The Last Heiress by Bertrice Small Read Free Book Online

boy and shook his head wonderingly.
    Then he smiled.
    “Aye, ye’re my get, and there is no denying it. Why did yer mam nae tell me she hae given me such a fine son? And she is dead now? Poor lass!” He turned to his third wife, Ellen.
    “ ’Twas before ye,” he explained.
    “Aye,” Ellen Hay said. “Ye’re a man for the lasses, and I knew it before I wed ye.”
    Baen MacColl had two younger half brothers, and an older half sister. While his stepmother was surprised by his sudden appearance, she had welcomed him warmly and treated him with kindness. He was given his own small chamber within his father’s house. His gentle half sister, Margaret, and Ellen Hay taught him manners. Meg had entered her convent the year after he came to Grayhaven. While she loved her father, Margaret Hay did not approve of his earthiness. She did not, however, hold Baen responsible for the behavior that had led to his birth.
    “But ye’re nae a cotter’s lad anymore, Baen,” she said in her quiet voice. “Ye must learn to eat and to behave like a man of good breeding.”
    And he had. He had learned how to read, and to write, and to do sums. He had learned how to use a sword, a dagger, and a staff. And when he had shown a good intellect, and that he was no simpleton, the master of Grayhaven began to consider what was to happen with this third son he had suddenly inherited. Would he do for the church?
    But Baen would not do for the church. He soon demonstrated that he had his father’s instincts for and charm with women. Colin Hay tried not to be too proud, and his stepmother just shook her head and laughed. She loved her man. And she loved his son.
    Baen liked the outdoors. When his eldest son had turned twenty, the master of Grayhaven gave him his own cottage and put him in charge of his flocks and his shepherds. And Baen was content with his father’s generosity. He considered himself fortunate and worked very hard. While he was the eldest he felt no jealousy toward his father’s heir, his half brother James. Baen was the bastard, and he understood the way of the world, for hadn’t Parlan Gunn and his daughters taught him his place? Colin Hay had wanted him to bear his surname, but Baen refused. He was proud to be the MacColl.
    His relations with his brothers had been easy from the start. As they grew older they rode and drank and wenched together. They gambled and won. Gambled and lost, but they always took care of one another. Colin Hay watched with satisfaction as his two legitimate sons and his bastard grew as close as if they had come from the same womb. The master of Grayhaven was relieved that there was no jealousy between his sons. Each had a place in his heart, and each knew his place in his father’s life.
    And his third wife, Ellen, mother to James and Gilbert, had taken Baen into her heart with her usual generosity and calm manner. Unable to have any more children after her two sons were born, she enjoyed this third boy and grew to love him, for he was so like his father.
    “Are there any more out there like him?” she teased her husband.
    “Not to my knowledge,” he had replied with a small grin.
    Ellen Hay had died just two years ago, and she was missed by all of her menfolk.
    And of his three lads Baen was the most like Colin Hay, but for Tora’s stormy gray eyes. It was in those eyes the master of Grayhaven saw the cotter’s daughter with whom he had once lain in the heather that summer so long ago. She had been a virgin that afternoon, and his eldest son had come from their passionate couplings on that single day. He thought it strange that after birthing such a strong lad that she had never had another child. Baen had told him that his mother’s marriage was an unhappy one, and that his stepfather had been cruel to her, that his daughters had neither respected nor loved her.
    “She was good to them,” Baen told his father, “yet they followed their da’s lead. In the end it was to their detriment,