Page 22 of Claiming His Highland Bride (A Highland Feuding #4)

T ensions were high in the great hall as the low and the high of Clan Cameron gathered there at their chieftain’s command. The sick feeling in his gut told Alan he kenned what brought them there, but he hoped and prayed that was not the reason. Would another young woman be sacrificed to appease Gilbert’s insatiable need for more?

Not if Alan had anything to do with it...and he planned to have something to say on the matter if, when, it arose. Glancing around, he saw his parents and brothers enter then. The same expression of surprise lay on his father’s face when he caught sight of Alan there. Alan made his way through those present and kissed his mother on her cheeks before greeting his father and brothers.

It had been nigh to a year since he’d seen either of them. Young Robbie, who looked like a younger version of their father, had been living with the powerful MacLerie Clan, already betrothed to the chieftain’s second daughter. Tomas, younger still, was being fostered with their mother’s brother, laird of the MacSorley clan in the south.

‘You were summoned as well?’ he asked once they’d got wine and were waiting for Gilbert to arrive.

‘This cannot be good,’ his father warned. ‘You two, be on your guard and stay with your mother,’ he ordered the younger boys.

‘Father,’ Alan said. ‘I must speak with you now. Before this goes any further.’ Alan had already witnessed the arrival of a young woman who was being kept in a private chamber until Gilbert made his announcement. ‘Come.’

His father said something to his mother before following Alan out into the corridor. Alan strode up the stairs, heading for Gilbert’s chamber, kenning there was little time left to him.

‘What are you doing, Alan?’ his father asked as they turned the last corner and approached the chamber.

‘’Tis time for me to do what I should have done long ago, Father.’ His father grabbed his arm and pulled him to stop.

‘Why, Alan? Why now and why you?’ he asked. ‘Have you thought this through?’

‘I have done nothing but think on this matter and the time has come for our family to choose a path. I found proof of his treachery and his plans against the truce—’

‘Have you, now?’

Alan and his father turned to discover Gilbert and the council of elders standing there listening. His uncle crossed his arms over his chest and lifted his chin at them.

‘And where did you find this proof?’

Many of elders fidgeted and shifted on their feet. Alan knew that they were not unified behind Gilbert’s leadership, but none would speak out first or be openly supportive of one who brought a claim as he did now.

‘You do not deny that you plot against the treaty with the Mackintoshes and Chattan Confederation?’

Murmurs and questions rippled through the growing crowd. Many of those who’d been below stairs came to see what was happening there and watched now. Even his mother and brothers had followed the crowd and stood there listening.

‘The treaty has outlived its usefulness,’ his uncle claimed. ‘I have been looking into our options and opportunities.’

Alan walked towards his uncle, leaving his father a few paces behind him. Gilbert’s smirk spoke of his confidence in this matter. Certainly he would be confident if he kenned that the only witness was a dead woman.

‘Opportunities that benefit you while destroying more of our kith and kin,’ Alan challenged. ‘The peace has been good for all of us.’

‘Peace is for weak men,’ Gilbert snarled out the words. ‘Like my brother and like you.’ He shook his head at them. ‘Weaklings who would seek the favour of our enemies and allow the Camerons to be thought of as followers instead of the leaders we are.’

Gilbert strode towards him and Alan waited for him.

‘Weaklings who take the dregs left by other men and are not worthy of being called a Cameron.’ His father lunged past him and grabbed at Gilbert then, surprising everyone including Alan.

‘You bastard,’ his father yelled as he threw a punch at his brother’s jaw. ‘I supported you all these years.’

Alan watched as his father was thrown back by his uncle. Confused by their exchange, he pulled his father to his feet.

‘Camerons do not betray their own,’ Alan said quietly then. ‘Camerons do what is best for the clan and we expect our chieftains to uphold that.’

‘Are you challenging me, boy? You? Are you certain you wish to let him do this, Brother?’ his uncle yelled. When a few of his closest allies tried to calm him, he pushed them away and nodded at Alan. ‘This is about that whore I married, is it not? The one you thought was in love with you and chose me instead?’

Alan understood his uncle’s aim—to break his concentration and make him doubt his purpose. Hearing Agneis spoken of like that disturbed him, but it would not change his mind. He had to keep himself under control or he would lose this before it began.

‘You wanted her, but she left you the moment I showed interest in her and called her to my bed,’ his uncle boasted. ‘Why settle for a worthless boy when she could have a man? A chieftain with the power of life and death.’

‘And you killed her!’ Alan called out to him. ‘Used your fists like she was a beast of burden instead of your wife.’

His uncle’s reaction to that was to laugh. Stunned silence filled the corridor as Gilbert laughed loud and hard. Even Alan could not fathom the cause of it.

‘It is about her. She tried to tell me my rights and my duty. I showed her what hers was. Even a stupid beast could learn the lesson sooner than she did.’

His sword was in his hand before he thought of drawing it. The gasps and outrage spiralled around those watching.

‘You would challenge me over that dead piece of arse?’ his uncle asked. Now, his voice was cold and controlled, as he was. ‘Or do you think you should be chieftain instead of me? That is it, is it not? You want to take the seat from me—for your spineless father? Nay, for yourself? Think again, bastard, if you think you can take it from me.’

‘I will stop you from killing any more women whose only sin is to find themselves in your control, Uncle.’ He shifted the hilt of the sword in his hand, finding its comfortable place, and grasped it strongly.

‘Uncle?’ Gilbert asked, mockingly. ‘Robbie, have you not told the boy the truth? He has no place here other than what I give him, like the stray mutt he is. He has no right to challenge me—’

‘We have an agreement, Gilbert,’ his father said in a quiet voice.

Though not loud, the import of it carried across the area and drew all the attention. Alan glanced at him and then his mother and saw the shame and dread in both their expressions. When she tried to push his brothers behind her, Alan kenned it would be bad.

‘An agreement? Oh, aye, we did. But I warned you that I would end it if you did not bring him to heel.’

A sick feeling rose in the pit of his stomach and Alan looked to his father for some explanation. Let him speak it before Gilbert did. But his uncle began laughing again and the sound of it made Alan’s blood run cold in his veins.

‘Gilbert.’ There was sadness and shame and a plea all in one name, but his father’s mistake was in thinking that there was some mercy in this man.

‘You should hate the Mackintoshes more than I do, boy. Robbie and I came upon three of them having their way with his betrothed. During one of the last battles. Three Mackintosh warriors, fresh from the fight, found her and took her. Used her right there in the road. Killed her maid and her guard while she watched.’

Everything around him stopped in that moment.

Was he saying that...? One glance at his mother’s pallor told him it was true. She had been raped. Violated by three men. And he was the product of that attack.

‘I see you understand now. You are nothing more than a mongrel Mackintosh bastard, raised by a man too soft and weak to put her aside as he should have. No man who takes a soiled woman like that in marriage was worthy to be chieftain.’

No one spoke. No one seemed to breathe or move.

‘And no one will accept you because you carry no Cameron blood at all in your veins. My brother knew it and took the shame in exchange for his place as my steward.’

His uncle laughed again and a nervous titter ran through those listening to the shocking disclosures.

‘He took whatever I would give him in exchange for me allowing you and your soiled mother to live with among us. ’Twould have been better if we’d put you both down the day we found her in the road, covered in her own blood and their seed.’

It made everything so clear to him. Every slight against his parents, every mean and crude gesture, every insult and demeaning action—they all made sense now. Though he was horrified to learn of his mother’s past and to hear her exposed before everyone she kenned, it lightened his heart and gave him new purpose.

He was not beholden to this man. He was not related to him and held no oath of loyalty to him. He was not honour bound to uphold his commands. In good conscience, in good faith, for those who had died meaningless deaths at the hands of Gilbert Cameron and for those betrayed by his actions, Alan was freed from any constraints now.

‘Mayhap you should have, Gilbert,’ he said quietly as he rolled on the balls of his feet to get his balance. ‘But you may have another chance to do that right now.’

‘You have no standing here. You are the bastard of some nameless Mackintosh warriors who we killed when we found them over her,’ Gilbert said, pointing at his mother then. ‘And you have no proof with which to accuse me of anything.’

‘He may not, but I do.’

A voice he never thought to hear again whispered across those gathered. The crowd parted to allow her through. Sorcha MacMillan walked to confront Gilbert Cameron with his crimes.

Dressed in the fine raiment of a lady of high standing, she nearly glowed. Jewels on her hands and at her neck. Costly gown and tunic. Her hair had been arranged in swirls around her head before the length of it cascaded down her back, the fine golden chains woven through it sparkling in the light of the candles around the chamber.

‘You cannot be here,’ Gilbert yelled. ‘You are...you are...dead.’ He lost all the colour in his face and wobbled unsteadily on his feet at the sight of her.

‘I would be if I had not escaped.’

‘Who are you?’ Alan’s father asked.

‘This is Lady Sorcha MacMillan,’ Brodie said as he stepped to her side. Spread out behind him were the same Mackintosh men he’d faced that morning when she left him. ‘She has some things to say that you all might find interesting. Especially you, Colum, and you, Duncan.’ He’d spoken the names of two of his unc—two of Gilbert’s most trusted cronies. ‘Your days are numbered in his plans as well.’

‘No woman will ever betray me,’ The Cameron said, grabbing a sword from the nearest guard and running at Sorcha.

Alan was too far and Brodie was unarmed and under truce. He screamed out her name and watched as Gilbert lifted the sword to strike her.

‘Nay, Brother, you will not!’

The man who’d raised him as his beloved son stepped in front of her, sword raised and held, and protected her from the death blow. Two years older and just as skilled, he pushed back against Gilbert’s frenzied attack on her as Brodie pulled her to safety.

Now, it was up to Alan.

Whatever he’d expected this moment to feel like, this was not it. Instead of anger and fury filling him, a cold calmness flowed through him. This man who had struck down his friend Agneis and who tried to kill the woman he loved just now must die. For shaming his mother before all there. For all the innocents who’d died at his hands and all of their kith and kin who would fall in his vainglorious attempts to destroy the Mackintoshes, Alan would strike him down. Gilbert regained his footing and faced Alan.

‘Come then, mutt,’ he goaded Alan. ‘If you think you can...’

Alan did not wait for the taunt, he attacked. He took the man on his own terms, determined not to let him set the pace or path of this fight. But he did not fool himself that he would win other than by wearing the older man down and killing him.

The crowds moved back, giving them room to move, and Alan became a relentless force against the man. Some cheered for one or the other, but Alan ceased noticing anything but his quarry. When Gilbert moved to the left, Alan spun and met his blow. When he feinted right, Alan struck with the strength of his sword. He kept the man moving, pushing, kicking and shoving with his elbow and body to tire him out.

With grim determination, he used every move that Brodie had taught him and he could tell from his lack of counterattacks that Gilbert was not expecting them. Alan could not help the smile that lifted his mouth then. He would defeat this man who would bring dishonour and death to everyone about whom Alan cared.

When Gilbert’s laboured breathing signalled that the contest was nearing an end, Alan did not play or draw it out any longer. With a kick, he crushed the man’s knee, sending him to the floor. Hardly winded himself, he shoved The Cameron sharply on to his back and pressed his sword to the man’s neck.

But before he ended this miserable cur’s life, he looked to those who mattered most to him in the room. To make certain they knew, no matter the outcome for him, they mattered. His mother. His father. His brothers.

Sorcha.

She met his gaze unflinchingly and a slight smile lifted the curve of her lips. He kenned what those lips felt like on his skin and against his mouth. He smiled back.

When Brodie placed his hand on her arm, telling Alan she would be protected no matter what happened, Alan looked down at the man under his sword.

‘Burn in hell.’

He leaned his weight down and thrust the blade through the place where a man’s heart should be. A gasp and then a long hiss of breath escaping was the last sound the man made before dying. The silence erupted then, with screaming and yelling as Gilbert Cameron died before them. Releasing the hilt of his sword, he left it in place for all to see.

‘Take him.’

Alan did not know who called the order, but he found himself grabbed by many hands and dragged down the corridor. He would face the consequences of this act, but he would never regret ending the man’s life and his reign of terror. Never.

And, even if Sorcha could never be his, she would not be Gilbert’s either. She was safe, Brodie would see to that and no one would naysay The Mackintosh in that. Alan did not fight back and found himself not harmed as they locked him in a small chamber along the hallway there.

* * *

Some time passed with many people rushing along the corridor past the chamber. He heard bits and pieces, names whispered and yelled, as the commotion raged there. Well, he had killed their chieftain, so he expected that there would be confusion and questions about who would lead them. He was not certain if his actions would speak to his father’s fate. Or the man he would always call father.

Alan was standing by the door when it opened. Of all those who it could have been, she was not the one he expected.

‘Alan,’ his mother cried as she rushed to him. ‘Are you injured?’ She began rubbing her hands over him, seeking any wounds.

‘Nay, I am well, Mother.’

The enormity of the things they needed to speak about was crushing and they stood looking at each other for some long moments.

‘Mother...’

‘Alan...’

He took her in his arms and held her, wishing he kenned the words that would ease the terrible shame and choices she’d faced for him. And now, everyone had heard the tale.

No matter that she had been faithfully married to Robert Cameron and bore him two other legitimate sons. No matter that she had raised the child born of violence and horror with love and caring. No matter that she had suffered such a thing and had to face the scorn of those closest to her. Alan worried that none of those qualities and manners be remembered now and only. Gilbert’s shocking words would be.

‘Thank you,’ he finally whispered. ‘I just wish that you did not have to suffer such a thing.

‘Robbie gave me the hope I needed,’ she said, wiping her eyes as she leaned her head against his chest. ‘His love never let me lose heart. He taught me how to love.’

‘You must have hated me.’ Surely, a woman who’d suffered such an attack and then borne a child from it would have harsh feelings for the result of her shame. And yet... He’d never had a clue of his origins from either her or his father.

‘You were mine, Alan. Always first in my heart. And he claimed you before everyone as his. Neither of us ever felt anything but love for you.’

‘I would speak to him, to Father, before...’

He did not ken what he faced, but he hoped he would have a chance to make his peace with the man who’d raised him. So much made sense now and he had questions that no one else could answer. But the sound of a number of people approaching the chamber made Alan wonder if his fate was now at hand.