“Is it so impossible to think that her father is a brute and liar? That he despises her because she is so unlike him?”
“Ah.” Laird MacKay stood up. “I have had the displeasure of meeting Laird Bane on numerous occasions. Broken bread with him when he still held his clan and lands so many years ago.”
“If ye hate the man so much, why were we indebted to him?”
His sire came from behind the table and crossed to the other side of the solar and poured himself a dram of whisky. He drank it down and poured himself another. “Eighteen years ago, a great ague broke out among our most prized herd, the poor beasties grew weak and wouldna eat or drink. The winter storms came early that season, sealing the fate of our clan—killing more than half of my prized ewes. I was forced to cull another third of them, hoping to save the ones that didna show symptoms of the illness.”
Why haven’t I heard about this?
“Bane prospered that year—his fertile land and hives producing the best honey in Alba. However detestable the man is now, he knew how to keep bees. I was a desperate man that winter, and our clan struggled. I couldna bear to see ye and yer mother go hungry, or me men abandon their posts and seek another clan. So I dared to visit Bane and begged for a loan. He was only too happy to accommodate me and said one day in the future he would collect on the debt.”
“Why Bane? Why not the Sinclairs or one of our other powerful neighbors?”
“Never let anyone outside of our clan have that kind of power over ye, lad.”
“Bane is but a distant relation, through me grandfather.”
“Aye, but blood just the same.”
“Why do ye hate him, Father?”
“Hate is the wrong feeling.”
Adam didn’t understand—what had driven his sire to harbor such ill feelings for Kali’s father?
“Once I accepted the money, Bane thought that provided him with an open invitation to invade me home. And he’d bring his wife and bairn with him, unannounced.”
The lingering sneer on his sire’s face provided the answer he sought.
“Ye were a wee lad”—his father continued with the story—“and even then, ye lingered near that redheaded bairn like she was fairy-born.”
So, he and Kali shared a longer history than he remembered, more intimate than he had known. No wonder he was drawn to her. “Ye blame the daughter for her father’s misdeeds?”
“Nay,” his sire sighed. “But the mother…”
“What?” He eyed his father skeptically. There was something different in his eyes, an emotion he had never seen before.
“Ensla Bane was a witch.”
“A witch?”
“Aye, as assuredly as the North Sea is plagued by storms, that woman cast her spells upon me, and I burned for her night and day.”
“Father!”
“What do ye want, lad?” he growled.
“The truth.”
“The truth is different to every man. What one man sees, another will deny, even if he stood beside that man and witnessed the same thing.”
“That’s a coward’s way of thinking. Ye coveted Bane’s wife—I can see the guilt on yer face.” The truth hit Adam like a punch to the gut. Never would he have suspected his father of coveting another man’s wife.
“Women know how to seduce men—it’s in their nature.”
“Do ye hold the same opinion about me mother?”
Laird MacKay crashed forward in a fit of anger and slapped Adam’s cheek. “Doona ever question me feelings for ye mam again. God rest her soul.”
