Claiming the Highlander (17 page)

Suddenly her own father’s criticism of her didn’t seem so terrible.

“Why would your father do such a thing?” she asked. “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,” he said, his voice strained. “My mother 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?” she asked.

Braden curled his lip in disgust. “She had no use for him. That was why she 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 kirk yard.

He must hate her passionately.

She couldn’t imagine the way he must have felt when both his parents turned him out. It was 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 tic 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 asked, 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 Kilgar- igon 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,” she said, her voice and eyes sincere.

His humor died as she passed a sharp, judgmental look over him. One that ruffled him more than just a wee bit.

Now, this was getting out of hand. He wasn’t the only one to blame here. True, he’d been with a lot of women, but he had never forced any of them. In fact, he usually wasn’t even the one doing the pursuing.

“Tell me, Maggie, have you ever asked yourself why it is I might be such?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Because you’re a man.”

He snorted at her response. She made it sound as if his being a man explained all the questions of the universe. “In part, but have you failed to notice how many women come after me?”

Her jaw dropped and she raked him with a scathing, repugnant look. “And that’s your excuse? They come after you and so it frees your
conscience up to just take what it is they offer? Consequences be damned? You’re disgusting.”

“Nay, I’m not disgusting,” he said quickly. “You say I am inconstant. Well, what of your fine feminine friends? I can hardly be inconstant alone.”

“So, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I’m not the only one to blame here. As you said yourself, I’m a man and it’s hard to resist a woman when she’s crawling naked into your bed begging for your favor, or pressing her body up against yours while she whispers in your ear all the things she wants to do to you.”

She looked aghast. “Are you trying to tell me that all the women are seducing
you?
That you are just a humble little lord walking about, minding your own business, when some evil woman sneaks up upon you and forces you to take her?”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Of course I don’t believe you. It wasn’t me doing the seducing last night, Braden MacAllister. It was you breathing in
my
ear and making free with
your
hands on
my
body.”

“That was different.”

“How so?”

He didn’t honestly want to think about it. But in his heart, he knew it was different.

Seeking to change the subject before she made him say something they would both regret, he
said, “Did it never occur to you that if I could ever find a woman who was completely loyal to me, then I would certainly be loyal back? I would love to find one woman on this earth who would be concerned for me, and never ask me to do unconscionable things to please her. To have a woman who wouldn’t stray from my bed to the next man who turned her head.”

She scoffed. “Now, there’s a bit of irony.” She gave him an incredulous look as if she couldn’t believe what he had said. “Would you really be able to confine yourself to one single woman?”

“Aye. Do you not think I wouldn’t love to have a home with children? I’d give most anything for it, but I’ll not be made a fool of by a bonny lass. My brother Kieran killed himself over a fickle woman who wasn’t content with him but had to have Ewan as well. And the woman they loved, after tearing our family apart and causing Kieran’s death, abandoned Ewan the first chance she got to go off with a richer man. Women, in case you’ve been asleep during Sunday mass, are the root of all evil.”

He could tell by the look on her face that she would love to strangle him, but to her credit she merely glared at him. “Women would never be evil if it weren’t for men such as yourself leading them down the fiery path to hell.”

Now, that made him see red. How dare she
blame it all on his gender. “You can’t be blaming men alone for it.”

“Can’t I?” she asked, her voice high-pitched and angry. “As you said yourself, it takes two to form a tryst. More often than not, ‘tis the man doing the leading.”

Braden couldn’t believe that came out of
her
mouth when she, of all women, ought to know better.

“That so?” he asked. “Do you not remember the time when I was but ten-and-six and your friends laid an ambush for me? Why, I barely escaped with my life.”

It truly had been unnerving. He had come down a path near a copse of trees when ten girls had launched themselves at him. They had tackled him to the ground and started screaming in his ears how much they loved him and how they wanted him to marry them. They had ripped his plaid and tugged his hair until he was bloody from it.

Somehow, he’d managed to find his way out of their groping hands, and Maggie had hidden him inside the hollow of an oak tree, then sent the girls off in the wrong direction.

It was the last time he had ventured to her house without an escort.

He saw the recollection on Maggie’s face as her eyes turned a bit sheepish.

“And,” Braden continued, “what about that
time at your house when you pretended to fall down, and when I tried to help you up, you latched on to me so tight that you almost strangled me?”

Her face turned bright red and he knew in that instant that she had been as guilty of laying a trap for him as the other lasses.

“That was different,” she said defensively.

“How so?”

“It just was.”

Braden narrowed his eyes on her, certain now of his victory. “You may not like the truth, Maggie, but the truth is that most women are up to no good.”

Her face was a mirror of disbelief. “You arrogant, apish, underhonest lewdster!”

Braden laughed at her insults. He had to give her credit, she could rival his brothers for creativity.

Her body rigid with rage, she whirled around and stomped ahead of him.

Braden hurried his step until he stood directly behind her and Sin.

Sin cast a curious glance at him over his shoulder before looking at Maggie.

Her eyes snapped amber fire. “Your brother is a beslubbering, churlish, hell-governed princox, and I hope one day he gets the beating he deserves for it.”

Sin threw his head back and laughed.

“You find that funny?” she asked incredulously.

“Indeed,” Sin said, smiling. “You’re the only woman I have ever known who insulted him. And you do it so well.”

Braden joined Sin’s laughter.

Now she was furious at them both. If only she weren’t so beautiful when she was angry, Braden mused ruefully. Aye, bright red looked good in her cheeks.

“Men,” she fumed as she stomped on ahead of them. “Who needs them?”

 Chapter 10

“B
raden,” Maggie called. “I need you. Help!”

Braden paused at the plea, amazed by it.

It had been nearly an hour since they had lost sight of Maggie in the dark forest. Yet they had known the entire time she wasn’t too far ahead of them because her angry, often derogatory tirade against men in general, and Braden in particular, had kept them highly amused.

“Braden, please!”

It must have cost her dearly to utter those words after the large amount of condemnation she had heaped upon him, his hide, his soul and every human being who had ever met him.

Normally such a plea from a woman would have him rushing to her side. However, Maggie’s
tone was too rational for her to be in any real danger. It sounded more as if she were merely annoyed.

Resuming his walk over the peat-covered path, Braden looked at Sin. “Did we not hear her say, several hundred times in the last hour, ‘Men, who needs them?’”

“That we did.”

“Think we should ignore her cry, then?” Braden asked.

The baffled frown on Sin’s face was priceless.