The Laird (Captive Hearts) (18 page)

A kiss that would assure her he’d never leave her side again.

Her grip on him became more fierce. “Such expectations are a kiss in themselves.”

Her lips grazed his, soft as sunshine. Michael resisted the urge to take her in his arms, resisted the need to wedge his body against hers.

“Again, please, Wife. Kissing wants practice.”

She repeated the gesture, this time kissing her way across his mouth, corner to corner. “You taste like tooth powder.”

While she tasted like hope. “What do I feel like?”

More kisses came his way, and he endured that torture until her tongue touched his upper lip. This necessitated—much as life necessitates breathing—that he tuck one arm around her shoulders.

“You’re all bone and muscle and braw determination,” Brenna said, her breath feathering across his chin, “while your mouth is wondrous soft.”

He dipped his head to brush that wondrous soft mouth across her lips, like one fellow might gently slap a glove across another’s cheek in a moment of high drama. “You’re softer. Marvelously soft.”

While part of him was growing marvelously hard.

***

“Something tells me you aren’t where you’re supposed to be, child.”

Maeve was caught, and Uncle Angus, standing in the door of the stall, looked infernally pleased to have found her. Grown-ups were entirely too big sometimes.

“I’m allowed out of the castle, as long as somebody knows where I am.” Though Lachlan likely did not qualify as a somebody, and “outside” certainly was not an adequate description of her whereabouts.

“You were peeking at Wee Bannockburn, weren’t you?”

To be accurate, she was marveling at the size of the droppings in Wee Bannockburn’s stall. Wee Bannock, a huge dapple gray, was the biggest horse Maeve had ever seen, and Lachlan claimed he had the biggest droppings in Aberdeenshire.

Boys were always interested in things like horse droppings.

“My uncle in Ireland would like him. Bannock’s a fine lad.”

In the next stall over, Bannock munched at a pile of hay taller than Maeve.

“Your uncle would like the damned beastie better at pasture, which is where a horse belongs come summer.” Uncle Angus came into the stall, which caused the horse to sidle away from the hay.

“Bannock doesn’t like it when you swear.”

Uncle Angus bent at the knees and hoisted Maeve to his hip. “If you’re going to sneak out of the castle, get your boots dirty, and come to table smelling of horse, you should at least get a decent look at your friend, and Bannock doesn’t give a—Bannock doesn’t care a whit about my language as long as he can get at his hay.”

Maeve was too big to be carried like this, and Uncle smelled of pipe smoke and whisky. The scent wasn’t entirely unpleasant—some people had whisky with their breakfast even in Ireland—but it was an old man smell. And yet, the view from Uncle Angus’s hip was better than trying to peer between the slats at the horse, or getting her pinafore dirty climbing over the boards.

“He’s busy with his hay. You can put me down now.”

“You’re not that heavy. Have you seen the foals in the back paddock?” He walked with her into the barn aisle and didn’t put her down until they were in the saddle room. “We’ll find a bite of carrot, and you can pet their wee noses. Perhaps I’ll sketch them for you one day soon.”

Admiring horses from a distance was one thing, but Maeve knew as well that horses—especially young horses who had yet to learn their manners—could nip when fed treats.

“Maybe we’re not supposed to spoil their lunches.” The door to the saddle room was closed, which meant nobody would see them taking the carrots, and yet, Maeve felt vaguely uneasy. Like when Bridget fought with her husband. Like when Maeve hadn’t really told anybody where she would be.

“Them wee beggars would eat every blade of grass in the shire,” Uncle said, producing three carrots from a sack. “Come along, Maeve, and meet the horses you might someday ride. This excursion can be our little secret.”

He took her by the hand, and Maeve went, because all misgivings aside, meeting horses she would ride was a wonderful offer, one she could boast of to Lachlan.

Though she likely would not be telling Brenna or Michael about this outing. Uncle Angus had said it was to be a secret. She let Angus take her hand and lead her out to the paddocks behind the barn.

***

A soldier occasionally left important parts of himself on the battlefield—a hand, a foot, an eye, the ability to hear out of one ear. Casualties were more often intangible, however—a sense of humor, the ability to sleep through the night or tolerate thunder.

Michael knew of no veteran who’d lost the ability to ask a simple question, and yet, sitting in the pub among his own people, a pint of fine summer ale before him, Michael couldn’t seem to find the words.

“You were married.”

Across the scarred table, Hugh MacLogan studied the outline of a thistle gouged into the table. “Aye. For five years.”

For a widowed Highlander, this amounted to a speech, so Michael was encouraged to try again. “You had a wedding night.”

MacLogan stuck a finger in his mug and licked foam from the end. He was being courteous, a casual interest in ale being less rude than staring at the poor sod with the unconsummated vows.

“Aye.
We
did.”

Somebody two tables down let forth a magnificent burp, which sparked a spate of admiring comments about the burper, his mother, and his digestion in general.

“I have not yet had—Brenna and I have not had the pleasure of a wedding night.”

Michael spoke softly, lest the state of his marriage become common knowledge. The people in this tavern would not understand why their laird had neglected his lady. Despite his glib reasoning before Brenna about not wanting to leave her with child, Michael had never examined too closely why he’d left without consummating his marriage.

“That explains a few things,” MacLogan observed. “Snug’s in want of use.”

The snug would be more private, so Michael joined his cousin-by-marriage in the nook at the end of the bar.

“Your ale didn’t agree with you?” MacLogan asked as he slid onto the bench.

Michael retrieved his drink from their table, then took the opposite bench. “The ale is quite good.”

He’d sounded bloody English with that pronouncement. MacLogan was laughing at him too, but the bastard was silent about it—damned Scottish of him, to laugh only on the inside and make a man squirm with his confessions all the more.

“You’re looking to me for marital advice,
Laird
?”

Such delicate irony. “I’m looking to you for advice regarding your cousin, whom you’ve spent more time around in the past decade than I have.”

“Right. Here’s some advice, then: treat Brenna right or I’ll kill you. Dantry will dig your grave, and Neil will dance upon it. Fine dancer, is our Neil. He might even pipe you on your way.”

More courtesy. “Precisely because you
do
care about her, I’d appreciate any insight—” Bloody damn. Abruptly, Angus’s wifeless state did not loom as such a trial. “Brenna’s skittish as hell.”

“Maybe she wouldn’t be so
skittish
if her husband hadn’t turned his back on her for nigh ten years. Just a thought.”

Michael stalled by taking another sip of his ale. A barmaid, sturdy, buxom, and dark-haired, sauntered toward the table, but something in MacLogan’s expression must have dissuaded her.

“Brenna is entitled to be exceedingly vexed with me. I was gone too long, I didn’t write enough, and I should be made to pay in the coin of her choosing for as long as she pleases.”

“Damn right. With interest.”

“She wants our marriage to work, though. She’s said as much, and yet, she doesn’t…I can’t…”

Behind them, a series of greetings indicated more custom had arrived for the noon meal.

“Brenna has her reasons,” MacLogan said. “If she’s said she’ll have you, then you’re as good as had, but you’ll have to talk to her if you want to know her secrets. Her lot hasn’t been easy, and her trust is worth earning. If she does part with those secrets, just recall it’s you she protected with her silence. Dantry! Neil! The laird’s buying a round for the house.”

A cheer went up, and Michael lifted his mug in acknowledgment. A few pints of ale was a small price to pay for confirmation that Brenna was not merely reticent with him; she was secretive.

Michael turned to greet MacLogan’s brothers, the smile freezing to his lips. Dantry was still growing into his muscles, though he had his brother’s height and red hair. Neil, however, was big, had dark auburn hair, and was by no means a stranger to Michael.

Even though Michael had seen Neil MacLogan in his nightmares for nearly ten years, he stuck out a hand in greeting anyway. Neil was Brenna’s family, and thus Michael’s family too.

***

Brenna floated through her day, occasionally touching her fingers to her lips and wondering how married people got anything done. A few kisses—a few wonderful, lingering, marvelous kisses wrapped in her husband’s strong arms—and Brenna had gone daft.

This was how Hugh had felt about his Ann, how—once upon a time, long ago—Goodie MacCray had felt about Donal. A feeling more blessed than sunbeams, even more blessed than the fresh breeze whipping off the loch and setting the Brodie pennant to flapping against the flagpole above one corner of the parapet.

The feeling had grown even better, when Michael had framed her face with his hands and touched his mouth to hers, slowly, deliberately. She’d peeked and found him watching her, his concentration ferocious and tender all at once.

That kiss—her pleasure in it, Michael’s lips curving against hers when she’d grabbed him by the hair and kissed him back—proved so much was possible for them that Brenna would never have dreamed they could have.

A kiss like that was a foundation, upon which hope and joy and—

Brenna’s mental effusions evaporated, between one feathery, lovely thought and the next, for out behind the stables, Angus Brodie walked in from the paddocks, carrying a child on his back.

A girl child.

Since Michael’s return, Brenna had lapsed in her vigilance. She hurried down through the castle and across the bailey, too sick with dread to castigate herself for that now, and too angry.

She forced herself to emerge from the stables at a dignified pace. “Maeve Brodie, you are old enough to walk.”

Angus sauntered along, making no move to put the girl down. His hands were laced under the child’s bottom, while Maeve’s arms were around his neck.

“It’s a long way in from the yearling paddocks, Brenna. You’ll not begrudge a wee child a piggyback ride, now will you?”

Damn him. He manipulated and implied and finagled until his actions were above reproach, kindly even, and Brenna was cast in the role of villain or incompetent.

Sometimes both, if Angus was in a particularly nasty mood.

“Put the child down, Angus. She told no one where she was going, and she knows better. I’m frequently on the parapets, and can see disobedience and foolishness when it goes skipping across my bailey of an afternoon.”

The girl wriggled down and stood beside Angus with her hand in his. The sight nearly caused a reappearance of Brenna’s noon meal.

Maeve hung her head and scuffed her boot heel in the dirt. “I’m sorry, Brenna. I wanted to visit with Wee Bannock, and—”

Because Brenna had once been a small, lonely girl in Castle Brodie, she could finish the sentence: and Uncle Angus promised me some treat, some special outing, that my young conscience could not withstand. Brenna saw that the outing had not taken untoward turns, either, which was a relief so vast it would fill the loch.

Brenna saw as well when Angus gently squeezed the girl’s hand, a signal to Maeve not to implicate Angus in her first failed attempt at truancy.

“I know better,” Maeve said, dropping Angus’s hand. “I’m sorry.”

She would know better still before the day was over.

“To the castle with you, Maeve, and wait for me in the solar. You are not to go in through the kitchens, either.”

Where Cook would fuss and cluck, Lachlan would sympathize, and Michael might interfere, if his business in the village were concluded.

Angus at least waited until Maeve scampered off before he marched up to Brenna and stood breathing pipe smoke and lemon drop at her.

“You have no say where that child is concerned, Brenna.”

“She cannot be wandering off. She’s new here. She could get lost, hurt, or
worse
.”

He gave her a strange look, part humor, part convincingly honest regret, and part glee, because he no doubt knew what proximity to him did to Brenna’s insides.

“You honestly believe I’m the worst thing that could happen to a wee lass who’s wandered to the foals’ pasture of a summer’s day, Brenna? You wound me, and all over a few silly moments years ago, which your female imagination has inflated past all reality. Allow me to remind you of some relevant facts: my father and brother were laird here, your husband depends on me for guidance when it comes to the estate, and if I take a notion our best bottom land cannot be wasted on cow pastures, then your cousins—the last of your clan to stand with you in this shire—will be on the next boat out of Aberdeen.”