The Laird (Captive Hearts) (10 page)

“They have different purposes, the Angus and Highland,” Hugh said. “Though the Angus are tough for all they gain weight more quickly than the Highlands.” He slapped a sizable rock back onto the top of the wall as if it weighed nothing.

“MacLogan, is there a reason you keep glancing back at the crofts? Do you expect Angus will steal your chickens?”

Something crossed Hugh’s craggy features, something between disgust and despair. “He’s your uncle.”

“Yes.”

“Ask Brenna why I might want to keep an eye on Angus Brodie.”

A girl child with hair as red as her father’s came scampering out of the croft. At the sight of her, Hugh turned back, though he and Michael hadn’t walked half the perimeter of the pasture.

“You’ve no wife,” Michael said. “Who looks after your daughter?”

Hugh stopped and hefted another rock. “We do. She’s sensible, is my Annie, and a good girl.”

The good girl scampered directly to Angus’s fancy black gelding, which brought Angus from his perch on a nearby stone wall, pipe in hand.

“Hugh, are we in a hurry?”

“Yes.”

Another red-haired fellow had emerged from a cow byre halfway up the hill, and he, too, was apparently in a hurry to reach the crofts.

“One of your brothers?”

“Dantry. Boy has a temper and a mortal dislike for sheep.”

And Angus was in a mood to sermonize. Michael nearly tripped over a loose stone at his feet, but didn’t stop to stack it back where it belonged.

***

“Tell me about your cousins.”

Brenna fussed as she tied a ribbon around the bottom of her braid, because this was not a topic she could have anticipated. “What do you want to know?”

Michael turned down the covers on their bed, sat on the edge, dusted the soles of his bare feet together, and scooted back to arrange himself against the pillows. He was again wearing only his drawstring breeches, which Brenna took for a measure of husbandly consideration.

“Do the MacLogans typically raise cattle? I know little about cows, though I enjoy a good cut of beef.”

He wanted to talk about cows, while Brenna wanted to talk about kissing.

Or the lack of it.

“My uncle Seamus MacLogan had a fold of handsome Highlands. Ferdie and Amos MacLogan emigrated to Pennsylvania, where the winters aren’t so harsh. They think the Aberdeenshire blacks will do well there.”

“Hugh plans to export cows?”

Brenna blew out her last candle and draped her night robe over the foot of the bed. “You must ask him about his precious cows when Angus isn’t on hand to scowl and fume and pace about.”

“I tried that. You’re leaving the window open?”

“It’s a soft night. I like the fresh air.” Needed it, in fact. Brenna climbed onto her side of the bed. “Hugh is shrewd. If he thinks there’s a market for cows, then you can bet he has a reason for it.”

Angus had reasons for criticizing anything Hugh or his brothers put their hands to, and Brenna did not want to discuss those reasons any more than she wanted to discuss cows.

“When did your cousins come into Brodie tenancies?”

“The spring after our marriage, as a condition of the settlements.” Brenna lay on her side, facing her husband, though she could not see him well.

He shifted about, making the bed heave and rock. “You read the settlements?”

“You didn’t?” In the pained silence following her question, Brenna realized she had insulted him without meaning to. “I’m sorry. That came out wrong. I know you read the settlements, because you signed them, as did I. I’ve had occasion to refer to them from time to time, while you could not.”

He was silent, and the darkness abruptly took on an oppressive quality. No breeze stirred in through the window; no moonlight illuminated the bedchamber.

“Brenna, if you had three wishes, would one of them be that you had never married me?” His tone was gentle, not accusing.

“Michael, you’ve not been home three days. What are you asking?”

His hand settled on her cheek, which caused her to flinch—but only flinch.

“You startle whenever I touch you. Even in sleep.” His fingers traced her jaw, bringing her a whiff of vetiver and despair. He could not have asked her that fanciful, brave question about wishes in the broad light of day.

“You surprised me, Husband, yesterday by the river. I’m not keen on surprises.” The way Michael had probably not been keen on French victories.

He withdrew his hand. “So if I tried to kiss you now, you might let me survive with my manhood intact?”

She could not guarantee that. “The conception of children doesn’t require kissing.”

“You’ve made a study of this?”

She had, in fact, to the extent that asking old women for specifics was a study, though worse than despair, she now heard mockery in Michael’s tone.

“Maybe I could kiss you.” Brenna’s suggestion was unplanned and not at all likely to succeed. “You mustn’t expect much. I haven’t the experience you do.”

Michael rolled across the mattress, so the warmth and bulk of him pressed against Brenna’s side.

“The vast majority of my experience was gained before I married you, Baroness, and I would not object had you no experience at all. I am available to be kissed at your earliest convenience.”

He was eager to mash his mouth against hers, eager to slobber all over her. “Maybe you should just swive me and have done with it.”

“Brenna Maureen, you would sound more enthusiastic about selling Boru to the English. I’ll kiss your cheek now, despite your woeful lack of interest.”

He kissed her cheek so quickly, Brenna barely had time to tense up in preparation—and then he rolled away.

“Good night, Wife. I will dream of your kisses.”

Brenna shifted to her side, so they were again back-to-back in the big bed. That kiss had been nothing. No slobbering, no enduring his tongue down her throat, no…nothing.

And he had warned her.

Brenna fell asleep wondering at Michael’s question: If he had three wishes, would one of them be that he hadn’t married her—or might he wish that his wife could someday kiss him with the enthusiasm any soldier home from the wars deserved from his lady?

Five

From the warmth of the big bed, Michael watched as his wife began her day. Brenna was inherently considerate, making little noise as she brushed out her hair and laid out her clothes. She was also inherently decent, too decent to admit she regretted marrying him.

Because what, after all, could they do about it now?

He struggled up against the pillows. “I’ve been thinking.” And thinking, and thinking.

Brenna’s hands did not pause as she organized her hair into a thick braid.

“Good morning. What have you been thinking about?” She remained facing the mirror, which of course meant she could keep surveillance on Michael in the mirror’s reflection.

“I never wooed you. We never wooed each other.”

She whipped a green ribbon around the bottom of her braid, tied a knot, and yanked the ends tight.

“My da wanted a place to stash me. Your da needed a bit of coin. Wooing wasn’t necessary. I was eight years old when the betrothal contract was signed, for pity’s sake.”

The way she batted the brush at the end of her braid suggested the topic—like many topics—annoyed her.

Michael rose, retrieved their tray from the corridor, and placed it on the hearth. While Brenna tidied up the bed, he poured a mug of tea, added cream and honey, and brought it to her.

“Wooing,” he said, extending the mug to her. The cup was the same one she used every morning—blue with pink roses. He wanted to tell her to leave the damned bed for the maids, except Brenna was a woman who needed to move about.

And he’d yet to see a maid in this wing of the house.

“Explain yourself,” Brenna said, accepting the cup but not taking a sip.

“We are stuck with each other, why not make the best of it?”

He caught bewilderment in her expression before she took to studying her tea. “Did you put honey in this?”

“I did.”

She took a drink, then set the mug back on the tray and resumed making the bed. “We could get an annulment.”

Must she sound so hopeful?

“Not likely. We’ve spent three nights in the same bed, we’ve had years and years to repudiate our vows, and I, at least, was an adult when we went through a ceremony the import of which I well understood. Under Scottish law, you were of age as well.” Though under English law, she’d been too young by years. “Based on the betrothal contracts, the union also had your father’s blessing while he was alive.”

Brenna lifted her tartan shawl from the foot of the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“I suppose an annulment would cost money.” She sat on the bed, as if the weight of this realization took the wind from her domestic sails.

Michael had money. Ten years of officer’s wages carefully invested, a knack for lucky wagers, and a parting gift from Sebastian St. Clair had left Michael quite comfortable. The Strathdee barony also came with an income, though now wasn’t the time to share that news with his reluctant wife.

Wearing only his linen drawers, Michael took a place beside her on the bed they’d yet to put to its happiest use.

“I realized something when I was dreaming of your kisses.”

“Bother your dreams,” she muttered, though she also smiled, as if him dreaming of her kisses was not
entirely
a bother.

“I realized that I love you.”

She was off the mattress and headed for the door before he could snatch her hand and bring it to his lips.

“Michael Brodie, that is not amusing, and if you think I’ll fall for sweet words from a man who would rather make war than be married to me—”

An interesting and appallingly female way to view service to King and Country. “Listen to me, Brenna, before you go flouncing off in a cloud of righteous fury.”

“I’ve never in my life
flounced
,” she shot back, turning to face him.

She looked coldly affronted—she was good at looking coldly affronted—and yet, Michael’s every instinct told him she was hurt, perhaps even scared.

And had been for some time.

“I recall the day you came to live at Castle Brodie. You had no doll. I thought girls were born clutching dolls, because even the poorest crofter’s daughters seemed to have something with yarn for hair that they called a doll. You had a storybook.”

She settled on the hearth, looking brittle and cold in her nightgown and shawl. “When you’re an only daughter with four older brothers and no memories of your mother, a good story can be a comfort.”

Was that why she taught young Lachlan to read?

“I worked harder on my lessons after you came to live with us. I understood that you were to be my wife one day, and I could not have you more learned than I was. You were reading French by the time you were ten years old.”

“French isn’t difficult.”

“Not for you perhaps.” Michael rose, moved the tray, and took a place beside her. Under his linen-clad backside, the stones were hard and cold, but at least Brenna hadn’t bounced to her feet. “For me, it was gibberish, but command of that gibberish saved my life on many occasions.”

“Was that why you ended up in France? You spoke the language well?”

“Most of Wellington’s officers were fluent in French, which was fortunate when French deserters came our way.”

She hugged her knees. “Were you a deserter, then?”

“I was not, not to the people who counted, and part of the reason I did not come home to you immediately is that I made enemies on both sides of the war. I did not want to risk them following me here.”

Brenna turned her head, so her cheek rested on her knees.

“That’s all you can say? For two years, the entire shire whispers about why Michael Brodie turned his back on his wife, his clan and his holdings, when he might have come home to a hero’s welcome, and that’s your explanation?”

He wanted to give her more, because the entire shire hadn’t merely whispered. They’d muttered, speculated, gossiped, and insinuated too. In nine years—in nine hundred years—that aspect of human nature would not have changed.

He also wanted to kiss her. Huddled in her shawl, her toes tucked under her hems, Brenna looked young and unhappy.

“I made the acquaintance of torturers, Brenna. Men who excelled at inflicting suffering, men who could cherish a grudge like a Papist would cherish a piece of the true cross. The barony is at least in part an effort to provide me with safety by recognition.”

She studied him, and he bore it, though her pensive expression made clear she was not thinking about kissing.

“Tell me about this love you think you have for me.”

He silently thanked her for the change in topic, though in its way, love was no more easily discussed than torture.

“I knew from the day I first beheld you that we were to be wed. Even a boy of thirteen understands what that involves.”

“A girl of eight does not. I knew you had a nice smile, and when you teased me, it wasn’t mean.”