by K. E. Saxon
Nay, ‘twas not.
* * *
“Branwenn!” Maggie cried, falling to her knees next to her soon-to-be daughter-in-law. “Whatever did that scoundrel of a son of mine say to you to get you in such a state as this? Tell me, and he will be made to fix it, I swear this to you, lass.” Her own eyes misted in sympathetic tears as she watched Branwenn’s body wracked with sorrowful sobs.
“H-he...w-we-ee-ee...are no longer betrothed! He hates me!”
“Branwenn!” Maggie said, shocked. “‘Tis the very last thing he feels for you, child. How can you even think such a thing?” An angry gleam came into her eye. “Tell me he did not actually say such to you! I will string him up by his toes, the rascal!”
Branwenn, still lying on the floor, turned her face away from Maggie’s view and hid her eyes in the crook of her elbow. Her only answer was a shake of her head.
Maggie patted Branwenn’s back. “All will be well, you shall see.”
* * *
Callum sat on a stool in the solar an hour later looking from one to the other of the seven people—his grandmother, mother, stepfather, two massive cousins, and Branwenn’s brother-germane, as well as Robert—standing over him and feeling like the defenseless prey to a sloth of hungry bears, with first one batting at him, then the other, and all leaving with yet another piece of his pride laid to waste. And, he admitted, his suspicions as well.
“Callum, dear, ‘twas not as you believe at all. Your mother and I inveigled that poor guard to pretend an interest in Branwenn as a means of prodding you into doing what you should have done the first time the two of you were together—told her you loved her!” Lady Maclean chided.
“And I have no recollection of the lady ever touching me,” Robert interjected before Callum had time to form a retort. His eyes widened as the light of understanding dawned. “Ah! Mean you when the page spilled a bit of the contents of my trencher on my sleeve? When Branwenn did the ladylike thing and wiped it off for her guest with a cloth?”
Callum gave him a sheepish look.
Robert howled. “Are you insane? Truly. Are you? Because ‘twas clear to me from the moment I began speaking with the lady this morn that her thoughts are never far from you. Why, she must have asked me fifty questions about you, just while we ate.” He began to count on his fingers as he gave examples. “‘How long have you known Callum?’, ‘What was he like back then?’, ‘Was he always so good with a sword?’, ‘...With a lance?’, ‘Did he always hate to dance as he does now?’” He looked up with a huge grin on his face, and added, “And, my favorite: ‘How many lasses has he bedded?’”
Everyone laughed but Callum. He only squirmed.
“This one, I confess, I gave a bit of a lie to her on—I said only your wife”—the whole company roared at that one and Robert had to raise his voice to be heard above the laughter—“since I was trying to aid your cause with the lady, not ruin it, as you evidently believe.” He waited for the raucus sounds of mirth to subside before continuing, “I have no interest in your betrothed, Callum, and she certainly has none in me.”
“And,” Reys interjected, his arms crossed over his chest, “forget not, I can easily take her home with me—an idea I’m growing more fond of with each passing second of hearing your driveling, I assure you—and have done with this contract that I’m sure to be made to regret signing in any case when my princely cousin learns of it.”
Callum leapt to his feet. “Nay, no need!” he said as he plowed through his cousins and hurried to the door. “She’s mine. I’m hers. No problem.” Now, to gain her forgiveness and, if need be, convince her all over again of just that.
* * *
CHAPTER 11
Callum found Branwenn seated in the north bailey garden not many minutes after Robert’s and Reys’s last words to him in the solar. He’d not taken the time to fetch his cloak from his chamber, but, it seemed the need for it was not so great, as the day had turned unseasonably warm for this close to Samhainn.
He saw she was seated slightly sideways on the stone bench with her head bowed a bit as she gazed at the frost covered, now almost completely winter-brown garden to her left, her hands loosely clasped, palms up, in her lap. Her dark brown cloak was thrown back on either side, its edges draped over her shoulders and the gown she wore was one of the old ones that his mother had given her upon her arrival here. She’d changed since earlier. Why she tended toward the looser garments, he had never quite figured out, for ‘twas God’s truth, she could stop his heart with her loveliness when she wore one of the form-fitting ones his grandmother had had made for her. But, after his horrid behavior in the face of another man giving her attention this morn, ‘twas no doubt better that she not wear such enticements when there were male guests about.
As if feeling his presence, she turned her head and their eyes met across the last small distance between them. In three strides, Callum was by her side. He dropped down to his knees before her and took her hands in his. She resisted, but then, as if deciding it mattered little one way or the other, she relaxed and allowed the contact. Her eyes were like frozen violets suspended in a crimson-rimmed flower bowl. Cold now, but proof that once there had been fiery tears stinging them.
“I’m an idiot.”
She shrugged.
“You are perfect, pure, and I truly do not deserve you.”
He watched her eyes shift from one to the other of his own as if trying to see into his soul. Then she nodded.
“I adore you. I want to be your husband. ‘Tis truly my fondest desire, and has been since, I believe, the moment I first met you outside the stables at the Maclean keep that day so many moons ago now.”
With a cry, she threw herself into his arms, her own wrapped tightly about his neck, and he fell backwards onto the ground, taking her with him. He laughed and held her tight as the vise around his heart snapped free, allowing the tormented organ to once again beat with joy.
“I adore you, too,” she whispered happily between kisses to his neck, his cheek, his ear.
He rolled her onto her back, her fur-lined cloak cushioning her from the cold, hard ground, and settled between her thighs, rucking the hem of her gown up on one side as he did so before beginning a long, slow caress of her outer thigh and hip. “Mmm...soft, just as I remembered.” He bent his head down and kissed her, using his tongue and teeth to tease that lower lip of hers that daily drove him mad for a taste and had only a few hours past been the source of his jealous wrath.
After a moment, he left her mouth to enjoy the sweet taste of her velvet-smooth neck. As he did so, he inched his hand around to grasp her sweet, rounded bottom and press her more snugly against his now painfully swollen arousal.
“Oh, Callum, it’s been so long since we”—she drew in a sharp breath when his finger entered her feminine sheath from behind as he rotated his hips to tease her clitoris—“oh, Gaawd,” she groaned, arching her back.
Callum clamped his mouth over the turgid nipple of her breast that showed through the material of her clothing. He sucked hard a second before saying, “I want to strip you naked right here, right now. I want to see the winter sun’s rays light every inch of this luscious figure you hide from view. I want to see you, Branwenn. Please, let me see this lovely body of yours at last.”
Branwenn, her eyes clamped tightly shut as she trembled on the verge of release at her lover’s skilled hand, shook her head. “Nay, Callum, please. Not yet, I’m not ready.”
Callum’s hand was drenched with the proof of that falsehood. “Oh, you are ready, my love, very ready.” He kissed her sweet lips again before opening them wider by thrusting his tongue deep several times, repeating the motion with the finger he had inside her slick passage as he arched above her. In seconds, she went rigid, her muffled cries vibrating against his teeth and gums, and the walls of her canal clasping and unclasping his love-dewed digit.
It shocked him a second later when his own body jerked uncontrollably in sudden climax. “Branwenn!”
Dazed and still seeing black spots, he collapsed upon her now-limp form.
After another second, he rolled to his back with his eyes shut against the sunlight, still reeling in a release-induced haze. It took several minutes more for his breathing to return to a more natural meter, but when it did, he turned on his side and propped himself up on his elbow, resting his cheek on his fist. He smiled as a wave of the most intense tenderness he’d ever felt washed through him. Branwenn had dozed off, her face now a serene mask of innocence and youth.
Why would she not allow him to see her naked? It made no sense. She was so open in her sexual curiosity, actually rather pleasingly adventurous for one with only the experience he’d thus far given her. Hell, if it had not been for that one time, their first time, when he’d lit a taper afterward, he would never have even seen the one—lush, succulent, full, tip-turned (like her eyes), rosy peaked, with a freckle—breast that had been accidently revealed when the sheet drooped a bit before she covered it.
Her eyes opened as he gazed upon her and they were once again the color of crushed violets—as they were whenever her emotions were high, he’d discovered. Touching his fingers lightly to her brow, he moved the dampened dark locks to the side before leaning down and placing a soft kiss on her mouth and then repeated the action on her cheek. “Now, who is embarrassed, I wonder? I look like a wee lad just out of swaddlings with this stain on the front of my tunic.”
Her eyes wandered down to the offending wet spot. “I could get you a new one?”
He grinned and quickly released the strings of his damp braies—thankfully, he’d worn his long tunic this day—saying, “Actually, that would be rather helpful,”—he scooted both that undergarment and the hose attached off of his torso and legs, flicking his shoes off at the same time—“as I have no desire for either of your brothers to learn of this lover’s tryst we’ve just enjoyed.” He wadded the material and tossed it over his shoulder, then put his feet back inside his shoes, before rolling to his side once more and propping his cheek on his raised fist again.
Branwenn groaned and threw her hands over her face. “Oh, Callum! We were going to wait until our wedding night!” She turned her wrath-filled eyes upon him once more. “‘Tis all your fault! Why can we not spend five minutes together without doing”—she waved her hand in the air—“this?!”
Callum came closer to her and dropped his arm over her waist. “Aye. ‘Tis my fault. For, you see, you are much too enticing a creature, my sweet fey Mai, for one such as I, a mere mortal, to resist your siren’s call.”
“Pardon? Did you just say ‘twas my fault?”
“Nay, I said ‘twas my fault.”
“How is that exactly? For, according to you, I am enticing you, calling you, and you are only a mortal unable to resist it. Somehow, tho’ ‘tis certainly a pretty speech, if you hear it logically, it’s really your way of blaming me.”
Callum growled in frustration. “All right! ‘Tis all my fault because I’m a lecherous male and all I think about when I’m with you is seeing you naked and fucking you—does that satisfy your sense of justice now?”
Branwenn giggled behind her hand. “Aye.” After another moment, she sobered and said, “Callum, you hurt me so deeply with those horrible accusations you made. Why did you think I would do anything like that—ever?”
He studied her for a long moment, his gaze tracing the shape of her face and form before returning once more to look into her eyes. “‘Tis a thing I didn’t expect to ever feel again. Not with you, for this is a love match we have. But when you spurned me so coldly this morn, and in a manner much like my wife, Lara, had done when she was displeased with me—as often she was—and then you gave your whole attention to Robert instead—also a thing that Lara had done—I became angry and sure that I was setting myself up to be a cuckold once more. A thing I never want to be again.” He paused. “You do know what happened between Lara and Robert last Hogmanay, do you not?”
“Nay, though I know what she tried to do with Bao. He almost lost Jesslyn over it.”
Branwenn’s hand was resting just below her breast and Callum picked it up and softly stroked the top of her fingers with his thumb. “Bao and I found the two of them together.”
“But Robert’s your friend!” She whipped over onto her side and lifted up on her elbow. “Why ever would he have done such a thing to you! I shall never speak to the man again!” She dropped her gaze, shaking her head.
“When I came upon them, ‘twas clear they’d done the deed, so Lara accused him of raping her.”
Branwenn’s gaze flashed back to his. “What! Did he?”
Callum shook his head. “Nay. And he’d only bedded her because...” Now here was the tricky part.
“Because...?” Branwenn prompted.
He cleared his throat. “Because I’d bedded his sister,”—Branwenn sat up, her eyes glued to his countenance—“a thing he thought of as traitorous.”
“You...” Her voice was small but grew louder as she continued, “bedded Isobail! You are a traitor! To me! You said there was naught between you. You...you...aargh!” She crossed her arms over her chest and turned her back on him.
“Branwenn,” Callum began soothingly. Rising up himself into a sitting position and placing his hand on her shoulder, he slowly caressed her. “I was thirteen summers at the time—that was over eight years ago now—and she was a lass of fifteen. She was my first, but I was not hers. She’d had quite a few lovers by the time she set her sights on me—and then, I found out later, ‘twas only in order to make the lad she’d decided she must wed—Laird Grant’s nephew—jealous enough to give her his troth.”
Branwenn relaxed back against him with her head bowed as she spoke. “So the two of you never...after that?”
“Nay. Never.”
She lifted her head and shook it. “The Isobail I knew did not seem at all like the lass you just described.”
Callum sighed and rested his forehead on her shoulder a second before lifting his head and saying, “Aye, the lady you knew was the true Isobail. At the time of our youthful affair, however, she’d had a bit of a heartbreak and was punishing, I believe, her father for his role in her pain. Tho’, again, I learned of this much later.”
Branwenn raised up and twisted around so that she was facing him once more. “I only wanted to be kind when I spoke with Robert this morn, since he just lost his dear sister. I wasn’t dallying with his affections, I swear this to you.”
Callum nodded gravely. “Aye, I know that now.” He scrubbed his fingers roughly over his brow. “Isobail’s death is a sad loss to both him and David.” He lifted Branwenn’s hand to his mouth and kissed each finger, one by one. “My thanks for spending the eve with the lad. When I spoke to him before breaking our fast, he seemed much better settled than he had been after I spoke to him before his mother’s passing this day past.”
“Grandmother Maclean and your mother aided in that as well. They always seem to know just the right thing to say.” She took her hand from his and placed it on his cheek as she gazed directly into his eyes. “I understand much better now what happened this morn. I was wrong to treat you so coldly; I should have spoken to you about my misgivings instead. And, knowing what I now know about Lara and how you were treated by her, I can see why you reacted as you did when I spent my time with Robert. But, I beg you, do not ever think that I will cuckold you, for you are my body’s and my heart’s one desire.”
Callum took her hand in his once more and, bringing it down to rest on the ground between them, he leaned forward and kissed her. After several rather heated moments of this, he at last lifted his head and said, “Robert told me what you spoke of this morn. Me!”
Branwenn slowly opened her eyes and looked at him. He had the most grotesquely happy, self-satisfied grin on his face she’d ever encountered.
She watched him lean back with his arms out behind him to rest on his palms before saying, “Aye, he told me you’d bedded every young maid, daughter, a
nd widow in the shire by the time you were fifteen summers.”
Callum sat bolt upright. “He did?! That cur dog spawn of the devil! He said he’d told you I’d only slept with Lara!”
Branwenn howled. “Ohmygod! ‘Tis true! I only said such to tease you, for I knew Robert’s answer to be false.” Her eyes wide with shocked mirth, she waited for his reply.
Callum’s cheeks burned, so he knew he was blushing. “Well, ‘twasn’t every daughter.”
Laughing, Branwenn threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, Callum, I love you!”
He chuckled and shook his head. “I love you, too.”
* * *
The next morn, Robert left with a small wagon containing his sister’s body inside, wrapped in burial shrouds and covered over with several layers of furs. The pall that hung about the place that morn was heavy and grim. No one seemed inclined to speak, so they quietly trudged back inside the keep after saying their farewells to the man, and one final farewell to the lady whose body lay so quiet and still beneath the covering of blankets.
“Aye, she was a dear, lovely lass, that one was,” Chalmers broke the silence once they were all settled around the hearthfire and drinking a bit of mulled ale. “And the poor lad, how it breaks my heart that he’s lost both his parents in the same twelvemonth!”
Branwenn’s eyes misted. Callum, seeing her distress, reached over and took hold of her hand and rested both of them on his knee, stroking the top of hers with his thumb. He cleared the sudden thickness in his own throat before saying, “He seems a bit less fretful since the ladies—and Bao and Daniel—spent time with him the day of his mother’s death.”