Page 31 of The Outlaw's Bride
Never again would he take the sweet scent of freedom for granted.
Home.His return was bitter-sweet. He was pleased to be here, but circumstances had made things awkward.
On one level he was relieved his father still lived—just because they’d never gotten on didn’t mean he wished the old man dead—but on another it complicated life. With Morgan Fraser in charge, he would resume his role as captain of Talasgair Guard, which often took him away from the broch for days at a time. That didn’t please Lachlann, for he’d have preferred to stay close to Talasgair. He wanted to keep an eye on his scheming younger brother. Even before Lachlann’s capture, Lucas had been forever trying to ingratiate himself with their father.
And then there was Adaira. Lachlann couldn’t help her at present, and that frustrated him. He hated having his hands tied like this.
Lachlann let out a long sigh, sinking deeper into the hot water.
The crash of the door flying open and slamming against the wall, yanked Lachlann from his reverie. His gaze snapped up to see Lucas striding into his bed-chamber. “What are ye doing in here?” his brother boomed. “The men are still celebrating yer return downstairs. They want stories and boasts of yer escape from Dunvegan.”
“They’ll have to wait,” Lachlann drawled back. He pushed himself up, retrieved a cake of lye soap, and began to scrub under his arms. Despite his sea-water bath, his skin itched with filth. “I’m busy.”
Lucas pulled up a stool and lowered his heavily muscled bulk onto it. Lachlann eyed his brother. Lucas seemed to get bigger by the year. Folk here had nicknamed him ‘The Giant of Talasgair’, such was his height and breadth. He was formidable in a fight although Lachlann was quicker. He’d always been the fastest of the four of them—but that hadn’t helped him during the battle against the MacLeods.
“I’ve just been to see Da,” Lucas said after a pause. “If ye take his chair again, he’ll have ye flogged.”
Lachlann threw back his head and gave a belly laugh. “Bootlicking worm … I should have known ye would go straight to him.”
Lucas’s mouth twisted, but he didn’t reply to the insult. “Da wants to know if ye have had yer way with the MacLeod lass.”
Lachlann stopped soaping himself and favored Lucas with a slow, dark look. However, he didn’t answer.
“Well, have ye?”
“What is it to him?”
His brother gave an off-hand shrug. “Who knows … maybe he’s worried she’s carrying yer brat. He might have to kill her for that.”
A chill feathered across Lachlann’s naked skin despite the heat of the bath water. He thought back to the kiss he’d shared with Adaira and of how he’d wanted to take it further. It was just as well he hadn’t.
“I never touched her,” he lied. A kiss was a touch. “As far as I know, she’s still a maid.” That was the truth at least.
Silence fell between them then. Lachlann resumed soaping himself, although the pleasure he’d found in his bath had gone. He wished his brother would take himself off and leave him in peace. Lucas’s toadying toward their father irritated him. He’d only been back at Talasgair a few hours and already his brother, the one who’d stood to inherit if Lachlann had never returned home, was seeking to undermine him.
Ye won’t get my lands, ye bastard,he thought grimly.Over my dead body.
Lucas heaved himself off the stool and rose to his feet, towering over Lachlann. “I’ll leave ye to it,” he said. His gaze was shuttered.
Lachlann watched his brother leave the chamber, slamming the door behind him with his usual finesse.
Heaving a sigh, Lachlann sank down under the water. The heat enveloped him like a soothing blanket. Resurfacing, he reached for the cake of lye soap once more and started to soap his wet hair.
A frown furrowed his forehead as he did so.
No doubt Lucas would go straight to their father.
Chapter Thirteen
The Happy News
“YE WANTED TO see me?”
Lachlann stepped inside his father’s bed-chamber to find the healer tending to Morgan Fraser’s wounds.
“Aye,” his father rasped. “Come in, and shut the door.”
The healer, Domhnall, smeared salve over an ugly scab that stretched down the chieftain’s naked flank. Domhnall was a portly man of middling years; his kindly face was tense in concentration as he worked.
