turned him out. ‘Twas more than any soul should have to bear.
Looking at Braden, and the pain in his eyes, she wondered what he truly thought of his parents. And in her heart, she knew it must sting him too.
Braden walked in silence as he remembered when Sin had been forced from his home.
To this day, he couldn’t quite forgive his mother for her deplorable actions. How any woman could turn a child, even one not her own, over to a mortal enemy was beyond him.
It had been on that very day that he had decided never to marry.
Should any child ever show up claiming to be his, Braden would welcome it with open arms. He would have no wife to hate it. No woman to badger him into an unforgivable act.
Worse was the unrelenting guilt in his soul that Sin had been the one his father gave up that day. For in his heart, he knew that as the youngest son, he should have been the one to leave, and Sin as the eldest, should have been the one to stay in Scotland.
But Braden’s mother had saved him from the English.
Over the years, Braden had often wondered if all women would have done as his mother, or if it had merely been a flaw in her character alone.
“Tell me,” Braden said to Maggie before he thought better of it. “Had you been my mother, what would you have done?”
Indecision played across her face as she thought it over. “I don’t know.”
“So, you would have sent him away as well?”
She looked up at him, her amber eyes pensive.
“I honestly don’t know. On the one hand, I would hate to say that I could ever turn a child out, but it would be hard to have proof of my husband’s infidelity so close at hand.
I can’t imagine what your poor mother must have felt every time Sin came near her.
Still, children are innocent of such things, as none of us ever ask for the gift of life.
” She sighed. “I suppose ‘tis not for me to judge her actions or to say for certain what I would have done unless I’m faced with a similar choice.”
Braden felt his jaw tick at her words. If he lived an eternity, he would never understand how his mother had done what she had. And though he loved his mother, he found her actions that day selfish and cruel.
Maggie adjusted the pack on her shoulder. “You and Sin are terribly close, aren’t you?”
Braden nodded. “In spite of the years we lived apart, we are. Over the last eight years, I’ve traveled to England several times to see him.”
“Is that how you got your English lands?”
Braden grinned. “In part. Henry also wanted a way to assure himself of Highland loyalty should he have need of it. Having me swear fealty for English lands seemed like a good way to make an ally of a powerful clan.”
She smiled gently. The sunlight caught against her freckled face and the softness in her eyes was truly something to behold. “You’re a good man, Braden MacAllister.”
“Am I?” He was amazed she would say such. For some reason, he had the impression she had spent far more time condemning him than praising him.
She looked at him askance. “Now, don’t be thinking anything of that.”
He laughed at the outraged tone of her voice. It was plain she thought he would use her praise to seduce her and that she wouldn’t welcome such a thing. “You don’t think very much of me, do you?”
She furrowed her brow in thought. “I do, and I don’t.”
“What does that mean?”
She stopped walking and turned to look at him. “I know there’s goodness in you, but there’s an equal part of the devil, too. If you weren’t so very fickle, you’d make some woman a fine husband.”
Her choice of words amused him. People had called his activities any number of choice things over the years, but no one had ever used the term fickle before. “Fickle?”
“Aye, fickle. Do you not think I know how many women you’ve been with? Why, I doubt there’s more than three women in all of Kilgarigon between the ages of ten-and-five and two score years you haven’t had.”
“Och, now, Maggie, you wound me.” And she did, too. He hadn’t been with that many women. He wasn’t some randy rooster just out to tup every woman who crossed his path. In fact, he had turned down more offers than he had ever accepted.
“The truth is often painful.” Her tone and eyes were sincere.
His humor died as she passed a sharp, judgmental look over him. One that ruffled him more than just a wee bit.