The MacKinnon’s Bride(65)

If he’d not witnessed the sight of them together with his own eyes, he’d never have believed it.

When Iain should have beaten the impertinent bitch, he returns, instead, cradling her within his arms while she sleeps like a wee bairn. After the trouble she’d stirred, he’d half expected, half hoped, his brother would send her flying back to her father. At the very minimum, that their long absence meant he’d taken it upon himself to return her to Balfour, dumping her like so much offal into the castle ditch.

It was no more than she deserved.

Instead, Iain had been picking crocus blossoms for the Sassenach slut. She clutched one still within her fist whilst she slept.

Damn, but naught was going as planned—naught at all! By this time, he’d hoped to be rid of Iain’s whelp once and for all. And the wench—she never should have become a problem to begin with—rot Iain and his bleeding heart!

He sat, watching Kerwyn and Dougal load Ranald’s still-soaked body upon the horse he’d intended for Malcom, and could feel his face burn with impotent rage. They’d had to fish the poor bastard out of the loch and then rewrap him, and only now were strapping him on again. It seemed the lass was to go with Iain, Malcom with auld Angus, and he was helpless to do anything but stand and watch and seethe. He’d hoped Page and Malcom might ride together.

He loathed feeling this way—helpless—despised Iain’s bloody guts for it, too. Bastard! Just like his father, he was! Thinking himself so noble for the sacrifices he made.

Iain’s da, the gaddamn bastard, had sacrificed even him—without so much as a backward thought.

Well... he intended to right the wrong soon enough—rid himself first of Malcom, then of Iain, and then lead the clan himself.

It was his right after having suffered in silence all these years.

Damn Iain’s sire for a selfish old fool! Had the old man truly expected that his deceit would never be discovered? Had he anticipated that Lagan would simply accept the lie so glibly when the truth was at last made known? That he’d forget he’d been left, as a result of his father’s murder and the ultimate deception, without a mother, or a father?

Foolhardy old man. In trying to save his son from the repulsive truth—that his wife had dared to love another man, a MacLean at that—he’d managed to strip Lagan of every birthright.

Aye, for while Iain lamented never having known the mother who had once suckled him at her breast, Lagan had truly never known her at all. Christ, but he had not even the right to grieve for her openly. He had only snatches of her memory from Glenna, for not even Glenna would speak of the sister she’d lost so shamefully—not even to the son she’d died giving birth to.

Iain, at least, had known her for those two years—two years Lagan might have plucked out his eyes to have had the same luxury—and his brother had not the right to grieve.

Whether he recalled her or nay.

Poor wretched Iain... his father’s revered son... While Iain had been assiduously trained to take the lead of his clan... Lagan had been naught more than a discarded kinsman.

How he’d envied the old laird’s attentions to his son. How he’d craved it. Never knowing...

Christ, but he’d not even been told of his father until he’d been too old to feel anything more than bitterness. That was all he’d ever been told—that his father had been a deceiving MacLean, no more—and never once had the MacLeans acknowledged him.

Never once.

It had been Glenna, the aunt he’d once called mother, who had revealed the connivance after all. Her own guilt had been great—and rightly so! She should never have contrived to deprive him of his rightful life.

Damn them all, for he’d been robbed by clansmen he’d loved—clansmen who’d favored the old laird more than they had the lonely child he had been. Every last MacKinnon had conspired to keep the dirty secret of his birth. None of them had come forth, not a one!

And now those who would recall were mostly dead, but for Glenna and a scarce few others. They too would pay. And then... when the guilty were gone from his sight, he could learn at last to live—never forgive, but to put the past behind him once and for all.

The jest was upon old MacKinnon—might he turn in his grave—for in trying to spare his goddamned son, Iain, he’d burdened him with a lifetime of guilt over his mother’s death. Stupid bastard, for it had been his own birth that had killed her, not his half brother’s. And yet Iain had lived every day of his miserable life thinking he’d been the one to rob their mother of her last breath of life. Let him think so—bloody bastard—he could take his bloody guilt to the grave, for all he cared—that, along with the guilt he suffered over Mairi’s death. Damn, but he’d hoped she would die at her childbed. He’d wanted her to so badly—had tried so hard to make it come to pass.