The great hall was empty, and the early morning light spilled in from the windows high above their heads. His brothers and Simon were passing good-natured insults and taunts as they joined them.
Callie sat him at the table, then hurried off to find food for them.
“She’s in a most cheerful mood this morn, isn’t she?” Lochlan asked.
Sin grunted as he grabbed the heel of Lochlan’s bread and tore a piece from it. “She’s interminably pleasant.”
“She wasn’t last night.” Lochlan reached for his cup.
Sin frowned at the odd note in his brother’s voice. “What say you?”
Lochlan inclined his head toward where Callie had vanished. “When I left her last night, she looked as if she were about to cry.”
“Over what?”
“You.”
“Me?” he asked, baffled by Lochlan’s words. “I did nothing to her.” At least not yet. It was what was to come that made him want to throw himself from the top of her castle.
Until that inevitable day came that would divide them forever, the last thing he wanted was to cause her hurt.
“Aye,” Lochlan agreed, “It’s the not doing anything to her that was the problem. It seems she was upset because you barely notice her at all.”
That was wholly untrue. Sin noticed everything about her and therein was the crux of his problem. He didn’t even want to contemplate a future without her. “You know better than that.”
“It matters not what I know. Only what she perceives.”
Braden clucked his tongue as he joined their conversation. “And after all that advice you gave me about Maggie. For shame, Sin. I thought you were a man of action and not one of talk.”
“Braden,” Simon interrupted, “I think you might be forgetting one small detail. Sin is here to find one of Callie’s kinsmen for Henry. How do you think your Maggie would have felt had you been an outsider and done that to her?”
Lochlan stiffened as he turned back to Sin. “You wouldn’t really do that.”
Sin sighed. “I am honor bound to it.”
“Sin,” Lochlan said, his voice thick with warning, “you know the code of conduct that runs thick through everyone with a drop of Scot’s blood. You don’t betray your kin, and most especially not into the hands of an enemy.”
Sin arched a brow at his words and watched as color darkened Lochlan’s cheeks. Interesting that his brother would expect better behavior from him than their father had shown.
“That was different,” Lochlan said, knowing Sin’s thoughts. “It was wartime and that was the only way to cease hostilities.”
“And if I don’t stop the rebels, it will be wartime again. Henry is out of patience.”
“Then for your sake, I hope the rebel leader is someone in this clan your wife isn’t overly fond of.”
Sin stared at the table as his stomach knotted. In his gut, he already knew the culprit even though his heart argued repeatedly that it must be someone else. Anyone else.
But it was Dermot MacNeely as sure as he sat at the table listening to his brothers. His wife would curse and hate him forever when she found out. But there was nothing to be done about it. It was what must be done.
“Well, I never...” Callie’s voice broke off.
They looked up as Callie came into the room bearing a tray of fresh baked bread and sliced cheese.
“When I left, the four of you looked fine and here I come back and it’s as if the Second Coming were upon us. Should I ask what tragedy has darkened the mood of this hall?”
“‘Twas only the absence of your beauty.” Braden grinned. “We dwell in absolute darkness without it.”
Sin snorted and tossed his piece of bread at Braden. “You’d best counsel your tongue, little brother, else I will counsel it for you.”
