Chapter 12 #2
Fate was indeed mocking him.
Instead, he heard the sound of his mother’s shocked gasp as she came into the room and heard words that were almost identical to the ones Kieran had once said in this very same hall.
“Take her, Ewan, if she’ll have the likes of you. I willna stand between the two of you. But know that if you leave with her, I will never again call you brother.”
He wondered if Ryan was as sincere as Kieran had been when Kieran had spoken those words to him.
Or would Ryan ride home, gather his men and then start the feud he’d promised?
In his mind’s eye, Ewan saw the death and destruction that had reigned over the MacAllister lands as they fought with the MacDouglases.
Wincing from the pain of the memory of then and the reality of now, he turned away from the face of the only woman he would ever really love.
“She belongs with you, Ryan. I have no need of a wife.”
Nora felt as if Ewan had slapped her. Nothing had ever hurt her more than his cold announcement.
“I was wrong about you, Ewan MacAllister,” she said, her voice breaking on his name. “You are heartless.”
With a dignity she didn’t feel, she lifted her chin and returned to her parents. “I wish to leave.”
“Now?” her father asked.
“Aye. I’ll go with you or on my own, but I willna stay in this place another instant.”
Ewan couldn’t breathe as he heard her words. She was leaving him.
You told her to go.
Aye, he had. It was kinder this way.
Why then did he feel as if his stomach and heart were being shredded?
Fight for her, damn you, fight!
But he didn’t have it in him. He couldn’t let his clan be torn apart.
Nora’s parents said a quick and embarrassed goodbye to his mother while Nora stalked from the hall without even glancing back at him.
So be it.
He was better off without her.
And yet the thought of returning to his home alone made his blood run cold.
Ewan made his way up the stairs and to his bed. He had barely lain down before his brothers stormed into his room. The three of them appeared angry and ready to battle.
“May I be the one who beats him?” Braden asked.
Ewan frowned at them. “Beats me for what?”
“Stupidity,” Sin hissed.
Lochlan thumped Ewan on the arm.
Ewan grimaced and rubbed the sore spot. “Do that again, and I shall rip your hand off.”
“Try it and I’ll have your worthless hide for a rug before my hearth. Now tell me how you can be so foolish as to let her leave?”
Ewan ground his teeth as rage filled him. “What are you, daft? You do remember what happened the last time I took a woman from her betrothed, do you not?”
Lochlan pierced him with a feral glare. “Ryan is not Robby MacDouglas, nor is he Kieran.”
Ewan said nothing.
“He’s closed us out again,” Braden said disgustedly. “He’ll not hear a word we say.”
“Then may I kill him?” Sin asked.
“Nay,” Lochlan said, “I want the privilege.”
Braden scoffed. “You’re just angry that she took Catarina with her when she left.”
Lochlan shoved at Braden. “Leave off that line of taunting. I never want to hear that woman’s name pronounced in my presence again.”
“Out!”
All four men jumped at the sound of Aisleen MacAllister’s commanding tone. “Leave your brother be, lads. He needs no more pestering from the likes of you.”
Reluctantly, they withdrew.
“Thank you,” Ewan said as silence once again claimed the room.
Then, to his utter shock, his mother came to the bed and smacked him hard across the side of his right hip.
“What was that for?” he asked, unable to believe she had done such a thing.
“I wish you were small enough I could give you the spanking you deserve.”
“Mother, I’m injured.”
“Aye, and in the head to boot.”
He was aghast at her. She’d never spoken to him in such a manner. “What has possessed you?”
“Anger mostly. I want to know why you let such a fine lass go off with that good-for-nothing. He’ll only make her miserable and well you know it.
I canna believe you would do such a thing.
Saints preserve me, but I thought I had raised you up better than this, and now I find out just how wrong I was. ”
She crossed herself and started praying for his lost and wayward soul.
Ewan gaped at her, unable to believe her. “You of all people would have me come between them?”
She broke off mid-prayer to glower at him for a full minute.
Then, his mother sighed wearily and sat down on his bed. She sat there for several heartbeats, not moving or speaking.
He couldn’t tell if she were really gathering her thoughts, or getting ready to hit him again.
When she spoke, he leaned away from her just in case her madness should again possess her.
“Ewan,” she said as if the weight of the world were upon her, “I have tried all your life to bring happiness to you and it saddens me that I have failed you so miserably.”
“Mother—”
“Nay,” she said, holding her hand up as she interrupted him. “Let me say my piece.”
A far-away look came over her as if she were remembering his childhood.
Ewan gave an involuntary shudder. If she remembered too much of his errant childhood, he really would be in trouble.
“Unlike your father and your brothers, I know why you are withdrawn. I’ve always known. Do you think I don’t remember the way you looked when at age four you were too large for me to pick up and carry? You used to stare at me holding Braden and I could see the hurt in your eyes.”
He opened his mouth to deny it, but she silenced him by placing her hand over his lips.
“I would sit for hours and weep, wishing that I had been born larger so that I could take you in my arms and carry you about as you wanted. But it was too late. From that day forward, you pushed me and anyone else away from you. It broke my heart that you decided you had no use for me.”
“That’s not true,” he insisted, even though in his heart he knew it was. He’d always been wounded that his brothers seemed to get everything else while he was left on his own.
That was why Kieran had meant so much to him. Their father had taken up with Lochlan to the exclusion of the rest of them. Braden was favored by their mother and Kieran had always doted on him.
Braden had always picked at and harassed Ewan while Lochlan lost patience with virtually everything he had ever said or done. Kieran alone had taken time to befriend him.
“Aye, it is true,” his mother said. “Any time I have ever reached out to embrace you, you have tensed up and immediately moved away.”
She stared intently at him. “You don’t tense when Nora touches you, Ewan. When the two of you were in the hall below and you were fighting, I saw the way you looked at her. The need you had in your eyes when she reached for you.”
Ewan stared at the wall as her words sank in and the pain of the past and present ran rampant through him.
“I know you were never happy when you lived here with us. Your father was ever cruel while you tried so hard to please him. He judged you harshly and I won’t make excuses for him. But he did love you, Ewan. The last words he spoke on this earth were about you.”
“Because he didn’t think I could care for myself.”
“Nay, that was not what he said.”
Ewan looked at her.
“He knew there at the end that he’d been too demanding on all of you.
He’d tried so hard to make Lochlan strong enough to be laird, to make Kieran shoulder the burden of family.
Braden to stand up to the rest of you so that the rest of you didn’t run over him.
Your father wanted me to find Sin and make amends to him for what we’d both done to him and you... ”
Ewan held his breath as he waited.
“He wished that he had never let you hear his cruel criticisms. He regretted the times he wounded you with his words. The times he told you you disappointed him. You didn’t disappoint him, Ewan. He was proud of you.”
Tears filled his eyes as he remembered what his father had said to him when he had come home to find Kieran dead.
His father had viciously backhanded him. “You disgust me. You stole what didn’t belong to you and you killed your own brother by doing it. Never again will I welcome you into my sight. You deserve nothing but my scorn.”
Embittered and grief-stricken, Ewan had left the MacAllister castle that day and had refused to ever set foot in it again until after his father’s death.
He would never have returned at all had Lochlan and Braden not come after him and told him that their mother needed to see him.
That she was dying of her grief and that if he didn’t return with them, they would lose her as well.
And so he had come home, ever reluctant, back into their family fold. A missing part that had never really fit.
His mother leaned forward and kissed him on his forehead. “I have never blamed you for Kieran’s death, Ewan. Never once. It is you alone who carries that in your heart and if I could, I would exorcize it from you. I would give up my very soul to bring you peace and happiness.
“Nora is a good lass and she cares for you a great deal. ‘Twould be a pity to live in a cave when you could just as easily live in comfort with a woman who loves you. But ‘tis your life for you to make.”
She patted him gently on the arm and got up to leave. “Sleep well, my son. If you can.”