Callie silently stitched the wound on his chest, then looked at his forearms where her sword had cut him. "I'm so sorry for hurting you."
Sin looked up at her words. The sincerity scorched him. "You didn't hurt me."
She alone had never hurt him. Not yet anyway.
He stared at the tendrils of her red curls falling over her shoulders, the gentleness in her green eyes. He felt her unwillingness to hurt him as she touched his skin. It made his entire body burn ferociously, demanding he take her in his arms and ease the ache in both his heart and his loins.
She was so incredible. And he wanted her with a passion so fierce, he wondered if it would destroy him.
She dipped her head down to his, and just as he opened his lips to taste her, a loud commotion filled the air.
People shouted as a group of horses came into the courtyard below.
Callie pulled away instantly, leaving him to curse the interruption while she went to the window to see what was going on. He joined her there and looked out over her shoulder.
In the courtyard below were three riders. Her clansmen and servants were rushing about to welcome them like long-lost family as Aster and Dermot left the castle and offered up a greeting to their guests.
"The MacAllisters are here," Callie said with a note of reverence in her voice.
Sin forced himself not to smile. She had no idea what was in store for her now.
His brother Braden rode his fierce stallion Deamhan, who pawed and stamped at the ground in aggravation at having to stop. The horse and man had much the same temperament.
Braden's long, black hair was tangled by the ride and his dark green and black plaid was worn as haphazardly as ever.
Ewan rode next to him on the back of a roan, while the fair-haired Lochlan swung his leg over his dapple-gray and slid masterfully to the ground.
It was good to see them again.
Callie turned to face him, her cheeks bright. He arched a brow at her exuberance, somewhat stung by it. She seemed happier to see them than she did to be with him.
"I'll go make sure they have food and drink. You dress and I will meet you below."
Sin frowned as she rushed from the room with a light step. He looked back out the window at the cheerful crowd below that warmly welcomed his brothers. Their shouts of greeting rang in his ears as Aster clapped Lochlan on the back like a father welcoming home his beloved son and Dermot laughed with Braden.
He supposed some things never changed.
Callie's heart pounded as she headed down the stairs. A powerful clan, the MacAllisters had once been an ally to her own. But over the last decade, their ties had dwindled. Still, it would be good for her clan to renew the alliance, and since the MacAllister was on such good terms with the English king, mayhap it would help quell the rebels as well.
She reached the hall at the same time Aster was showing the men inside.
Callie paused as she straightened her dress. They were giants all! Standing head and shoulders above her uncle and brother, the MacAllisters made her feel very petite. Only Sin could compete with their height.
"My niece, Caledonia," Aster said, directing their attention to her.
Callie swallowed nervously. The combined effect of the MacAllister brothers on a woman's senses was earth-shattering and quite disconcerting.
The blond man stepped forward. He was devastatingly handsome with stern blue eyes. "Lochlan MacAllister, my lady, 'tis a pleasure to meet you." His deep voice sent a shiver over her.
"My brother Ewan."
She looked to the giant on his left. He was like a large black bear, his hair long and in need of a trim.
"And Braden."
Callie nodded, hiding a smile. He was more handsome than a man had a right to be, and she knew the reputation of this particular MacAllister brother, who was said to be able to slay a man with a single blow and fell a woman with a single kiss.
She smiled at the three of them. " 'Tis a pleasure to meet all of you. Please, come and be seated."
As she led them toward the laird's table, Aster fell in by their sides.
"I'm sorry to have you waste your trip, lads. I had no idea the English intended to send my kin home to me."
"I'm surprised as well," Braden said. "It's not like Henry to give up hostages voluntarily."
"He didn't," Dermot sneered as he walked behind them. "He sent her home with a Sassenach husband."
"Is it anyone we know?" Braden asked.
"Doubtful," Aster answered. "I've never heard of him. Callie, isn't he an earl?"
"Aye, Uncle."
Lochlan raised a brow. "Earl of what?"
Callie paused as she realized she didn't know. No one had ever mentioned his properties to her. "I'm not really sure. But I was told he has vast holdings."
Callie stood to the side of the table, ready to see to the men's needs. The servants entered with ale and platters of meat and bread at the same time Simon joined them. He approached the table with his kind, open honesty that she found so very charming.
The MacAllister brothers watched him suspiciously as he neared her.
"The MacAllisters?" Simon asked.
Callie nodded.
Simon approached them. His smile widened and his eyes gleamed in instant friendship. He looked like a man greeting old friends he hadn't seen in a long time. "I feel as if I already know the three of you."
Braden stared at him with a stern frown. "You are?"
"Simon of Ravenswood. And you would have to be Braden."
"I don't know any Ravenswood. How did you know me?"
"Youngest and full of mischief." He turned to Lochlan. "You would be Lochlan, who never met a rule he didn't love. Always steadfast and ready to lay your life down for any member of your family or clan." Then he looked at Ewan. "And you are the quiet one. Serious and short-tempered, ever ready to battle. Oh, the stories I've heard about the three of you."
The brothers exchanged nervous glances.
"Heard from whom?" Lochlan asked.
"From me, you worthless lickspittle. So tell me what miracle dragged the three of you from your holes and got your lazy hides all the way here. And a day early, no less."
Everyone in the hall froze at the harsh words.
No one with any sense would ever dare insult a single MacAllister, never mind the three of them at once.
Gasping, Callie turned her attention to the entranceway, where Sin stood, dressed in his armor, with this arms crossed over his chest. She could read nothing in his features. He merely stood there stoically as he regarded the men he'd just insulted.
Aster bellowed in rage. "How dare you insult my guests!" He turned to her with a glower. "You see the peace he brings?"
The three MacAllisters rose slowly to their feet. Like a giant wall, they moved in unison around the table toward her husband.
Callie swallowed while she saw Dermot's amused smile. Her brother was looking forward to this confrontation.
She crossed herself.
As soon as the brothers were in arm's reach of Sin, they laughed and swarmed him.
She stood in stunned shock as the MacAllister brothers grabbed Sin into hugs and he bristled, cursed, and slapped at their hands.
"Ow!" Sin snapped. "Let me go, you damned ogres."
"Have your burns not healed?" Lochlan asked with a worried frown.
"Aye, they have, but I've a new wound throbbing, and if you don't stop, you'll have it bleeding again."
"New one how?" Braden asked, his frown mirroring Lochlan's as he pulled at Sin's clothes as if looking for the wound. "What happened? Have you seen a physician for it?"
A loud whistle rent the air.
The men stopped talking and everyone turned to look at Callie.
"Would someone please tell me what is going on here?"
Ewan passed a disgruntled glare at her. "We happen to be saying hello to our wayward brother. If you don't mind, we don't get to see him much."
Callie's jaw went as slack
as her uncle's and Dermot's. Nay…
Had she heard that correctly? If it were true, why had Sin never bothered mentioning it to her?
Why on earth would he hide something like that?
Crossing the room, she confronted her husband. "You're a MacAllister?"
There was a pain so profound in his eyes that it made her breath catch.
Lochlan stiffened. "Of course he is." Then he saw the look on Sin's face, too, and under his breath she heard him speak to him. "Regardless of the past, you have always been a MacAllister."
A tic started in Sin's jaw and when he spoke, his tone was equally as low. He cut a harsh glare to Lochlan. "If you recall, I was very publicly denounced. Twice."
She saw the shame on Lochlan's face as he dropped his troubled gaze to the floor.
Aster approached them. "Are you telling me this lad is a Highlander? Henry married my niece to a MacAllister?"
"You married her?" Braden gasped in disbelief. "You?"
Sin snorted. "Makes you want to run for cover before the Apocalypse strikes, doesn't it?"
Braden shoved him good-naturedly.
"Off," Sin said again, shoving at Braden's hand. "I told you I was wounded. What are you going to do next, break out the saltcellar and rub it in?"
This was the first time since she'd met him that she truly saw her husband relaxed and unguarded. There was even an air of good humor about him.
Ewan grabbed her up and hugged her hard. "Welcome to the family," he said, planting a kiss on her cheek.
"Put her down before you hurt her," Sin snapped.
Ewan growled at him and refused to release her. "Now, lass, why would you be wanting to marry his surly hide when you had me and Lochlan to choose from?"
"Because you didn't ask her," Sin said wryly.
"Aye, well, I might have, had I seen her first."
"Well, you didn't. Now put my wife down."
Ewan set her back on her feet, then winked at her. "Possessive of her. Now, that's a good sign."
"Aye," Sin concurred, "but a bad omen for you if you don't be keeping your hands off her."
Lochlan laughed. "You talk like that, braither, and I can almost hear the burr in your voice."
Sin scoffed at him. "Wishful thinking on your part."
"You know," Braden said, indicating Simon with the tilt of his head, "we still don't know why he knows so much about us."
Sin stepped back and pulled Simon forward to meet his brothers. "He was one of my foster brothers."
"You must be the one who annoyed him on my behalf," Braden said, offering Simon his arm. "I hope you did a good job of it."
Simon shook arms with him. "I certainly tried to, anyway."
The men laughed as Aster herded them back toward the table. Callie watched and listened to the brothers and marveled in the changes their presence had on her husband.
With them here, she was hoping to corner one of his brothers and find out more about why her husband was so unwilling to accept her.
Most of all, she wanted to know why Sin hadn't bothered to tell her he was a Scot.
* * *
Chapter 11
« ^ »
The men sat for hours bantering and laughing. Callie listened, her heart warmed by their affection for one another. The MacAllisters even accepted Simon into their midst, and unlike her clansmen, they had no problem whatsoever with his English breeding.
She learned much of their past, including a lot of information about their brother Kieran who had killed himself. But she learned very little about Sin. It was almost as if they knew his past hurt him and so they sought only to mention tiny slices of it.
It was the wee hours of the night before they decided to find their beds. Callie yawned as she showed the men where they were to sleep.
At last she found herself headed to her room to be alone with her husband.
Sin was still smiling.
"You're very handsome when you do that."
"Do what?"
"Smile."
He frowned at her words.
"Here, now, I didn't mean to make you stop."
He cast a reluctant look to the bed, then moved away from her.
"Why didn't you tell me you were a MacAllister?" she asked quietly.
"Because I'm not."
Her frown matched his as she tried to sort it out. He definitely wasn't related through his mother. "I don't understand."
He sighed as he unbelted his sword and set it aside. "My father sired me the first year of his marriage. He was away from home, visiting a friend in London without his wife, and for whatever reason, my mother caught his fancy. She was scarce more than a girl back then, and they tell me his accent and wild ways enchanted her. I was conceived in the back of a barn in a manner my mother assured me was most humiliating and painful for her.
"As soon as she bore me, she sent me and my wet nurse to Scotland to live with my father. An old servant who was there that night told me that my stepmother took one look at me and was so distraught she almost miscarried Lochlan."
He spoke the words calmly and without emotion. Even so, it had to hurt him deep in his heart and soul. There was no way it couldn't.
She wanted to go to him and offer comfort, but was afraid if she tried he would stop talking. So she listened quietly, while her heart broke a little more with every word he uttered.
"From that moment on, my father wanted nothing to do with me. He ignored me every time I tried to speak to him. If I approached him, he turned his back and walked away.
"To my stepmother, I was nothing but a painful reminder of my father's infidelity. She despised everything about me. Because of his guilt and shame over what he'd done, my father went out of his way to prove to his wife that he bore no special favor toward me. My brothers had the best of everything and I had whatever was left over."
She swallowed against the tears that choked her, but she refused to let him see them. "He sent you back to England to be with your mother?"
"He tried, once, when I was seven. It was the middle of winter." He paused and leaned with one arm against the mantel to stare at the fire as if recalling the event. He looked so lost, standing there with his raw hurt etched plainly along the lines of his handsome face. Callie didn't know how she maintained the strength to keep herself from going to him. Perhaps it was the strength of him that held her together and allowed her to just listen as he told a story she was sure he had never told before.
When he spoke again, she heard the hidden agony inside his heart. "I remember being so cold the entire way. My father had sent next to no coin with us and the knight who was taking us to my mother would rent a room for himself and leave us to the stable or barn."
Callie cringed at the dispassionate way he spoke.
"My nurse kept telling me that my mother would be delighted to see me. She assured me that all mothers loved their children and that my mother would treat me just as Aisleen treated my brothers. She said my mother would grab me up in her arms and kiss me home."
Callie closed her eyes to stave off the sympathetic pain inside her. Knowing his mother as she did, she could well imagine his reception.
"We arrived on Christmas Eve. There were presents strewn about, and my nurse led me across the great hall to where my mother sat at the lord's table with a baby boy in her lap. She held him so lovingly as she laughed and teased him. I was joy-filled at the sight and thought that at last I would have the mother I had yearned for. That she would see me standing there in my worn-out shoes and tattered plaid, and hug me close and tell me how glad she was to have me there at last."
Callie felt a tear slide down her face and she was glad he wasn't looking at her to see it.
"When my nurse told her who I was and why we were there, she shrieked in outrage. Angrily, she threw her wine in my face and said that she only had one son and that I was never again to disgrace her with my presence. Then she had us thrown out into the cold night."
Sin took a deep, ragged breath as
he continued to watch the fire. It was as if he refused to look at her for fear she, too, would reject him.
He lifted one foot to kick a piece of wood back into the grate. "I knew then that there was no such thing as a family for me. I was neither Scot nor English. I was nothing but a homeless bastard. Unwanted. Useless. My nurse returned me to my father, and his contempt for me grew until the day when King David's men came for a son. They wanted hostages to send to King Stephen in England to ensure that no more Scots would raid his lands or attack his people."
"So he sent you."
He nodded. "Aisleen told him if he sent one of her sons, she would kill herself. Not that she needed to say it. All of us boys knew who was going to be sent." He laughed bitterly. "It was the only time in my entire life my father had ever looked at me or spoken to me."
Sin wiped a hand across his face as if thinking about the past made him weary. "My father and I passed angry words, and in the end he grabbed me by my shirt and shoved me into the hands of David's men. He said I was never to be welcomed into his home again, and as far as he was concerned I no longer existed."
Her tears fell freely as Callie tried to imagine the horror that had been his life. Never wanted, never loved. No wonder he was so distant with her.
Worse, she thought about how her clan had greeted his brothers after the way they had treated him and Simon. The way she herself had left his side to see to his brothers' needs while he had been left up here with a fresh wound. Alone.
He was always alone.
Dear Lord, how she wished she could go back and change this afternoon. He had been pushed aside more than anyone ever should. And she ached for him. She wept for the way he'd been treated, and in her heart she knew she would never be able to let him leave her and walk alone again.
"I will always want you with me, Sin."
He curled his lips at that and pushed himself away from the hearth. "Don't mock me," he snarled angrily. "I don't need your pity."
Nay, what he needed was her love. But he had lived so long without anyone's love that she wondered if it was too late for him. Maybe there was such a thing as being too strong.
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