“Nay, of course you couldn’t.” Braden cupped her face in his hands to offer her comfort. He half expected her to pull away or stiffen. Instead, she just stared up at him, her amber eyes large.
In that instant, he saw the vulnerability inside her. The uncertainty. And he ached to soothe her in some way. Not just with physical closeness. Nay, he wanted to make her feel better from the inside out.
“I am sorry about Anghus and Aidan, Maggie, truly I am.”
She placed her hand over his and looked up at him with tears brimming in her eyes. “Then stand with us, Braden, and do what is right. You know the feud canna go on. Help us to end it.”
Her courage amazed him. The cunning and determination it had taken her to achieve this stand-off. The woman was truly brilliant.
“Tell me, how did you do this? How did you get the MacDouglas Lairdess to agree with your plans?”
The right corner of her lips turned up into a beguiling half-smile. “I snuck myself over to their lands. Since I was just a woman alone, no man thought to stop me. When I reached the MacDouglas castle, I pretended to be a servant, and went to the Lady MacDouglas’s solar to wait for her. Once she heard me out, she agreed to help stop this.”
He paused in thought, but what played across his mind was not to his liking. Maggie’s tale had all the ingredients for a planned betrayal. “And how do you know she’s not lying to you? Even now they could be planning a raid on us while Lochlan is occupied with worries over you.”
“Nay. I believe her. She’s a good lady and all she wants is her husband to see reason. She wants peace as much as I do.”
How Braden wished it were that simple. But he knew it would take more than a few days without sex or food to make Robby MacDouglas back down. The man was out for blood. And not just any blood.
In truth, nothing short of the impossible would cow the man. “Unfortunately, little blossom, it’ll never happen.”
Maggie frowned at him. “How do you mean?”
Braden dropped his hand from her cheek. It was time he explained the facts of the feud to the lass. Still, he didn’t want to see her discouraged. He so enjoyed her spirit that he almost hated for her to give up. But he had no choice.
And a looming deadline.
“Do you know what started this feud?” he asked.
“You said it yourself, the MacDouglas raided Ken Hollow.”
Braden nodded. “And do you ken why he did that?”
She shook her head.
“Do you remember the MacRae’s daughter, Isobail?”
Her frown deepened as she searched her mind. “The lass your bothers fought over?”
Braden winced at her reminder. If ever the devil wore the face of an angel, it was in the guise of Isobail ingen Kaid. Beautiful beyond description, the woman had ruined the life of every man she had touched.
“Aye,” he said past the tightness in his throat, past the haunting memories that burned him through and through. “She was originally promised to Robby MacDouglas, but she couldn’t stand the man, and threatened to kill herself if her father forced her to marry him. My brother, Kieran, brought her here to escape her father’s wrath.”
Braden’s stomach knotted as he recalled that day. Isobail had stepped into the hall, taken one look at Ewan, and in that instant decided he would make a better protector than Kieran.
“But didn’t Isobail run away with Ewan?”
“Aye, she did,” he said, his voice thick.
The day after Ewan and Isobail had left, Kieran had killed himself.
It was less than six months later Ewan had returned home with the news that Isobail had left him in the middle of the night to be with a rich Sassenach.
The news of what had happened to Kieran had destroyed Ewan.
To this day, Braden would like nothing better than to cross paths with Isobail and send her unmerciful soul back to hell where it belonged.
But now was not the time to dwell on what Isobail had done to his brothers. Now, he had to rectify the lasting damage her actions had wrought on them all.
