Part 18 (1/2)
”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 embarra.s.sment 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 pa.s.sionately.
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 a.s.sure 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 ofthat .”
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 Kilgarigon 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 withthat 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 pa.s.sed 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.”