The Laird (Captive Hearts) (2 page)

Outside the door, she paused and studied the scrolled iron plate around the ancient lock.

“We heard you’d deserted, then we heard you’d died. Some of the fellows from your regiment paid calls here, and intimated army gossip is not to be trusted. Then some officer came trotting up the lane a month after the victory, expecting to pay a call on you.”

Standing outside that impenetrable, ancient door, Michael accepted that his decision to serve King and Country had left wounded at home as well as on the Continent.

And yet, apologizing now would only make things worse.

“Had you seen the retreat to Corunna, Brenna, had you seen even one battle—” Because the women saw it all, right along with their husbands and children. Trailing immediately behind the soldiers came a smaller, far more vulnerable army of dependents, suffering and dying in company with their menfolk.

“I
begged
you to take me with you.” She wrenched the door open, but stepped back, that Michael might precede her into the castle.

She had pleaded and cried for half their wedding night, sounding not so much like a distressed bride as an inconsolable child, and because he’d been only five years her senior, he’d stolen away in the morning while she’d slept, tears still streaking her pale cheeks.

He searched for honest words that would not wound her further.

“I prayed for your well-being every night. The idea that you were here, safe and sound, comforted me.”

She plucked a thorny pink rose from a trellis beside the door and passed the bloom to him.

“Who or what was supposed to comfort me, Michael Brodie? When I was told you’d gone over to the enemy? When I was told you were dead? When I imagined you captured by the French, or worse?”

They stood on the castle steps, their every word available to any in the great hall or lurking at nearby windows. Rather than fret over the possibility that his wife had been unfaithful to him—her questions were offered in rhetorical tones—Michael stepped closer.

“Your husband has come home, and it will be his pleasure to make your comfort his greatest concern.”

He even tried a smile, letting her see that
man
and
wife
might have some patching up to do, but
man
and
woman
could deal together well and very soon.

She looked baffled—or peevish. He could not read his own wife accurately enough to distinguish between the two.

“Have you baggage, Husband?”

Yes, he did. He gestured for her to go ahead of him into the hall. “Last I heard, the coach was following, but I haven’t much in the way of worldly goods.”

“I’ll have your things put in the blue bedroom.”

When she would have gone swishing off into the bowels of the castle, Michael grabbed her wrist and kept her at his side. She remained facing half-away from him, an ambiguous pose, not resisting, and not exactly drinking in the sight of her long-lost husband, either.

“What’s different?” He studied the great hall he’d stopped seeing in any detail by his third birthday. “Something is different. This place used to be…dark. Like a great ice cave.”

And full of mice and cobwebs.

She twisted her hand free of his.

“Nothing much is different. I had the men enlarge the windows, whitewash the walls, polish the floors. The room wanted light, we had a bit of coin at the time, and the fellows needed something to do.”

“You put a balcony over the fireplace.” She’d also had the place scrubbed from the black-and-white marble floor to the blackened crossbeams, freeing it of literally centuries of dirt.

“The ceilings are so high we lose all the warmth. When we keep the fires going, the reading balcony is warmer than the hall below it.”

She’d taken a medieval hall and domesticated it without ruining its essential nature, made it comfortable. Or comforting? Bouquets of pink roses graced four of the deep windowsills, and every chair and sofa sported a Brodie plaid folded over the back. Not the darker, more complicated hunting plaid Brenna wore, but the cheerful red, black, and yellow used every day.

“I like it very much, Brenna. The hall is welcoming.” Even if the lady was not.

She studied the great beams twenty feet overhead—or perhaps entreated the heavens for aid—while Michael caught a hint of a smile at his compliment.

That he’d made his wife smile must be considered progress, however miniscule.

Then her smile died. “Angus, good day.”

Michael followed her line of sight to a sturdy kilted fellow standing in the doorway of the shadowed corridor that led to the kitchens. Even in the obscure light, Michael recognized an uncle who had been part older brother and part father, the sight of whom now was every part dear.

“Never say the village gossip was for once true! Our Michael has come home at last.” Angus hustled across the great hall, his kilt flapping against his knees. “Welcome, lad! Welcome at long last, and God be thanked you’re hale and in one grand piece, aren’t you now?”

A hug complete with resounding thumps on the back followed, and in his uncle’s greeting, Michael found the enthusiasm he’d hoped for from his wife.

From anybody.

“Surely the occasion calls for a wee dram,” Angus said. His hair was now completely white, though he was less than twenty years Michael’s senior. He wasn’t as tall as Michael, but his build was muscular, and he looked in great good health.

“The man needs to eat before you’re getting him drunk,” Brenna interjected. She stood a few feet off, directly under crossed claymores that gleamed with the same shine as the rest of the hall.

“We can take a tray in the library, woman,” Angus replied. “When a man hasn’t seen his nephew for nigh ten years, the moment calls for whisky and none of your fussy little crumpets, aye?”

Brenna twitched the tail of her plaid over her shoulder, a gesture about as casual as a French dragoon swinging into the saddle.

“I will feed my husband a proper meal at a proper table, Angus Brodie, and your wee dram will wait its turn.”

Angus widened his stance, fists going to his hips, suggesting not all battlefields were found on the Continent.

“Uncle, Brenna has the right of it. I haven’t eaten since this morning. One glass of good spirits, and I’d be disgracing my heritage. Food first, and then we’ll find some sipping whisky.”

Brenna moved off to stick her finger in a white crockery bowl of roses, while Angus treated Michael to a look of good-humored disgruntlement.

“She runs a fine kitchen, does our Brenna. Do it justice, and find me in the office when you’ve eaten your fill. I’m that glad you’re back, lad.”

He strode off, the tassels on his sporran bouncing against his thick thighs, while Brenna shook droplets of water off the end of her finger.

“Does my uncle often cross swords with you?”

She wiped her finger on her plaid. “He does not, not now. He leaves the castle to me. I’m sure your arrival is the only thing that tempted him past the door. What are you hungry for?”

He was hungry for her smiles. A soldier home from war had a right to be hungry for his wife’s smiles.

“Anything will do, though I’ve a longing for a decent scone. The English can’t get them right, you know, and they skimp with the butter and must dab everything with their infernal jams, when what’s wanted is some heather honey.”

Compared to the little curve of her lips he’d seen earlier, this smile was riveting. Brenna had grown into a lovely woman, but when she aimed that smile at Michael, he had the first inkling she might be a
lovable
woman too. Her smile held warmth and welcome, maybe even a touch of approval.

“A batch of scones has just come out of the oven, Michael Brodie. If we hurry, you can get your share before the cousins come raiding.”

He followed her into the depths of the house, watching her skirts twitch, and entertaining naughty, husbandly thoughts.

Until he recalled that the blue bedroom where Brenna was sending his baggage was a guest chamber, across a cold, drafty hallway and several doors down from the laird’s apartments.

***

He was Michael, and he was not, this Viking come calling. His table manners were still fastidious—some might say elegant—without being pernickety, his eyes were the same shade of green, and he still bore a light scent of vetiver… And yet he was not the man she’d married.

Brenna buttered him another scone—his third—and set it on his plate. “I have tried without success to hate you, you know.”

He paused, a bite of roast grouse speared on his fork. “To what do you attribute your failure?”

Good of him, not to scold her for raising the topic when he’d been home less than an hour. “I used to like you.” She had not meant to sound so wistful.

His smile was the same as her many memories of it, tipping up at the right side of his mouth first, and revealing a dimple in his right cheek. “One hopes you married a fellow you liked.”

She would have married nearly anybody who’d offered. “You used to tease me, but you were never mean about it.”

He’d also kept his hands to himself—hands that didn’t sport dirty fingernails, no matter how hungry he’d been when he came to the table.

He offered her the scone she’d just buttered. “You’ve been watching me eat for nigh half an hour, my lady, and the food is ambrosial. Please have at least a nibble.”

Brenna accepted the scone, tore off a bite with her fingers, and set the rest back on his plate. Before she took a bite, she tried to steer the discussion in the direction it needed to go. “I wondered if you regretted our marriage.”

“Never.”

She popped the bite of sweet into her mouth, mostly to give herself time to digest his answer, for it had been as swift and certain as a bolt from a crossbow. “Then why did you leave me a maid, Michael?”

“So I would not instead leave you a mother.” He spoke gently and held out another bite of scone to her, his fingers glistening with butter and honey.

His green eyes used to be full of laughter and confidence, and now they held shadows. He wasn’t lying, but neither was he being entirely honest. Brenna took the food from his hand, realizing she was hungry too, and dinner still some hours away.

“We eat late this time of year. The days are so long, and the nights so short.”

He went back to cleaning his plate, suggesting he was prudent as well as hungry. “Do I have time for a bath before the meal?”

“You do.” Brenna dispatched her bite of scone, licked her fingers, and caught her husband watching. “I’ll order you a bath.”

She scooted her chair back, and Michael was on his feet with a speed that astonished.

“You needn’t observe the parlor courtesies with me, Michael. I’ve been doing without somebody to hold my chair for years.” She moved away, she did not scurry.

“When you remind me of that, you don’t mean it as a scold, but I hear it was such. Will you assist at my bath? One anticipates a wife might perform that service for her husband.”

He
was reminding
her
that their separation had not been entirely easy for him either, drat the man.

“I’m not scolding. I’m…” She was hungry and tired, and not a little resentful of her husband now that he had returned—though she’d also resented his absence. Part of her wanted to assist at that bath, to touch him and make sure he was real. Another part of her nearly hated him.

Nearly.

“I did not wake up this morning anticipating that my husband might come home today. I got out of the habit of wishing for that, and now here you are, and what’s to be done with you?”

What’s to be done with us?

In some fashion understood only by soldiers who’d seen years of death, did he nearly hate her and all who’d spent those same years at peace?

He slid her chair back to its place at the table. “We will talk about what’s to be done, but first I’ll wash the dust of the road from my carcass, have a wee tot with Angus, and then a ramble around the castle. My thanks for the food. It’s the best I’ve had since leaving home.”

He seemed sincere, but that was the problem with men—they could so easily seem sincere. Or maybe, and this was an old conundrum, the problem was Brenna’s discernment.

She took herself off to the kitchens, both to relay the laird’s compliments and to arrange his bath. Under the circumstances, Angus might have assisted at his nephew’s bath, but Brenna couldn’t stomach such a notion.

Angus hadn’t even used the front door to come into the castle, but had let himself in through the kitchens, as if he still lived here or was perhaps anticipating living here again.

Which he might do, over Brenna’s dead body.

Brenna was Michael’s wife, and Michael had asked her to assist him at his bath. She was prepared to meet that challenge until she found the tub, not in the blue bedroom, but in the laird’s very bedchamber.

The presumption of it, that he’d countermand her orders, added more than a dollop of rage to her near-hatred.

“You’ve changed things in here too,” Michael said as the maids dumped the last of the water into the tub, all the while stealing glances at the prodigal laird. “My wife likes our home light and cheery. This is fortunate, because I do too.”