Claiming the Highlander (2 page)

Braden assessed his opponent.

As the youngest of five boys, Braden had been a warrior since he could first clasp a sword in his hand. In all the years of his life, only his brothers had ever been able to stand toe to toe with him in war. And the foolish Sassenach before him would prove a poor match for his skill.

Though he’d never shirked from killing men in battle, it didn’t suit Braden to draw blood over so trivial a matter. A woman was not worth a man’s life.

Now, if he could only convince the earl of that fact.

Braden spread his arms wide. “Now be reasonable, Rufus. You don’t really want to fight me.”

“Not fight you, you backward Highland barbarian? After what you were doing? I’ll see you in hell where you belong, you primitive, unholy dog.”

Braden stifled his laughter. How charming. Insults. Too bad the man hadn’t had more practice. Braden’s elder brothers could well tutor him in ways to draw blood with the tongue.

“Can we not be mature about this?” Braden asked the earl.

“Mature, you boiled-brained fustilarian?” Rufus choked.

Then, without warning, Rufus lunged with the sword.

Braden sidestepped him easily enough, but since the point of the sword whistled just inches
away from his throat, he decided it was definitely time he parted company with the earl.

“Come, now, Rufus,” Braden said in an effort to distract the man from the fact he was inching toward the open doors of the balcony. “You know you’re no match for me. I could fight a dozen men such as yourself.”

Rufus pulled back with a speculative smile. “‘Tis good then, that I brought my three brothers.”

Said brothers chose
just
that moment to enter the room and unsheath their swords.

You just had to say that, didn’t you?
Braden thought wryly.

Braden paused as he summed up his new opposition. None of them could possibly be younger than two score. Still, by the way they held their swords, he could see these were trained knights and not dandies out to pay scutage to their English king for their service. These men had battled much and still trained for war.

Not that it truly mattered, for he wasn’t afraid of mere knights. There would never be a day when such could ever lay low a Highlander. But Braden wasn’t a fool, and four trained knights against one half-dressed, unarmed Highlander were not the odds on which he was used to wagering.

He decided to play to the earl’s good English breeding. “These odds really aren’t very sporting.”

“Neither is cuckolding.”

Well, so much for sport.

Again Rufus lunged. Braden grabbed a pillow from the bed and deflected the blade with it. Jumping to the bed, he rolled across the mattress as Rufus brought the sword down for his shoulder. Rufus’s blade missed by a hair and tangled with the drapes of the bed.

Braden came to his feet on the opposite side and glanced to where the earl’s brothers were moving in.

“Braden!”

Dropping the pillow, he turned to see Prudence in her corner, holding his sword. Kissing the hilt of it, she tossed it to him.

Braden caught it by the hilt and thanked her an instant before one of the earl’s brothers charged him.

He deflected the man’s blow with ease and twisted out of the corner. Before he could make his way to the balcony, he was set upon by all of them at once.

Braden made a good showing, but with one boot on and one boot off, his hop-along stance made it rather difficult to keep up. Damn the English for their strange clothing. At home, he’d never been bothered by these uncomfortable boots, or so many other articles of clothing.

To think they called his beloved Scots brethren backward. At least in the Highlands a man knew how to dress for convenience and health.

And, most importantly, for unexpected trysts.

As they fought, the earl lost his balance and
stumbled, giving Braden the chance he needed to escape without shedding English blood.

Twisting against the wall, Braden cut the cord to the chandelier.

The earl and his brothers dashed apart as it crashed down, scattering tapers about the room.

While they rushed about stamping out the small fires, Braden ran to where the three women were huddled in the corner. He grabbed his supertunic from Patience, his boot from Prudence, and his cloak from Piety.

“Adieu, my fair ladies,” he said with a smile, touching Piety lightly on the cheek in a gentle caress. “If you ever venture to Scotland …” He looked at the men who were heading back toward him. “Leave the husbands at home.”

With that, he rushed through the open door to the balcony and jumped gracefully to the courtyard below.

He gazed up at the balcony to see the three women looking down at him.

“Remember us fondly,” Prudence called as she waved her hand delicately.

“Always, my loves,” he said, smiling.

Braden blew them a quick kiss, then pulled on his boot and made for the stable. He had little time to make his exit before the earl and his brothers would be after him. Not that he was afraid of them; far from it. He really could have killed them all, but therein lay the problem. He refused to kill a man over a dalliance.

Women were fun. They were his raison d’être.

However, no woman was worth his life, nor would he ever take the life of another man over a woman.

That was one harsh lesson he’d learned years ago.

Besides, ‘twas time he headed home. These Englishwomen were enjoyable for a time, but in the end it was the Highland lasses he craved the most. What with their gentle, lilting voices and bright smiles, they were the gems of the earth and it was time he returned to them and their open arms.

As well as other things they were only too happy to open for him.

Braden smiled at the thought.

With the speed of a trained warrior, he saddled his horse and was out of the stable before the earl could make his way out of the keep. Indeed, Braden was through the gate before the man reached the yard.

He had one quick stop left before he was free. But then he was northern-bound.

“Lay on, Deamhan,” he said to his black stallion. “Let’s see what other trouble we can find along the way, shall we?”

  Chapter 2

Kilgarigon, Scotland
Three weeks later

L
ochlan MacAllister was a practical man. A reasonable man, according to most. As the leader of his clan, he had to be. But this … this beat all he had ever seen in his score and eight years of living.

No woman in Kilgarigon would bed or feed her man until Lochlan agreed to end the feud with Robby MacDouglas!

He was still reeling from the unreasonable request. The women were mad. All of them. But none more so than Maggie ingen Blar.

In fact, he himself was ready to go and throttle the women’s ringleader.

And he wasn’t the only one. The men of his
clan were fast passing the point of charity, and already he had heard rumors of them going after Maggie themselves. Indeed, every morning he half expected to find her poor, rotting carcass nailed to the front door of his keep or hanging from the merlons.

Frustrated, he looked across his clean, elegant great hall to where his younger brother Ewan sat at the table sawing at a piece of beef Lochlan had attempted to cook a short time ago. In truth, he would have been better off salting and frying up his leather boots. For surely the leather couldn’t have tasted worse than the meat.

If not for the seriousness of his predicament, Lochlan would laugh at the sight of Ewan trying to keep his long shanks beneath the table. There were few men in the clan who came close to Ewan’s six-foot-six height. And though Ewan’s body was lean, it was muscled well enough to make even the stoutest gulp in fear.

But it was more than the man’s size that frightened most, ‘twas also his fierce demeanor. Ewan rarely smiled. In fact, Ewan avoided most people entirely and seldom ventured from the cave in the hills he called home.

Yet for all his moodiness, Ewan possessed an ability to see straight into the heart of a matter and call it by its name. It was for that reason Lochlan had summoned him from his hermitage.

“What am I going to do?” he asked Ewan.

Ewan attempted to chew the meat, but he
looked more like a cow with cud than the warrior Lochlan knew him to be. “Learn to cook, lest you starve.”

“Ewan,” he growled. “I am in earnest.”

“So am I,” Ewan mumbled as he pushed his wooden trencher away, then took a gulp of ale to rinse the fetid taste of charred beef from his mouth. “You can’t go on eating like this or you’ll never last another week.”

“Ewan…”

His brother ignored his warning tone. “It seems to me there is an easy solution to this.”

“And that is?”

“Go into the kirk yard, toss Maggie ingen Blar over your shoulder, take her out of there and force her to cook us a meal that’s edible.”

Lochlan sighed. “You think I haven’t thought of that? But she’s on holy ground. I’ll not violate that sanctity.”

Ewan rose slowly from the table. “Then I’ll do it. Satan’s throne would freeze before
I
let another woman make a mockery of me.”

“True enough,” a familiar voice broke into their conversation. “That’s why the good Lord put
me
on this earth.”

Lochlan turned to see his youngest brother, Braden, standing in the doorway of the hall.

Braden’s black hair was tousled as if he’d ridden hard. He wore his black and green plaid haphazardly over his left shoulder and his look was as mischievous as ever.

For the first time in a fortnight, Lochlan laughed. “Well, well, the prodigal son has returned,” he said as he crossed the room to greet his ever-errant and irreverent brother.

As soon as he drew even with Braden, Lochlan caught sight of the man in the shadows who stood quietly behind his baby brother. The smile froze on his face as he stopped dead in his tracks.

Nay, it couldn’t be …

But it was.

Lochlan blinked in disbelief.

It had been years since he’d last seen his halfbrother Sin. Even as a child, Sin had been more serious than Ewan and filled with more hatred than Lochlan could fathom.

When Sin had been sent against his will to the English king their father so detested, the youth had sworn never again to set foot north of Hadrian’s Wall.

Lochlan couldn’t imagine what had happened to cause Sin to change his mind, but he was certainly glad he had, for he loved his older brother and had missed him greatly.

Sin still had those piercing, mirthless black eyes that seemed to see straight into the soul. He had the same black hair as Ewan and Braden, and surprisingly enough, he wore it long like a Highlander, not short like the English.

But his clothes were another matter entirely. His black surcoat, mail, hose and boots were all
English. And oddly enough, they bore no markings on them whatsoever.

“What’s this?” Lochlan asked, recovering from his surprise. “You’ve returned from England with a guest?” He extended his arm to Sin, who stared at it a full minute before shaking it.

Lochlan clapped him on the back. “‘Tis good to see you, my
bráthair.
It’s been far too long.”

Sin’s taut features softened a degree, and it was only then Lochlan realized just how uncertain Sin had been of his reception.

“I was afraid to let Braden come alone,” Sin said as he removed his arm from Lochlan’s. “After the number of close calls he had in England, I feared he’d never make it home before some poor husband or father speared him.”

Ewan gave a shout as he recognized Sin. Crossing the room, he grabbed him up into a bear hug.

Sin bristled in the hold. “Put me down, you big, ugly
úbaidh
!”

“So,” Ewan said as he set Sin back on his feet. “You do remember your heritage. With those clothes on your back, I wasn’t sure if you were my big brother come home, or another of Braden’s conquests.”

As always, Braden took the ribbing in stride, but Sin’s look turned murderous.

“Speaking of conquests,” Braden inserted, “where are the women? I’ve yet to see a single one since I crossed into MacAllister lands.”

“Nay!” Ewan gasped as he turned to face Braden. “Can it be Braden’s made it a whole hour without a woman? Quick, Lochlan, send for a healer afore he collapses from the stress of celibacy.”

Braden clucked his tongue. “Now, that’s no joking matter. It’s not good for a man to go too long without a woman. His juices back up and before you know it, he turns into a soured, ill-tempered beastie.”

Braden’s eyes widened as he regarded Ewan. “So
that’s
what happened to you! Come,” he said, draping an arm over Ewan’s shoulders. “We’d best find you a woman quickly before you get any worse.”

His lips curling into a grimace, Ewan knocked Braden’s arm off his shoulder. “Would you stop with your foolishness?” He turned to Sin. “You’d best take him back to England before
I
run him through.”

Lochlan ignored their almost routine bantering. Ewan and Braden couldn’t communicate with each other unless they were exchanging insults.

Lochlan looked to Sin. “I’m glad you came home. ‘Tis been far too long since you last ventured to the Highlands.”