Chapter 16
Lex slammed the door to the master chamber that he had opened with one fierce blow of his fist. "I want the truth this time, MacEwen. I have no patience for lies any longer. Are you truly my father?"
"I tried to stop him, my lord," the sennachie apologized to his ailing chief lying in the bed.
Lex had thought the sennachie was the oldest man he had ever seen, but looking at the man sunken in the bed before him, Lex revised his earlier conclusion. The MacEwen chieftain had not looked like that the first time he had met him at Sandra’s wedding, and that had only been a short while past. Whatever ailment was devouring him was working at a henchman’s pace. The old man's hair was nearly white. No longer was it easy to tell the color of his eyes either. The fading blue had become so dim it practically blended with his whites, creating an image of a blind man. A blind man who was also unable to walk or get out of his bed. How could this possibly be the same robust man who had hand-fasted him with Sandra only a fortnight ago?
"Do I really look that bad?" came the MacEwen's cracked voice barely above a whisper.
Lex realized then that he had been gawking with an open mouth for overlong. "I had no idea of your condition. Sandra only told me you had fallen ill and could not travel with me to London. My last visit here, your clan would not let me see you for myself."
Five men burst into the room with claymore swords drawn and surrounded Lex. Each MacEwen blade touched a different part of his body, not one of which he was willing to part with just yet.
"Let him be and leave us," their chief ordered in a voice no more than a whisper, yet filled with the authority of his position. "I have waited for this man many years."
With little more than a grumble and a few sideways sneers, everyone left the room except the sennachie. The chamber seemed suddenly bigger from the silence. The rough wood furniture and huge oversize bed were the only things in the room left to testify to what kind of man the MacEwen had been. He no longer filled them with his husky bulk, but his withering form in the center of the bed still warranted all the hard-earned respect of a Highland chief.
"I will not take up any more of your time than necessary. I just need to hear the truth from your lips."
"That will be difficult from over there. Come here and sit with me." The MacEwen patted a spot on the bed next to him and shooed the sennachie away from his hovering position.
Lex felt odd accepting the warm welcome he knew he had not earned or really deserved. If this man only knew his true intentions for coming back to the Highlands he would not be asking him to sit on his bed for a chat. Nor would he have given him his daughter, no matter how many times Lex had taken her. They all had reacted to him like this, MacEwen and MacLachlan alike. His notions of what these clans were like, based on his distant memories of the feuding going on when he left as a young boy, had slowly changed and become clearer as he sat down on the edge of the enormous bed and shook the hand offered out by his enemy.
"I told him the truth already but he does not believe the words of a wise man. This young snap thinks your answer will be different than mine," the sennachie kept mumbling on in a disgruntled tone over in the corner.
"He is right," the MacEwen said with a smile that enlisted only half of his face. The other half did not respond at all. "He has lived long and knows much, but what I have to tell you should have been told to you many years ago. Had I known you were still alive I would have tracked you down--"
"Tracked me down and killed me like my brother so that you could claim my clan and wipe out our name." Lex's constant companion of revenge returned in a flash. A MacEwen grin was all it took to bring up his defenses again and remind him why he had to finish what he came for.
"I truly wish I had that spirit of yours fighting on my side instead of against me. Hopefully it is the only thing you got from that father of yours besides his green eyes." The MacEwen paused for a moment and studied Lex’s face with his good eye. "I am not your father and never would I kill my own son."
Lex felt both relief and regret at hearing his answer. Relief that he was in no way related to the woman he had already bedded as his wife, and a tinge of regret that this man was only his brother's father.
"I was there. I saw the fight and I saw you kill my brother. How can you deny it?" Lex accused the man but desperately searched his pale face for a rebuttal. He wanted everything he had thought all these years to be wrong. He wanted all the hatred his father had planted in him to be replaced by belonging, and this was the only man who could do it.
"My version is somewhat clouded like yours, but my heart knows I could not have done that kind of killin', be it my own blood or that of an enemy." The MacEwen scooted up onto his pillow with the aid of Lex's supporting strength. He looked frail and old but there was a slight return of a spark in his faded blue eyes. "Your mother and I hand-fasted to each other in a secret ceremony in the woods between our lands. I had loved her for years." A smile curved up one side of his mouth. "We felt in our hearts that we would be the ones to end the feud. Once the deed was done we thought all would be pleased, but that was not the way things turned out. Your mother was forced into a marriage with your father, Angus, and made to deny any association with me before her clan." His eyes came back from that faraway place and focused in on Lex. A single tear hung from his white lashes. "I watched from behind the sheep pen, ready to jump out and fight for her once she proclaimed her love, but she never did. Her beautiful face was purple with fresh bruises. He had beaten her into sayin' those things. I know to this day what she really felt in her heart."
Lex let out a slow, shaky breath to keep his own emotions under control. His poor mother. He was not the first man to let her down, to let her suffering go unavenged. "And that short time you were with my mother was enough to convince you my brother was yours?"
"Your mother told me she was too battered to be with Angus for nearly a month. By the time she had healed she already knew of your brother but kept it a secret. We secretly met several times and discussed what to do. We decided it best she stay with Angus and pretend the child was his until it came time for your brother to become the next chieftain, then we would make the whole truth known and join the clans as we knew was our destiny. As you know, in these parts being chieftain can mean a very short lifespan, especially for one as hated as your father." The MacEwen's old eyes drifted away again with a sadness Lex knew could never be healed in this lifetime. "The years dragged on and our hopes of ever meeting our destiny together began to fade. We saw each other only a few times during the many years, for your father kept a close watch on everything that was his, just as I kept a close watch on the members’ comings and goings in my own clan. That was when it came to my attention that my young niece was going to the same place in the woods that I had gone many years before to meet with your mother in secret. I followed her one day and uncovered the worst possible heartache a father could have created for his own flesh. I saw the two young lovers, my son and my niece, cousins, just as I had been, in love with a MacLachlan girl years before." Tears flowed down the cracks of the MacEwen's face like small rivers of regrets. Lex knew nothing he could say would stop the pain, so he let him continue on with his haunting tale.
“I stepped forward after watching and hearing more vows of love than could ever be between them. I pulled them apart and drew my sword to make your brother leave. But he would not leave. He drew his sword and was ready to fight for the one woman he loved. It was then that I dropped my sword and let the burden of my soul finally come full circle in the very place it had all started. I told him I was his father. His blue eyes were more than a testimony of the truth. No MacLachlan had ever had blue eyes before, and no MacEwen had green. The colors separated our clans as efficiently as our names." The frail man seemed to tire suddenly and slumped to his side toward Lex for support. Lex steadied his failing frame with both his arms. "If only I had held my tongue. I would cut it out now if it could bring him back," he cried with labored gasps, his hands clutching at Lex's arms.
"I need to hear no more. I can see the truth for myself in your pain." Lex felt his words in his very soul and wished that a worthy man such as this could have fathered him as well. His honor and truthfulness were evident. Whatever happened in that shed that day was no murder. It had to have been an accident.
"I have to tell you, Lex," he pleaded to go on. "You have to know it all. I was not the only one who had followed them there that day. Your father had found us as well, but I did not know he was there until after I had let my heart speak the truth."
"I know. I was there too."
"Then you can tell me what really happened?" He gripped Lex's arm with his one good hand, this time even more desperate than before. "Your father came out of nowhere screaming in a rage and waving his sword like a madman. I woke up here in my own bed and was told I was found next to the dead body of the MacLachlan heir, my sword still sticking out of his heart."
Lex's throat grew tight as that very same picture returned from his buried childhood memories. A MacEwen claymore buried halfway into his brother's chest and his father kicking Ronald's still living body in anger. "I only saw the result. I know not what happened in between." Lex stopped, contemplating whether to go on and admit his cowardice. One look into the desperate eyes of the MacEwen and he knew he had to. The old chief needed answers to his guilt just as much as Lex did. "I hid when my father yelled out his charge. It was an instinctive reaction, one I am not proud to have learned. I saw two bodies lying on the floor of the hunting shed once I finally came in. Yours and my brother's. My father said Ronald could not be saved and that we had to leave him as he was to let the MacEwens see with their own eyes what their chief had done or they would deny it like they did all the other murders they committed."
"Tell me it is over, Lex. Tell me my Sandra will not end up like your mother."
All Lex's pouring out of emotions had left him totally unprepared for such an accusation. "I am not my father." Even though he said it with deep conviction, Lex knew everything he had let himself become had been shaped by his father and his father's hatred for the MacEwens. "Have I given you any reason to believe otherwise?" he asked, his defenses just as high as before.
"I had hoped never again to see that look I saw in your mother's eyes the day they wed her to Angus. But I did see it again, in my own wee Sandra's eyes when she came beggin' for me to take her back into my home. She was scared to go back, I could tell. She told me it was all a mistake and you really did not want this marriage either. That you were willin' to let her marry Mangus. But a chief's word is his honor. No matter how much I wanted to take that sweet girl back into my heart and home, I had promised her to you for a set time. Tell me I did the right thing. My time here is goin' like the rays of summer. I need to know you two will fulfill the destiny I never could."
"And you expect my clan to give up their name to you that easily? I respect your honor and have honored my responsibility to your daughter, but there is still no solution to our clans' problem."
"There is no problem," the old MacEwen said with a chipper half-smile of glee. "Sandra has grown her whole life with the notion that one day her marriage would bring our clan under the MacLachlan name, she is my heir. I never told her of my own desires, she decided it by herself after she met a young MacLachlan in a pond one day and realized they were not really beasties. It would have been so, too, if Mangus had not come to me and begged to be taken into our clan as a MacEwen branch."
"And now that I have married her and hold the charter to both of our lands, whose name will take over whose?" He asked his question with all the distrust he had cultivated against the MacEwens for years.
"I give you this land gladly. I have no use for it now. I give you this castle and the care of my clan as well, Lex MacLachlan, for the sennachie has personally vouched for your honor as a leader of men. The only thing I will not turn over to you as long as there is a breath in my body is my daughter's happiness. I would rather see every member of both our clans die in battle before I see that defeated look in her precious eyes again. You can have it all, MacLachlan, we will gladly take your clan's name, but at a very high price. You must show me that happiness in Sandra's eyes again. I have to hear she is with you because she loves you. And I will be able to tell the truth the minute I see her." He looked out his one movable eye at Lex with a measuring glance-over. "Do you have feelings for her? Is she not the most beautiful woman you have ever held?"
It felt odd talking to a father about his daughter's desirability. But he could not deny it was true. "Aye, she is that...but I cannot stay--"
"I see much more in you than you want me to. She has snared your heart just as surely as she has caught all of ours. There are no games with her, just pure love and caring for her people. Now that I am sure of your feelings, I have something for you." MacEwen's strong arm waved out to the sennachie for him to come forward. "Bring it to me."
"I told you he was the one," the sennachie said with a dapper bounce to his step. He rushed to the far side of the room and took down the MacEwen claymore hanging from the wall. It was the same sword Lex had seen sticking out of his brother's chest, but other than that, everything else from his past memories had been changed.
"This belongs in the hands of the chief of the MacEwens. It is my daughter's place now to decide whose hands will wield it next. She is my heir and will pick only the best man for our clan. Give it to her so that she can finish what was started many decades ago with your mother and me. You are no longer hand-fasted by my forced decree. It is for the two of you to arrange from here."
Lex took the ancient MacEwen sword and held it in his hands. This was the highest symbol of leadership and honor in a Highlander's life.
"I will bring the sword to Sandra and honor any choice she makes for it within my clan."
MacEwen smiled his one-sided smile and winked his eye. "We know who that will be. You be nothing like your father, Lex MacLachlan, thank the heavens my prayers were heard before my voice failed me as well." He shooed Lex off with a grin and slid back down into his all-consuming bed covers. Only the top of his wavy white hair could be seen.
"Can you spare me a cloth to wrap this in? I would like to make it a surprise for Sandra."
The sennachie grabbed a tartan plaid from a chair and rushed over to give it to Lex. "I can do better than that," he said with a toothless grin. "It will be meanin' much murr to hurr if it comes in her daddie's wrap." The ancient man wrapped the sword carefully in the tartan, then reverently handed it back to Lex. "I meself did not think to be livin' to see the day when these clans settled the feud."
Lex bowed slightly from the waist to the small sleeping chief in the bed. He got no response, but he was not expecting one. The old man had spoken too much already for his weak condition. It was best that Lex leave him to rest as quietly as he had found him. "Worry not your tired mind over your sweet Sandra. You wisll never see that look in her eyes again." Lex said his final good-bye and exited the room, closing the huge doors behind him. Four members of the MacEwen clan were waiting outside the chamber with their swords still at the ready. Lex held his one free hand up to show he would not go for his sword and walked the rest of the way out of the castle with one eye on the exit ahead and one watching his back.
The MacEwen clan members who were present counted his every step with distrusting eyes. It was obvious they had no love for him in their hearts. He was sure their animosity toward him stemmed from their love for Sandra and the poor condition they probably saw her in the last time she left here.
One woman dared to do more than just give him an evil look. She waited until he was mounted on his horse before she stormed up to him and jerked his reins from his hands. "Break her tender heart, MacLachlan, and I will be fixin' yurrs up for a meal."
Lex vaguely remembered the plump woman's face from the day he had disrupted Sandra's wedding. "Her heart was never in my keeping, but maybe you should be worrying about mine."
"If that be the truth of it you will be in handsome company amongst your clansmen. She's stolen all their hearts already."
"Aye, that she has," Lex said as he gathered up the slack in the reins she released to him. "But at least one of them will have a chance to win hers in return."
"What do ya mean, one of them?" she yelled as he trotted off for the gates.
Lex did not answer. He was already absorbed in his own thoughts of what he had to do next, and what he would be leaving behind when he did.