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 spoken, 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 gave them a charming smile.
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 was the problem. He refused to kill a man over a dalliance.
Women were fun. They were his raison d’etre.
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 English women were enjoyable for a time, but in the end it was the Highland lasses he craved 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 made it to 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?”
One
Kilgarigon, Scotland—Three weeks later
Lochlan 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 steak 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 which frightened most, ‘twas also his fierce demeanor. Ewan rarely smiled. In fact, his brother 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.”
