DARE THE WILD WIND (11 page)

Drake wondered how many women who shared his bed at court would show such concern for a servant.  Few could put a name to a single soul who scrubbed and sweated in their kitchens.

"She had the good sense to slip away not long after the first man fell ill."  He paused.  "If you have as much sense, you'll leave off taunting your brother, and behave as though you regret what happened yesterday."

"I do regret it," she said with the ring of truth.

"I don't doubt you regret that it didn't end as you planned," he said in a dry voice.  "You have only one value to your brother.  Maintain your virtue to him, even if it's lost.  If you ever hope to prize yourself from under his thumb, your best hope is to marry."

"I
will
marry," she came back defiantly.  "As soon as the fighting is done."

Her folly made Drake want to curse.  "Your lover will face prison or exile before the summer is out.  Take the least objectionable of your suitors, and quickly. 

"If you go on spitting in your brother's face, he may wall you away in some corner o
f this castle until every man who ever offered for you has forgotten you.”

Chapter 8

"You may have found a protector in the Earl," Malcolm said with cold rancor, "but don't think you can behave as you please now that he and his men have marched out of our gates."

Brenna had watched Drake Seton and his escort of dragoons depart that morning with an uneasy mix of emotions.  Word had come that the Duke of Cumberland's army prepared to cross the River Spey, and the Earl and his men rode south to join him.

The bailey had been a bedlam of shouts and shyin
g horses, the creak of leather and the mingled jingle and rattle of bridles and swords.  The Earl had sat erect and aloof in his saddle.  Then, as Malcolm said his farewells, the Earl glanced up to the balcony where Brenna stood.  Their eyes locked for a second, and she felt an unexpected pang of regret.  Now she would have to deal with Malcolm alone.  Then, wheeling his horse away, Drake snapped out an order to Thomas Wolcott, and spurred the gray toward the gate. 

"Tell me, sister mine, exactly how was it you persuaded him to absolve you of any blame in MacCavan's raid?"

"I told him the truth."  Wary, Brenna laid down the book she had slipped from the shelf in her father's library. 

"He'd have it
that you only meant to elope with MacCavan, that the misbegotten rogue leads you around on a leash."

"I've loved
Cam as long as I can remember.  Did you think I wouldn't try to go with him?"  Fury boiled up in her, overruling caution.  "You broke your word to Father.  You made him a deathbed promise that Cam and I would be wed."

"Our father died before the Prince landed in
Scotland," Malcolm reminded her with abrupt heat.  "Before your benighted lover rode off to join the Stuart cause."

"You never intended to keep your word, did you?  You've always hated me.  And hated
Cam because Father loved him as much as any son.  You could never bear anyone who stole a moment of his time."

His skin had gone green, and he took a step toward her, fingers curling.  "Father spoiled you past all belief, and let that arrogant whelp have the run of Lochmarnoch."

For a frozen moment, Brenna thought he would strike her.  Then there was a sound at the door, and one of the servants appeared.  "Lord MacBeal has called, sir.  Are you at home?"

Slowly,  Malcolm's fingers flexed and relaxed.  "How fortunate you are, dear sister, to have a face I'd be a fool to mar."  He drew a thin breath, and turned to the maid.  "Show our guest i
n.”

Then he swung back to Brenna.  "But remember this.  I can devise worse punishment than the back of my hand if you defy or disgrace me ever again."

Charles Godwin was the last man Brenna welcomed at
Lochmarnoch Castle, a skeletal  repellent hanger  on Brenna had always despised. 

He moved forward to brush her reluc
tantly extended hand with paper dry lips.  "A vision, as always.  A credit to you, Malcolm."

Brenna summoned a faint, barely civil smile.   "What a surprise to see you here, Lord MacBeal."       

"I've come to offer Malcolm the assistance of some of my men in dredging the moat for the weapons lost by the dragoons."

His small obsidian eyes slid from her face to her throat and breasts, and his perpetually hunched posture made Brenna think of an oversized insect hovering over its prey.

"Surely the muskets are useless now," she said.

"You're quite right about the guns," he conceded, pulling the twin of her velvet
  upholstered armchair closer to sit beside her.  "Lamentably gone to rust.  But we can salvage the swords."

"Let's hope there won't be any need for them."  She fell back on social ritual.  "Shall I ring for tea?  Or would you and Malcolm prefer to be left to something stronger?"

He gave a harsh caw of a laugh.  "Your brother's hospitality runs more to claret.  But at this time of the afternoon," he went on, sending her a sanctimonious smirk, "I'd much prefer tea."

It was sheer bad luck to be trapped in the library when Charles arrived.  Left to their own devices, Malcolm and Charles would empty bottle after bottle from their cellars, and be too far in their cups to have an appetite for dinner.  She ordered a tea of salmon pasties and honey cakes, bent on stuffing him too full to accept Malc
olm's invitation to dine.  But her strategy failed.  Charles stayed to sup with them, and lingered afterward.  Brenna made a pretense of absorbing herself in needlework and rose to excuse herself when they took up a game of backgammon.

"Nonsense," Malcolm told her with a warning glint in his eyes.  "It's scarcely
half past nine."

Brenna had counted every tick of the ormolu clock since the two men finished  their port.  Before she answered, Godwin spoke.

"Perhaps Lady Brenna would allow me to instruct her in the game."  Pinpoints of anticipation  in his dark almost lashless eyes and his patronizing tone maddened her.  Brenna had beaten Malcolm at backgammon since she was ten.  But she wouldn't fall victim to the urge to
teach Charles a lesson. 

"I have no head for games," she said, knowing Malcolm would be loathe to confess the defeats she had handed him.  "And I'm afraid my eyes burn from too much sewing.  I can scarcely keep them open."

Godwin's chair scraped back from the game table.  "Eyes so lovely shouldn't be wasted on needlework.  Will I see you again soon?"

"Won't you be riding to join the Duke of Cumberland's army?"    

He reacted with discomfort.  "I've accepted a commission.  But the Duke of Cumberland seems to prefer to rely on British regulars."

"But surely now, with the Duke's army so close...?"  Brenna had hoped military duties would occupy him elsewhere.

He preened, flattered she thought his services vital to the King.  "I expect to join the Duke shortly."

"As I would," Malcolm put in, "if my bad knee didn't make it impossible for me to sit a horse more than an hour at a time."  

His glance flayed Brenna for bringing up the subject.  Malcolm's injury wasn't a sham.  He resented admitting he wasn't fit for military service, and he slouched sourly over the game table.

"Perhaps we
should
excuse Brenna," he said venomously.  "My sister seems to have discarded her tact with her manners."

"On the contrary," Charles objected quickly, "I've seldom spent such a pleasant evening."

Thank the Earl of Stratford's warning to tread lightly with Malcolm.  Brenna had already baited her brother enough for one day, and she had been uneasily aware her usual treatment of Charles Godwin's courtship could bring trouble down on her head.

"Then I'll bid you both good night."

To Brenna's dismay, Charles rose and offered his hand to conduct her to the drawing room door, his fingers unpleasantly sticky from the bits of candied fruit he had eaten after dinner.

"I regret I had no opportunity for a dance with you when I was last here.  The Rebels won't find any of us napping again."

They were past the double doors and halfway to the staircase in the great hall, well out of Malcolm's hearing
.

"Not one of Malcolm's guests was in any danger from
Cam or his men," Brenna said in a low furious voice. 

The lines in Charles Godwin's face tightened.  "So you still defend MacCavan?"  He laughed in contempt.  "He'll kick from a rope by summer, unless the King devises something more entertaining."

Brenna fought a wave of nausea at the thought.  Charles would relish any execution.  As a boy, it had been his greatest pleasure to pull the claws from kittens and perform cruel surgery on fallen birds.  But she wouldn't let him see how he had shaken her. 

"Does King George confide in you, Charles?" she said  in as taunting a voice as she could muster.  "If he did, I hardly think you'd languish at home with a two
penny commission."
 

His obsidian eyes went flat.  "Still the shrew," he grated out.  "Smiling sweetly one minute, spitting in my face the next."

Brenna glared at him.  "I've never deceived you.  I'm still betrothed to
Cam, whatever Malcolm may say.  Don't expect me to bite my tongue when you make threats about him."

He took a step toward her, so close she could smell his stale breath.  "You sorely need someone to curb your tongue."

He caught hold of her with bruising fingers.  Brenna gasped, as much in shock as pain.  Then, as if her reaction had reminded him there were servants within call, he released her with a rough wrenching shove.  He straightened and twitched his narrow shoulders to right his twisted coat. 

"You can count yourself lucky that you're still under your brother's roof.  But remember this.  You play with me to your peril.  One day I promise you you'll answer for it."

Chapter 9

       Morag burst through the door of Brenna's bedchamber.  "The English are back."

Brenna sprang up from the ornate brass bathtub, beaded jewels of water forming rivulets that sluiced down the ivory curve of her breasts and the long slender columns of her legs. 

Grimly Morag handed her a fresh towel from the stack in her arms.  Shivering in the April chill, Brenna rubbed briskly at her damp body and wrapped her dressing gown quickly around her to hurry barefoot over the rush
  strewn floor to the window. 

Early morning's steady curtain of rain had parted, and what she saw made her recoil.  The Duke of Cumberland was in pursuit of Charles Stuart and the Rebel army.

Beyon
d Lochmarnoch Wood on the open moor, a vast camp sprang up, not an advance party of dragoons or foot soldiers, but an army.  There were regiments of horse, battalions of foot, and a company of artillery, so many men Brenna couldn't count them.  But as she leaned over the rough hewn ledge of the window she knew there were thousands, along with baggage carts, a train of camp followers, hundreds of horses, and tents by the dozen being pitched and wrestled upright on the muddy earth.

A raw spring gale blew up from the loch, carrying sounds from the camp away across the moor.  But even at a distance, Brenna could make out the uniforms of the British regulars and the flash of the
Campbell plaid.  She wanted to will the earth to open and swallow the Duke and all his men.  This meant a battle would be joined soon, and Cam would be in the thick of it.  And Drake Seton was with the Duke's army.  A week ago, Brenna had never expected to see him again. 

Brenna stepped down from the window.  In
Europe, the Duke of Cumberland had displayed undisputed courage in battle, but the most charitable of his admirers called George the Second's son a ruthless disciplinarian and an ill mannered womanizer.  And she had no desire to match wits with the Earl again. 

"How long will the Duke make camp here?"

Morag retrieved the chemise laid out on the bed next to Brenna's lace
frilled stomacher.  "A day or two, long enough to repair their caissons and rest the horses that pull the cannon."

Morag held out the fine lawn shift.  Brenna lifted her arms to let it drift light as gauze over the tender thrust of her breasts and the swell of her hips. "Then they could be gone soon?"

"If the Almighty is in a proper frame of mind.  You needn't pother over a feast to welcome His Royal Highness the Duke.  His aide de camp already declined Malcolm's invitation.  The Duke prefers to set an example for his men, and dine in his own tent.  Your brother just rode back from his camp in a fine fit of spleen."

Brenna felt a small measure of relief.  If Drake Seton took his meals with the Duke at his camp, she might not see him at all.

That afternoon the Duke extended an invitation to Malcolm to dine with him in his mess.  To ignore Malcolm altogether would have have been a slap not even the heavy
handed Cumberland would deal an outspoken Loyalist.   No women were asked to grace such a rude and simple table, as the Duke's messenger delicately put it when he delivered the invitation.  Delighted, Brenna ate alone.