The Laird (Captive Hearts) (35 page)

Unusual, perhaps, but not if Michael’s own mother had furnished the place.

And yet… Why would Angus, who’d adorned his bed with tasseled pillows, keep that portrait as the last thing he saw each night?

The sense of evidence eluding notice resurged, and along with it, a repugnance for the task Michael had set himself.

The search here must be thorough, so Michael started with the wardrobe, intent on working his way around the room. Angus was well dressed, his shirts beautifully made, his boots a testament to the quality of goods available when a man had coin. Formal clan attire hung on the inside of the wardrobe door, proof Angus meant to attend the next day’s gathering.

And yet, something was off.

The wardrobe was a massive piece, as wardrobes tended to be. Nearly as high as the ceiling, several feet wide and several feet deep. The floor of the wardrobe was a good foot higher than the rug upon which it sat, however, suggesting…

The false bottom came up easily, revealing a space packed the way a sailor might stow his goods in a trunk. Every inch of the compartment was used, and every article positioned for ease of access. To one side, Michael found yet more books, including what looked like sketchbooks.

A cold foreboding slithered through Michael’s guts, a certainty that this was a central piece of the puzzle that must be put together if Michael was to make his castle a home for those he loved.

Somebody moved about below stairs, a door closed—Hugh, nosing around among the pipe smoke and ledgers. Michael was abruptly glad that whatever lay in the bottom of Angus’s wardrobe would not be revealed to any save Michael.

On closer inspection, the wardrobe held journals, the entries in the same tidy hand as all the ledgers in the office. Michael took a sketchbook off the bottom of the stack and crossed the room to a cushioned window seat, the better to see what he’d found.

He pushed the drapes wide and flipped open the book to a page at random. The images on the page, the precision and skill in them, gave Michael a momentary reprieve from absorbing what he was seeing. When his mind caught up with the evidence of his eyes, he endured the sensation of a great mean fist squeezing his lungs, until his very vision dimmed, and his ears roared.

Hugh found him in the window seat, an indefinite while later. “Laird?”

At some point, Michael had thrown the sketchbook halfway across the room, and he saw now that it lay open on the rug before the empty hearth, a stash of letters having come free of it as well.

What was needful was that Michael get up, gather those letters, and close that damned sketchbook, so nobody would ever see its contents.

He could not move.

“Something amiss?” Hugh asked, hovering in the doorway. “I found nothing in the family parlor but more sketches of you, your sisters, and Brenna as a child, more cutwork and some framed embroidery. Not a very manly decorating scheme, but then I suppose a dower property—”

Hugh’s words landed in Michael’s awareness like so many crows chattering from the parapets high above the bailey, while Michael’s every certainty about life and about himself lay shattered like Lachlan’s pretty platter in the dark confines of the butler’s pantry.

“Laird?”

“Don’t call me that, and don’t you dare look at the damned book.”

So, of course, Hugh glanced down at the open sketchbook. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

The holy family, the very last invocation Michael might have chosen, given what was revealed in Angus’s drawing.

“I said not to look.”

“I’m not looking,” Hugh said, toeing the book closed as if it were a source of contagion, which it most assuredly was. “You did, though. You looked at every page?”

Michael managed a single nod, and the remains of his breakfast threatened a reprise. Fortunately, Hugh was a father, a privilege Michael would never know, which was likely why Hugh could speak calmly even in the grip of fierce emotion.

“Where did this piece of excrement come from?” Hugh asked, gathering up the letters scattered on the rug.

“Bottom of the wardrobe. I want to wash my hands, Hugh.”

And he wanted to kill his uncle. A small desperate hope remained that Angus had drawn those pictures from imagination, that Brenna hadn’t been made to pose without her clothing for an adult male’s perverted pleasure, that were Michael to read Angus’s journals, he’d find a recounting of crops harvested and calves born.

Hugh shoved the sketchbook back where it had come from, replaced the floor of the wardrobe, and latched its doors. “Take this.”

A handkerchief, the plain farmer’s variety, sporting a half-inch tear and a small clumsy embroidered bouquet likely done by wee Annie.

Annie, whom nobody had allowed near Angus.

The small desperate hope guttered and died amid a blackness without end. Michael could not touch the flowers a little girl had sewn to brighten her papa’s day.

“I want to kill him.”

And Michael wanted to die. Wanted to cast himself into an endless desolation as great as the sorrow welling in his chest.

Hugh eyed the wardrobe as if writhing, slimy things lived inside and were struggling to get free.

“You saw some sketches. You can’t kill a man for sketches.”

They were sketches of Brenna, but perhaps Hugh hadn’t realized that. Michael pressed his own handkerchief against his eyes, a bit of silk Michael stored among Brenna’s dresses because he wanted the scent of her near throughout the day.

“Somebody should go through what’s in that wardrobe,” Hugh said.

“Nobody should have to do that,” Michael retorted, letting his head fall back to rest against the wall of the window seat. “I saw enough.”

Brenna in poses far too seductive for tender years, Brenna as the first harbingers of womanhood unfurled in a child’s form, Brenna with trust and hope shining from her eyes, though she wore not a stitch over her small body.

And for nine long years, Michael had left Brenna to contend with the monster who’d abused her, all because Michael had never imagined a monster might enjoy devouring more than one variety of prey.

***

“You’re quiet,” Brenna observed as Michael dragged a brush through his hair. “Are you planning your apology to Maeve?”

He studied the brush, Brenna’s brush, actually, as if he weren’t sure how it had arrived in his hand.

“I forgot to apologize to Maeve.” Then he stood before his shaving mirror, brush in hand, as if he’d also forgotten the next step in his end-of-day routine.

Rather than puzzle over her husband’s peculiar mood, Brenna turned down the covers on the bed.

“Maeve probably expected you to apologize at dinner, and that’s why she was so quiet. Then too, we’re all tired, getting ready for tomorrow. Are you looking forward to the festivities?”

“Yes.”

That small word conveyed anything but gleeful anticipation. Brenna scooped coals into the warming pan, but wasn’t careful enough with the hearth tools, so a few red embers went spilling onto the bricks.

“Careful,” Michael said, a bit sharply.

Brenna dealt with the small mess, closed the lid of the warmer, and aimed a smile over her shoulder at her husband.

“Tend to your washing off, Michael. Your hair is quite brushed, considering I might well put it all awry before morning.”

He set the brush down and retreated behind the privacy screen, not a hint of an answering smile to be seen.

Since coming north from England, Michael had been the soul of patience, good cheer, and consideration. Something had put him off stride today, maybe something to do with working among the men earlier.

“Are you concerned that we’re spending too much on tomorrow’s gathering?” Because Brenna was concerned. Ever since losing a year’s worth of wool money, she was concerned over every groat and farthing.

“I am not.” He emerged from behind the privacy screen in nothing but his kilt, his expression unreadable.

“I’ve shown you my finances,” Brenna said, slipping off her robe. “When will you show me yours?”

She tossed the question out in hopes it might catch Michael’s interest, because whatever was amiss with him, he was behaving like a stranger—a worrisome stranger.

The look he gave her, his hands on the fastening of his kilt, his eyes…
bleak
. That look chilled as surely as the draft sneaking in under the door kept the floor toe-freezing cold.

“Every penny I have is yours, Brenna. Every pound, every…thing I lay claim to on this earth is yours for the asking.” He sat heavily on the bed, his kilt still on. “We’re man and wife.”

Brenna sat beside him and laid the back of her hand to his brow. “You’ve no fever. Are you sickening for something?”

“Possibly.”

A memory came to her, of their wedding night. She’d begged and begged for him to take her away with him when he joined his regiment, and he’d grown quieter and quieter, until she’d fallen asleep in his arms.

He was growing that quiet now.

“Do you need a posset?” Brenna asked, though instinct told her a posset wouldn’t put her husband to rights.

“I need to sleep.” He rose to push the peat and coals to the back of the fireplace, snugged the screen to the bricks, and blew out the bedside candles. “If you’d oblige me?”

Brenna rose from his side of the bed, her puzzlement edging closer to panic. “Is something wrong, Michael?”

He got into bed without taking his kilt off, and that frightened her.

“Get into bed, Brenna. Tomorrow will be a long day.”

Every day was long, but the days since Michael’s return had also been good days, mostly. She climbed in on her side of the big bed and did not presume to snuggle up to her husband.

“You’re still wearing your kilt, Michael.”

He rustled around beneath the covers until his left fist emerged holding a length of plaid, which he tossed to the foot of the bed. “Good night, Brenna.”

He hadn’t kissed her. Hadn’t even found her hand beneath the covers and given her fingers a squeeze.

He hadn’t dusted his big feet together before stretching out on the mattress.

He’d spoken a truth—they were man and wife, and soldiers home from war could be given to odd moods. Brenna ought to have taken this into account sooner. She punched her pillow, hard, then flopped down beside her spouse.

“If you continue to behave like this, Michael Brodie, I will soon miss you every bit as much as I did the first year of your absence.”

“I did not deserve to be missed, but believe this, if you believe nothing else about me, Brenna. I regret leaving you behind. I regret that bitterly.”

“I got over it,” she said, which was in the nature of a truth belatedly admitted rather than a lie. “I did get your letter about Corunna.”

He shifted to his side, so he faced her, and yet Brenna remained on her back. Whatever was wrong with him tonight, even the weight of her stare might send him out of their bed, into some dark place she could not follow.

“Mention the name Corunna to any soldier who served in that campaign, and you will fill him with a sorrow and dread that…” Michael’s voice trailed off.

Brenna waited, because his letter had been short and factual. A headlong retreat across more than two hundred miles of northern Spain, the French in pursuit, pounding at the stragglers, at times near blizzard conditions ensuring the camp followers were the most vulnerable, and army discipline disintegrating into looting and mayhem.

When the remains of the British Army had straggled, sick and exhausted, onto the coast, the evacuation ships had taken two more days to reach them.

“You spared me that, Michael. You spared me all that brutality and violence, all that sickness, injury, and disease. You talked about the horses that had to be shot, hundreds of them, foundered and starving, the wounded left under horrific conditions. I might easily have been with child, or even had a child…”

He was over her without warning, an avalanche of heat and husband.

“Hush. For the love of God, please hush. I do not deserve your forgiveness.” His arms held her in a desperate embrace, and yet he made no move to kiss her. No arousal nudged at Brenna’s sex; no tender caress swept across her brow.

“There is nothing to forgive, Michael. You fought your battles. I fought mine, such as they were.” She tightened her arms around him. “We have the rest of our lives together, and I, for one, am grateful for that. Very grateful.”

He shuddered, as if a sexual paroxysm claimed him, or a great grief. When he rolled back to his side of the bed, Brenna at first let him go.

“What is wrong, Michael? I am your wife, and I will endure much if you ask it of me. Your silence cuts at me.”

“Some silences are meant to be kind. You understand that. You probably understand that far better than most.” A spate of sentences. Brenna drew encouragement from his loquaciousness and possessed herself of her husband’s hand.

“Most silences need to be broken. I’ve been looking for a way to bring up some difficult matters, Husband. Old business, as it were. I haven’t known how, but after we’ve seen to this nonsense tomorrow, I will want some of your time.”

She hadn’t meant to say any of that, though darkness was certainly appropriate to her declaration.