I mean, how hard could it be to bring peace between people who want it?
What of Kieran?
His gut tightened at the memory. Neither Kieran nor Ewan had wanted the fight that Isobail had caused. They had even tried to work it out peacefully between them before she delivered her ultimatum.
Closing his eyes, Braden tried to blot out the lonely image of the green and black plaid, impaled by Kieran’s family sword, lying on the cliff above the rocks where his brother had jumped into the sea.
He had tried so hard to keep his brothers from fighting. Tried to tell Kieran that there would be another lady he would love as much.
“You know nothing of it, Braden. Hearts don’t just stop loving, and when a man finds the woman he needs, he’ll do anything to keep her. Anything!”
Aye, that was a truth he’d seen firsthand on more than one occasion. Love made a man weak. It made him do unforgivable things, and in the case of Kieran, it had cost the man his very soul.
It was for that reason Braden would never allow himself to love a woman. He would never be such a fool.
Never.
His life belonged to him and he would make certain that no woman ever held control over him.
Besides, he enjoyed his carefree life and had no wish for it to change.
At present, the only thing he wanted to change was this stalemate between two obstinate fools.
Somehow, he would get the women back to their families by the morrow. Then, Lochlan would have his men under control, and Maggie...
Well, he had a different plan for her. One he couldn’t wait to get started on.
Four
Weary and frustrated, Lochlan pushed open the door to his keep, expecting an empty hall where he could sit quietly and brood over the events of the day.
What he found when the heavy door scraped open was about two score hostile men glaring at him as if he were the sole reason for their misery.
He groaned inwardly. “This canna be good.” Each man looked as if he was about to take a swing at Lochlan.
Lochlan paused with a frown. Never in his life had he seen a more sour-looking group. They reminded him of a gaggle of geese ready to confront the axe-bearing farmer. The only problem with the image was that Lochlan had no axe.
Nor much of anything else with which to protect himself.
And the geese were restless. They swarmed around him, their voices loud and ringing off the stone walls as they shouted at once.
Lochlan held his hands up to quiet them.
Instead, they grew louder.
Fergus stepped forward and yelled for the others to quiet down. To Lochlan’s amazement, they complied, and it was then he knew the leader of the irate geese.
Lochlan glared at him. “What the devil is the meaning of this? What are all of you doing here?”
“We’ve come for answers,” Fergus said over the murmuring voices. “I saw the way you and your brothers cozied up to the women, and now I’m thinking you and them fancy brothers of yours are wanting to be keeping our women for yourselves.”
Lochlan gaped in disbelief. “You canna be serious.”
“What else are we to think?” Davis snarled. At a score and ten years, with a thick mop of tawny hair and a slight build, Davis was normally one of the more reliable men of the clan. But, by the furious look on his face, Lochlan could tell Fergus had stirred up quite a bit of mischief while Lochlan had been gone.
Davis shook his head. “All of us here know that Braden MacAllister never sleeps alone, and now you’ve left him locked up in the kirk with our women. He’s probably in a darkened corner even as we speak with someone’s wife or daughter wrapped about him. And God help you both if it’s my wife he’s with.” Davis raked Lochlan with a repugnant glare. “Where was your head when you decided to leave him in there? I’m thinking it’s time we be finding ourselves a new laird! One with some common sense.”
“Aye!” the others shouted in unison.
