Born in Sin (18 page)

A loud whistle rent the air.

The men stopped talking and everyone turned to look at Callie.

“Would someone please tell me what is going on here?”

Ewan passed a disgruntled glare at her. “We happen to be saying hello to our wayward brother. If you don’t mind, we don’t get to see him much.”

Callie’s jaw went as slack as her uncle’s and Dermot’s. Nay…

Had she heard that correctly? If it were true, why had Sin never bothered mentioning it to her?

Why on earth would he hide something like that?

Crossing the room, she confronted her husband. “You’re a MacAllister?”

There was a pain so profound in his eyes that it made her breath catch.

Lochlan stiffened. “Of course he is.” Then he saw the look on Sin’s face, too, and under his breath she heard him speak to him. “Regardless of the past, you have always been a MacAllister.”

A tic started in Sin’s jaw and when he spoke, his tone was equally as low. He cut a harsh glare to Lochlan. “If you recall, I was very publicly denounced. Twice.”

She saw the shame on Lochlan’s face as he dropped his troubled gaze to the floor.

Aster approached them. “Are you telling me this lad is a Highlander? Henry married my niece to a MacAllister?”

“
You
married her?” Braden gasped in disbelief. “
You
?”

Sin snorted. “Makes you want to run for cover before the Apocalypse strikes, doesn’t it?”

Braden shoved him good-naturedly.

“Ow,” Sin said again, shoving at Braden’s hand. “I told you I was wounded. What are you going to do next, break out the saltcellar and rub it in?”

This was the first time since she’d met him that she truly saw her husband relaxed and unguarded. There was even an air of good humor about him.

Ewan grabbed her up and hugged her hard. “Wel
come to the family,” he said, planting a kiss on her cheek.

“Put her down before you hurt her,” Sin snapped.

Ewan growled at him and refused to release her. “Now, lass, why would you be wanting to marry his surly hide when you had me and Lochlan to choose from?”

“Because you didn’t ask her,” Sin said wryly.

“Aye, well, I might have, had I seen her first.”

“Well, you didn’t. Now put my wife down.”

Ewan set her back on her feet, then winked at her. “Possessive of her. Now, that’s a good sign.”

“Aye,” Sin concurred, “but a bad omen for you if you don’t be keeping your hands off her.”

Lochlan laughed. “You talk like that,
braither
, and I can almost hear the burr in your voice.”

Sin scoffed at him. “Wishful thinking on your part.”

“You know,” Braden said, indicating Simon with the tilt of his head, “we still don’t know why he knows so much about us.”

Sin stepped back and pulled Simon forward to meet his brothers. “He was one of my foster brothers.”

“You must be the one who annoyed him on my behalf,” Braden said, offering Simon his arm. “I hope you did a good job of it.”

Simon shook arms with him. “I certainly tried to, anyway.”

The men laughed as Aster herded them back toward the table. Callie watched and listened to the brothers and marveled in the changes their presence had on her husband.

With them here, she was hoping to corner one of his brothers and find out more about why her husband was so unwilling to accept her.

Most of all, she wanted to know why Sin hadn’t bothered to tell her he was a Scot.

T
he men sat for hours bantering and laughing. Callie listened, her heart warmed by their affection for one another. The MacAllisters even accepted Simon into their midst, and unlike her clansmen, they had no problem whatsoever with his English breeding.

She learned much of their past, including a lot of information about their brother Kieran who had killed himself. But she learned very little about Sin. It was almost as if they knew his past hurt him and so they sought only to mention tiny slices of it.

It was the wee hours of the night before they decided to find their beds. Callie yawned as she showed the men where they were to sleep.

At last she found herself headed to her room to be alone with her husband.

Sin was still smiling.

“You’re very handsome when you do that.”

“Do what?”

“Smile.”

He frowned at her words.

“Here, now, I didn’t mean to make you stop.”

He cast a reluctant look to the bed, then moved away from her.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were a MacAllister?” she asked quietly.

“Because I’m not.”

Her frown matched his as she tried to sort it out. He definitely wasn’t related through his mother. “I don’t understand.”

He sighed as he unbelted his sword and set it aside. “My father sired me the first year of his marriage. He was away from home, visiting a friend in London without his wife, and for whatever reason, my mother caught his fancy. She was scarce more than a girl back then, and they tell me his accent and wild ways enchanted her. I was conceived in the back of a barn in a manner my mother assured me was most humiliating and painful for her.

“As soon as she bore me, she sent me and my wet nurse to Scotland to live with my father. An old servant who was there that night told me that my stepmother took one look at me and was so distraught she almost miscarried Lochlan.”

He spoke the words calmly and without emotion. Even so, it had to hurt him deep in his heart and soul. There was no way it couldn’t.

She wanted to go to him and offer comfort, but was afraid if she tried he would stop talking. So she listened quietly, while her heart broke a little more with every word he uttered.

“From that moment on, my father wanted nothing to do with me. He ignored me every time I tried to
speak to him. If I approached him, he turned his back and walked away.

“To my stepmother, I was nothing but a painful reminder of my father’s infidelity. She despised everything about me. Because of his guilt and shame over what he’d done, my father went out of his way to prove to his wife that he bore no special favor toward me. My brothers had the best of everything and I had whatever was left over.”

She swallowed against the tears that choked her, but she refused to let him see them. “He sent you back to England to be with your mother?”

“He tried, once, when I was seven. It was the middle of winter.” He paused and leaned with one arm against the mantel to stare at the fire as if recalling the event. He looked so lost, standing there with his raw hurt etched plainly along the lines of his handsome face. Callie didn’t know how she maintained the strength to keep herself from going to him. Perhaps it was the strength of him that held her together and allowed her to just listen as he told a story she was sure he had never told before.

When he spoke again, she heard the hidden agony inside his heart. “I remember being so cold the entire way. My father had sent next to no coin with us and the knight who was taking us to my mother would rent a room for himself and leave us to the stable or barn.”

Callie cringed at the dispassionate way he spoke.

“My nurse kept telling me that my mother would be delighted to see me. She assured me that all mothers loved their children and that my mother would treat me just as Aisleen treated my brothers. She said
my mother would grab me up in her arms and kiss me home.”

Callie closed her eyes to stave off the sympathetic pain inside her. Knowing his mother as she did, she could well imagine his reception.

“We arrived on Christmas Eve. There were presents strewn about, and my nurse led me across the great hall to where my mother sat at the lord’s table with a baby boy in her lap. She held him so lovingly as she laughed and teased him. I was joy-filled at the sight and thought that at last I would have the mother I had yearned for. That she would see me standing there in my worn-out shoes and tattered plaid, and hug me close and tell me how glad she was to have me there at last.”

Callie felt a tear slide down her face and she was glad he wasn’t looking at her to see it.

“When my nurse told her who I was and why we were there, she shrieked in outrage. Angrily, she threw her wine in my face and said that she only had one son and that I was never again to disgrace her with my presence. Then she had us thrown out into the cold night.”

Sin took a deep, ragged breath as he continued to watch the fire. It was as if he refused to look at her for fear she, too, would reject him.

He lifted one foot to kick a piece of wood back into the grate. “I knew then that there was no such thing as a family for me. I was neither Scot nor English. I was nothing but a homeless bastard. Unwanted. Useless. My nurse returned me to my father, and his contempt for me grew until the day when King David’s men came for a son. They wanted hostages to send to
King Stephen in England to ensure that no more Scots would raid his lands or attack his people.”

“So he sent you.”

He nodded. “Aisleen told him if he sent one of her sons, she would kill herself. Not that she needed to say it. All of us boys knew who was going to be sent.” He laughed bitterly. “It was the only time in my entire life my father had ever looked at me or spoken to me.”

Sin wiped a hand across his face as if thinking about the past made him weary. “My father and I passed angry words, and in the end he grabbed me by my shirt and shoved me into the hands of David’s men. He said I was never to be welcomed into his home again, and as far as he was concerned I no longer existed.”

Her tears fell freely as Callie tried to imagine the horror that had been his life. Never wanted, never loved. No wonder he was so distant with her.

Worse, she thought about how her clan had greeted his brothers after the way they had treated him and Simon. The way she herself had left his side to see to his brothers’ needs while he had been left up here with a fresh wound. Alone.

He was always alone.

Dear Lord, how she wished she could go back and change this afternoon. He had been pushed aside more than anyone ever should. And she ached for him. She wept for the way he’d been treated, and in her heart she knew she would never be able to let him leave her and walk alone again.

“I will always want you with me, Sin.”

He curled his lips at that and pushed himself away
from the hearth. “Don’t mock me,” he snarled angrily. “I don’t need your pity.”

Nay, what he needed was her love. But he had lived so long without anyone’s love that she wondered if it was too late for him. Maybe there was such a thing as being too strong.

“It’s not pity I feel for you.” She moved to touch his arm. To her amazement, he didn’t move away. She ran her hand gently over the biceps of his uninjured side and up to his face, until she forced him to look at her and see the sincerity of her eyes. “You are my husband, Sin, sworn before God. I will always be here for you.”

Sin swallowed at her words, unable to fathom them, unable to believe she really meant them. It was a game she was playing with him, and he could only guess why she would want to do this to him.

He stared at the floor as he remembered the times in his life he had deceived himself. The times he had lain beaten by Harold, thinking that his father had only been angry at him when he had sent him away. That if he was a good enough lad and did as the English asked and spoke no angry words to Harold, that he would be allowed to go home as King Stephen had promised. That his father would welcome him back with open arms.

In the end, his father had continued to shun him. His father’s letter to Henry hadn’t even borne Sin’s name upon it. It bore no reference to him as a son at all. It had been cold. Harsh. A final rejection that still resonated in his heart.

He remembered the sting of the Saracen whips, the
beatings he’d endured during his training. The only thing that kept him sane was the belief that if he could escape them and get back to England, all would be right. His mother’s people would surely welcome him back into their fold.

And yet, after Henry returned him to London, he had been sneered at, hated and feared. They had treated him worse than a leper, worse than a heretic.

Not even God Himself could love something like you
. The pope’s condemnation rang in his ears.

Nay, he was still that little boy who had stood before his mother on Christmas Eve with his heart full of hopeful longing. What had he ever gotten for such foolish dreams?

Nothing but more ridicule. Nothing but more hurt.

His heart had withered and died years ago from lack of use. If he opened himself up to Callie now, he was sure she would betray him.

It was the only thing in life he counted on. The only thing that was a certainty.

Reluctantly, he removed her hand from his face. “’Tis late. You need to go to bed.”

“Where will you sleep?”

“On the floor before the hearth.”

Callie’s lip quivered as she fought against the tears inside her. Her frustration mounted. How she wished she knew a way to reach him. To make him believe in her. In them.

But he had shut himself off from her again.

She watched as he removed his surcoat and armor. His tawny shoulders gleaming in the firelight, he took a pelt from the bed and lay down to cuddle with his
sword. She clenched her fists at her sides, wanting to choke him for his stubbornness.

What was it going to take to reach this man?

Whenever you fail to win them over, lass, then mayhap you should partake of their leisure
. Her father’s words rang in her head, giving her the inspiration she needed.

She undressed until she wore nothing but her thin underkirtle, then she grabbed a pillow from the bed.

Sin listened to his wife moving about as he stared into the fire in the grate. He wanted nothing more than to join her in her bed. To go over there and pull her into his arms and finally experience the only piece of heaven a man like him could ever hope for.

But then, he was used to disappointment.

Suddenly a pillow was placed against the back of his head. Frowning, he leaned back to see Callie making a pallet behind him.

“What are you doing?”

She shrugged as she sat on the floor and pulled his blanket over her. “I am being Ruth. I am making my bed where my husband is. If you won’t join me in my bed, then I will join you in yours.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“
I
am?” She leaned up on one elbow to stare at him. “It seems to me ridiculous is lying on a cold, cobbled floor when you have a comfortable bed waiting for you just a few feet away.”

He closed his eyes, unable to deal with her and the raw emotions that were still churning inside him. He’d told her things tonight that he had never spoken of before. No one, not even his brothers, had ever
known what his mother had said or done to him that night.

He was weak and he was tired and all he wanted was respite from his past.

“Go to bed, Callie.”

She didn’t. She merely snuggled down beside him and continued talking. “Why? Did I do something wrong on our wedding night? Did I displease you somehow?”

Sin choked as he remembered just how warm and welcoming she had been then, too. She’d never done anything to displease him. Not until this moment when she refused to do as he asked. “Nay. I was not displeased.”

“Then why won’t you make love to me?”

An image of her naked and hot in his arms scorched him. His body roared to life over her handful of words. She was the first woman to beg him for his favor. It was erotic and sensual, and it made him burn. “I can’t believe I’m having this discussion with you.”

“Fine, then, no discussion. You lie there with your wounded shoulder and just pretend I don’t exist. Which you’re very good at, by the way.”

The hurt in her voice stung him. He didn’t want to hurt her. All he wanted was for her to leave him alone. Just leave him to the little bit of tranquility his beleaguered soul could find.

“Callie, it’s not you. Why can’t you just accept the fact that I am a faithless, worthless bastard and leave me in peace?”

“Like everyone else does?”

“Aye.”

She sat up and leaned over him. Her breasts rubbed against his arm, making his shaft jerk in response to her innocent touch. Her unadorned beauty held him transfixed as her coppery curls tumbled around her face and the firelight gleamed in her green eyes. Her cheeks were pink from her anger and she narrowed a hard glare at him.

“Because I don’t believe you’re faithless and I know you’re not worthless. As for being a bastard, that was hardly your fault.” She rested her chin on his biceps and stared at him with a hunger in her eyes he found unbelievable. How could this woman want anything to do with him?

“I would love you, husband, if you would let me.”

Those words …

They tore him apart and left him so vulnerable to her. He didn’t dare trust in them. He knew better.

“And if I did? What of your family? Are you willing to leave them behind forever? Do you honestly believe for one minute they would accept an Englishman into their hearts?”

“You’re not English, you’re a Scot.”

“Nay. I was born in England, and for the most part raised there. I was cast out of Scotland and told never to return. I hate being in this place more than you can ever understand, and the first chance I get to go back to London, I will take it. Will you be willing to stay with me then?”

Her eyes snapped angrily as she thought about that horrible place. “I despise London. The filth and stench. And they hate me there.”

“Then you
do
understand how I feel here.”