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Whereas Aunt Alisa had always treated him cruelly, seeing him as a disgrace upon the clan that could potentially ruin her son. She had insisted Daniel remain far away from Aindreas, yet the boy always found his way back. After Aindreas’s fall, Daniel and Marcus had been by his bedside during that time, telling him stories about the servants, entertaining him, so he wasn’t alone.
The memory made Aindreas chuckle while he dumped his body onto the trunk. Those were simpler times. He looked around at the saturated green pastures before him as a gentle mist trickled down from the low-hanging clouds.
As he sat, looking out at what should become his lands, he recalled one memory that had never sat well with him. He had been about five summers, five years before he fell from the tree. It had remained with him all these years, taunting and worrying him. He had been creeping up behind his mother. Her back had been facing him while he tentatively stepped closer, hoping to scare her. Yet, her crying had turned to a wail. It had been such wailing he feared his mother had turned into a ghost. Her cries had terrified him, making it unable for him to move.
“Mama?” he had asked, worried the apparition would capture him and drag him far from the castle and deep into the wood.
He remembered how startled his mother had looked, turning around and displaying her bloodshot eyes, her brown hair loose and in disarray. She had reached for him, pulling him into her lap and hugging him close to her body. “Oh, my sweet, sweet, lad,” she had whispered into his ear, kissing his temple as she continued to rock them back and forth.
Aindreas had heard the whispers before that the laird often slept with the maids of the castles, that he enjoyed extramarital affairs with the village girls. He had never believed them. Not until his mother had died. He blamed the laird for her death. The laird should have been there at her deathbed, and instead, he was away with another woman.
Aindreas rose and stepped closer to the tree, placing his hand on the trunk. His wet hair stuck to his face as he leaned closer, whispering, “Don’t ye worry, Mama. I will make him pay for what he’s done to ye. I won’t let yer death go unavenged.” Aindreas smiled, a plan coming to mind as he turned back to his horse, taking the reins.
He would act just as his father had, be the man his father wanted him to be.
Aindreas would be the perfect gentleman, and he would make Blair his. Only then would his father hurt as his mother had. Only then would he break his reputed father.
