The Laird (Captive Hearts) (6 page)

He rolled over, giving her his back. She’d seen his bare back earlier in the day, when he bathed, and she knew the skin over his shoulder blades would be smooth, the muscles along his spine lean and graceful.

Brenna rolled over too, so they were back to back, and any stray temptation to touch him less likely to overtake her good sense. “Good night, Husband.”

Why had he kissed her, and why hadn’t she panicked? “Michael?”

“Hmm?”

“I feel safer with you here.”

He said nothing, did not ask if she meant safer with him back home, safer with him in the castle, or safer with him in the same bed.

He also did not ask what or who she felt safer
from
.

Three

Army life, whether in a French garrison or among British troops in Spain and Portugal, was intimate. Michael had seen a woman giving birth in the snow along the road to Corunna, and rejoiced with his entire unit when he’d learned mother, child—and father—had safely made it aboard the evacuation ships.

He’d also seen a couple lying in the snow, arms about each other, both dead of the exhaustion and exposure that had claimed many on that hellish retreat.

Combat held worse intimacies yet, as when a French officer whom one chanced upon foraging with his men along a riverbank—and shared a bit of gossip and commiseration with—showed up the next day at the business end of a bayonet charge.

The garrison in France had been no different, with domestic squabbles, short rations, and news of the occasional victory or defeat equally shared by all. Thus, it should not have bothered Michael to spend the night in the same bed with his wife, to hear her sighs and murmurs, and feel her stirring in the dark.

“You sleep like a recruit after his first forced march,” Michael said, untangling himself from the sheets. “Though you don’t snore, and you smell a good deal better.”

Like roses, and like home.

“This time of year, nights are short, days are long.” Brenna sat on the bed with her back to him, wrapping herself into a wool dressing gown. She wouldn’t even cross the room without donning as much armor as the situation might afford her.

“Why do you wear the hunting plaid?” The darker hues flattered her vivid coloring more than the red everyday plaid would, but it was still an odd choice.

“This pattern doesn’t show the dirt as easily, and the colors suit me better.” Still, she sat with her back to him, as if the knot of her sash required all of her attention.

“Brenna, I’m decently covered.”

She peeked over her shoulder. “So you are.”

And yet, she blushed to find him wearing pajama trousers, though they were held up by a properly knotted drawstring rather than a morning salute from his cock.

“Do you break your fast here, or go down to the kitchen?” He could not imagine her putting the staff to the effort of serving her a solitary breakfast in a dining parlor.

“I take a tray, something light, though I’ll talk to Cook about preparing more substantial fare now that you’re back. I’m sure the tray will be sitting outside the door, along with your boots.”

Still, she did not move. She was, instead, watching him the way the French had watched Michael for months after he’d shown up at their gates, professing a mostly sincere disgust of all things English.

Michael fetched the tray—his boots could wait—and brought it to the bed, setting it down beside Brenna, and taking a place at the foot of the bed. Butter, honey, a basket of scones wrapped in snowy linen, and a pot of tea were arranged just so.

“The staff knows how to welcome the laird home.”

Her chin came up. “The staff takes its direction from the lady.”

Michael buttered a flaky, warm scone, set it on a plate, and passed it to her.

“I was once assigned the job of keeping track of an enemy patrol in the mountains.” An English patrol, which detail he did not share. “Those fellows were part mountain goat. They went up this track and down that defile, and I was supposed to follow without letting on I was in the area.”

Brenna paused with the scone two inches from her mouth. “Because they would have captured you?”

They would have shoved him off the bloody mountainside and told him to give their regards to Old Scratch.

“Something like that.” He possessed himself of her hand, helped himself to a bite of her scone, and resumed his tale rather than laugh at the consternation on her face.

“I eventually figured out that the way to execute my assignment was to get above them. You shouldn’t waste good food, Brenna.”

He saw the temptation to smile flirt with the corners of her mouth, and saw her battle it aside as she took a bite of scone.

“So when darkness fell, I began to climb. Gets cold in the mountains at night. Colder.”

Brenna paused in her chewing. “Would you like some tea?”

“Please. So there I was, clinging to the side of some damned French mountain, or possibly Spanish—there being little distinction when a fellow’s teeth are chattering and he has to piss—darkness falling, and me waiting for the moon to rise. Then the clouds came in. Sound can travel in odd ways in terrain like that, so I could hear the patrol below me, hear them laughing about the idiot thundering along behind them, smell the meat cooking over their campfire.”

Brenna stirred cream and honey into his tea and passed him the mug.

“It was a long night?”

“It was an interminable night, and that was before it began to sleet.”

He took a sip of pure heaven, the kind of heaven that had both tormented and comforted his memory on that mountainside.

“Is that how you feel now, Michael? As if you’re clinging to a mountainside in hostile territory, bitter weather coming in, night coming on, and the enemy laughing at you from behind their loaded guns?”

He passed her the mug of tea and took the last bite of her scone.

“I meant no disrespect to you when I complimented the kitchen staff, Brenna.”

She did not give his mug back, but cradled it in her hands.

“I anticipate criticism. It’s freely handed about here, for decisions made, not made, made too late, made too soon. I did not know what you’d want for breakfast, where you’d want breakfast, and a wife should know these things. I forgot to ask, and then you were asleep.”

Cold, dark mountainsides were apparently in ample supply in the Scottish Highlands, and Michael dared not belittle her concerns. An angry cook or a vindictive laundress could cause much suffering among the objects of her ire, regardless of pesky male nonsense like a war to be waged.

“For breakfast, I would like my wife’s company. I care little about what’s served, provided she shares it with me, but hot tea and fresh scones will never go amiss with me.”

Brenna took a sip from the mug and held it out to him, then busied herself slicing, buttering, and drizzling honey on a second scone. She put half on her plate, half on his, and passed it to him.

The day gained a measure of hope.

Michael had found a ledge on their marital mountainside. A small, narrow ledge, but one they could share.

***

Brenna fetched her husband’s boots rather than linger over the last cup of morning tea in hopes he’d tell her another story.

“You have your da’s way with a tale,” she said, passing him the mug of tea and taking the tray to the corridor. “I could listen to that man spin a yarn time after time, the same story, the same ending, and yet, I hung on his every word. Winters grew longer when he passed away.”

Michael unrolled his shaving kit on the windowsill and set up his folding mirror. “Angus has some of the same ability, particularly when the whisky’s on hand.”

Yes, he did. The same rumbling burr that drew the listener in, despite all sense to the contrary.

Brenna poured warmed water into a green porcelain basin and set it on the windowsill. “Do you shave every morning?”

“Mostly. Beards itch.” And yet, he’d threatened to grow one—for her?

“I thought they were warm.”

“A decent wool scarf is warmer. Will you weave one for me, Brenna, my love?”

He was flirting. She would get used to it, though flirting back was probably a hopeless cause. “Mind you don’t cut yourself.”

Now what was she to do? Get dressed with her husband in the same room?
He
had no difficulty strutting around in nothing but his cotton underlinen.

“Will you wear the Brodie plaid today?” he asked as he dabbed lather onto his throat and cheeks. “I’ll kit myself out in the laird’s regalia, unless you think that’s overdoing the clan pride.”

“It is not possible for a mortal Scotsman to overdo clan pride,” Brenna said as he drew the razor along his jaw in a movement that ought not to have fascinated her. “I’ll wear the plaid, and so will everybody else who owns a scrap of the tartan. At least it isn’t raining.”

“Or sleeting.”

To see a man shave was intimate. To see him moving around in only one old, worn, comfortable item of apparel, and to start the day with him held the same odd closeness.

“You don’t snore either, Husband.”

He smiled at her in the little mirror and went on scraping lather and whiskers off his face.

While Brenna blethered on. “You don’t kick, you don’t move about much, you don’t talk in your sleep. You do, however, give off a lot of heat.”

“Which ought to recommend me to your continued keeping September through June. Should you be getting dressed, my lady?”

She was a baroness. Did other baronesses watch their husbands make odd faces at a shaving mirror each morning?

“Soon. I dress quickly.”

But she ought to be doing something, so Brenna sat on the foot of the bed, pulled the ribbon off the end of her braid, and unraveled the single plait she usually slept in. She didn’t bother retrieving the brush from the vanity, because the vanity sat near the window.

Michael set the razor aside, wiped off his face, and began reassembling his kit. “You’ve pretty hair, Brenna Brodie. You always did.”

She had red hair, and lots of it. “You missed a spot.”

He looked disgruntled, as if she’d said the wrong thing, but he’d look mighty silly Trooping the Colour with that bit of lather on his chin. Brenna rose from the bed, took the towel off her husband’s shoulder, and dabbed at the spot near where the dimple in his chin appeared when he smiled.

“There. Your fizzog at least is presentable.”

Michael Brodie was what the old women would call a braw fellow, tall and muscular, but lithe. Dancing in his kilt over crossed swords, he’d be—

“I’m tempted to kiss my wife.” His voice had gone thoughtful, and Brenna couldn’t mistake the heat in his eyes. Nor could she quite understand it.

“Because I’ve wiped soap off your chin?”

His smile was unnerving, all male, all happy to
be
male.

“Because you bear the scent of flowers, because your unbound hair makes my hands itch, and because it’s early morning on a beautiful day. I don’t have to kill anybody today, and I don’t have to prevent anybody from being killed.”

Such was a soldier’s definition of a beautiful day.

Brenna closed her eyes rather than look upon his smile. “Kiss me then.”

A wife expected to endure her husband’s kisses—at least—and he couldn’t tarry at it too long, because he was soon to be out in the bailey, greeting his staff.

“Such bravery,” Michael said, and Brenna heard a smile in his voice. His arms came around her, slowly, not a pillaging embrace but more of a stealthy reconnaissance. She did not—could not—relax.

“You might offer your husband a hug of a morning.”

He was still smiling, but a feeling other than patient resignation stole up from nowhere and wrapped Brenna more tightly than her husband’s arms. She had seen plenty of flirtation and carrying on in the great hall and in the tavern in the village. When Lachlan’s mother had been alive, she’d been in her husband’s arms frequently, holding his hand, touching his hair or his sleeve. Even Davey MacCray’s wife sat in his lap, kissed his cheek, and carried on with him when he wasn’t too drunk.

While Brenna understood none of it.

“You put your arms around me,” Michael whispered. “You lean on me, and you know I rejoice to take your weight against me, because the feel of you in my arms alone gives me pleasure.”

He was instructing her in the basics of marital affection, and Brenna was grateful for his guidance. Pathetically grateful. She looped her arms around his trim waist and swallowed past a lump in her throat.

“Lean, Brenna Maureen. Lean on your husband.”

His arms were around her loosely. She could whirl away and grab her hairbrush; she could scold him for keeping her from her appointed tasks. He wanted more from her than a simple hug. He wanted trust, courage, good faith, and hope.

Michael’s hand stroked over Brenna’s unbound hair, a patient, soothing caress that landed like the blow of a claymore on her heart.

“Michael, I don’t know—”

His hand caressed her again, smoothing down her hair, gently, slowly. Then again.

She leaned.

***