The Laird (Captive Hearts) (17 page)

“I’ve come home from war, and supposedly I’m laird here, but all I do the livelong day is listen to people complain about things I must address, while I stand around looking patient and missing the hell out of my wife.”

Brenna was cuddled up along his side, so he felt her silent laughter, felt her try to fight it, and felt her lose.

And then he felt something else: he felt the wife he had missed all day, the wife he loved in some fashion, the wife naked in bed with him, hike up on her elbow and press her lips to his. A solid, mouth on mouth, hint-of-lemonade kiss, which by exercise of self-discipline alone, Michael allowed to remain a simple kiss.

She did it again, a quick in-case-he-missed-the-first-one kiss, then subsided against him, her arm wrapped across his middle, her leg across his thighs. As if her bare, warm breasts hadn’t briefly brushed against Michael’s chest, as if he was supposed to think after being teased so cruelly.

“Good night, Husband. I’m sorry your day was such a trial. Tomorrow will be an improvement, I’m sure.”

Brenna fell asleep wrapped in her spouse’s arms, while Michael thought of frigid lochs, tooth powder, and lemonade. She was right, of course. Tomorrow would be better. Any child knew, and most husbands did too, that kisses made everything better.

Eight

Kissing was not dignified. Kissing accomplished nothing. Kissing was a stupid, messy, uncomfortable inconvenience invented by men, because men were not concerned with anything save their own base impulses.

Some men.

“Are you angry?” Maeve posed the question while admiring her own needlework.

“No, I am not angry.” Though Brenna had been stabbing at her embroidery as if trying to commit murder-by-needle on the heather and thistles adorning Michael’s handkerchief. “How are your stitches coming?”

Maeve held up a hoop, upon which simple chain stitches outlined an orange cat.

“Preacher will be vain, to know you’ve immortalized him with your sewing,” Brenna said. “Will you embroider him a butterfly to bat at, or some grass to sit upon?”

Maeve budged closer on the sofa of Brenna’s sitting room. “I knew I wanted to have Preacher on my handkerchief, but I’ll have to sketch the rest.”

Brenna put her hoop aside and ran a hand over Maeve’s coppery braid. “I know the perfect place to sketch. Come with me.”

They stowed their hoops, gathered up a lap desk from the bedroom, and repaired to the battlements.

“Over here,” Brenna said, “we’re out of the breeze, and we have a fine view of the loch. There’s Cook, gathering some herbs from the kitchen garden, and you can watch Herman Brodie shoeing Bannockburn.”

“Herman calls the horse Banshee.”

Herman called the horse other things too, things a child would delight in overhearing.

“You can sketch your cat an entire garden, a herd of mice, or a flock of butterflies. Be sure to think about what color each flower or butterfly would be.”

While Brenna could sit in the sunshine and come to terms with a revelation.

“Butterflies,” Maeve said, opening the lap desk. “I don’t like that Preacher kills the mice.”

“He’s a cat. Cook adores him for killing the mice.”

“No, she does not.” In the way of children, Maeve was handling each pencil in the desk, evaluating them one by one for some quality known only to her little-girl fingers. “She feeds him scraps and leftover cream, and he has no need to kill mice.”

Such were the insights gained by a child who’d already realized Cook was an ally to the young and the hungry, both.

“So don’t draw him any mice to terrorize. Draw him butterflies he cannot catch.”

Butterflies, like the butterflies that had risen up in Brenna’s belly last night, when—too late to check herself—she’d realized she was about to kiss her husband out of his pout.

“Preacher shouldn’t kill things if he doesn’t have to. It’s not nice.”

Maeve fell silent, absorbed with her sketching. She sat beside Brenna on the bench in the sun, the stones of the castle wall warm at their backs, while Brenna let the familiar peace of the view settle over her. Beyond the village, partway around the loch, one of her cousins was mending a wall while wee Annie “helped.” Cook had gone back inside, and Herman’s farriery had progressed to a second great back hoof on the plow horse.

Why had she kissed her husband?

“Have you ever been to Ireland, Brenna?”

“No, I have not.” And that hurt. Brenna hadn’t been invited to go to Ireland. She’d been told Michael would have expected her to stay and mind his castle. “Tell me about Ireland.”

Maeve considered the tomcat sitting in the middle of the blank page. “Ireland is rainy. How many butterflies in a flock?”

“As many as you please.” An entire bellyful. Far below the parapets, Angus emerged from the dower house and started on the path toward the stables. “Do you miss Ireland?”

“I miss Bridget. Kevin yelled a lot, and Bridget yelled back at him.” Several butterflies, enormous in relation to the cat, took shape on the page.

“Late for dinner, muddy boots, reading at breakfast, that kind of yelling?”

“Yelling about me too. Kevin said Michael is head of my family, but how can somebody be the head of your family when you’ve never seen him?”

Angus always swaggered; Brenna did not imagine that. He was swaggering into the stable yard now, his kilt flapping because he’d eschewed a sporran. She hated when he did that, and suspected he knew it.

“You ask a fair question, Maeve. Michael is my husband, but I didn’t see him for years.”

She should not have said that, especially not to Maeve, but the horse, Bannockburn, had seen Angus coming up the path and lifted its great head to the consternation of the groom holding the lead rope. Brenna had been distracted by Angus’s ability to unsettle another, even another of a different species.

“Did you miss Michael while he was gone?”

“Desperately.” Though she hadn’t told him that. Not yet. “I miss him right now.”

Maeve paused in her sketching. “Grown-ups are silly. I like Michael. He doesn’t yell, and he doesn’t smell like dogs or muddy boots.”

“Fine qualities in a man, to be sure.” He also cuddled wonderfully, and had the patience of a saint. In the stable yard, Angus had begun pointing and gesturing, as if he’d explain to a seasoned stable master how to trim a hoof on a beast that stable master had likely foaled out.

“Michael likes shortbread, and I like shortbread. Lachlan does too. I think that’s enough butterflies.”

“That is so many butterflies, Preacher will dive for cover among the pansies. What colors will you make them?”

“Too many colors. I can’t embroider this.” Maeve set the sketch aside and appeared to take an interest in the goings-on below. “Herman names each big horse for a Scottish victory.”

“Fortunately for Herman, we don’t have that many heavy horses.” Though Michael coming home had been a victory of sorts. A victory without a name.

“Uncle Angus is yelling. He was nice to me yesterday.”

All the pleasure Brenna took in the bright, pretty day, all the preoccupation she’d felt with the doings of the previous evening, evaporated.

“Maeve, I want you to listen to me.”

This earned Brenna a cautious, sidelong glance. “I can hear you fine, even with Herman and Angus both yelling.”

The men were distant enough that their words were snatched away by the breeze. Brenna spoke slowly, so her words would find their target.

“Avoid Angus, and never be alone with him. If he tries to make friends, then don’t anger him, but slip away as soon as you can.”

“Bridget said Angus has a sorry temper.”

Bless
Bridget.
“That’s part of it. I’ll tell you one other thing. If you ever need to get away from him, you come up here. He’s afraid of heights. He doesn’t even like to be in the minstrel’s gallery in the great hall.”

Which realization, had given Brenna significant satisfaction.

“I had hiding places in Ireland, for when Kevin and Bridget got mad at each other when I was little. Prebish told me I was silly, because Kevin would pick Bridget up and carry her to their bedroom. They’d stop yelling then.”

The horse tried to yank its leg away when Angus picked up a front hoof. More yelling ensued as the beast capered around on the end of its lead rope, and then was taken back into the stables.

“Bannockburn likes carrots. He doesn’t like yelling,” Maeve observed.

“He’s a good fellow.” Brenna wanted to say more, wanted to make sure the child had absorbed her warning, but Maeve went back to sketching butterflies, so Brenna rose to stand by the parapets.

Herman caught sight of her and waved. Angus did not wave, but resumed lecturing the stable master, or trying to.

Angus was afraid of heights, and Brenna was not. She loved the view, loved the fresh air and the drenching sunshine. Loved seeing the land—part settled, part wild, all beautiful—and the village at peace down below the wooded hill. She had been afraid of kisses, though.

Had been.

She offered Herman a jaunty wave, resumed her place by the child, and filled her mind with thoughts of butterflies and kisses.

***

“How does one go about kissing?”

Brenna’s question stopped Michael mid-reach toward his shaving kit. She stood in her dressing gown on the threshold of the space behind the privacy screen, watching him at his morning ablutions.

“One goes about kissing tenderly, joyfully, and if he’s a fortunate man, frequently.” Also carefully, if he was Brenna Brodie’s husband, and gratefully. “Shall I demonstrate?”

As he unrolled his shaving gear, Michael’s heartbeat picked up. He was discussing kissing with his wife, in their bedroom, in the broad light of a beautiful Highland summer day.

And Brenna looked as determined as a line of infantry preparing to storm a broken siege wall.

“You may. Demonstrate, that is. Briefly.”

Michael was also in his dressing gown, which was fortunate, because it hid a reaction to her words that might not aid his cause. He took a steadying glance out the window at the cold, dark loch, at the whitecaps whipped up by a cool, brisk breeze.

“Come with me.” He led her by the wrist into their sitting room, locked the door to the corridor, then regarded the challenge before him. “You want to learn how to kiss?”

“I’ve said as much.” While her ramrod posture said she was done talking.

Ah, but in her silence, Michael detected uncertainty and longing, both of which told him his Brenna had been a faithful wife in even this minor regard. She hadn’t kissed; she hadn’t permitted anybody to kiss her while her husband was off soldiering.

Michael tugged her over to the desk near the window, the better to count the freckles dusting the bridge of her nose.

“This might take some patience on your part, Brenna Maureen. I’m out of practice, though I suspect the knack will return to me in time.”

She wrestled her wrist free of his grip. “You’re out of practice?”

“One hasn’t much call for kissing when at war.” Murdering in the King’s name being ever so much more enjoyable. He patted the desk. “Sit.”

Brenna perched on the edge of the desk. “You truly didn’t have much occasion for kisses while you were gone?” She offered her question while arranging the folds of her dressing gown over her knees, then closing the placket more snugly over her middle, then adjusting the drape over her calves.

“I missed you. That left no time for kissing anybody, save the occasional horse. Oh, and a cat, in London. Shameless fellow by the name of Peter. Hold still.”

The fussing stopped. “You start off your kisses by giving orders?”

He started off his kisses by sending up a prayer that he’d get this right. He’d kissed Brenna before, fumbling overtures on their wedding night, and casually since returning home. This was a kiss she’d invited, asked for, even. Michael’s entire marital campaign might flounder and sink on the strength of the next few minutes.

“Give me your hands.”

She gave him a cross look.

“Give me your hands, please, dearest, lovely wife.”

She surrendered the requested appendages.

Michael kissed each palm for luck, then placed them where his neck and shoulders joined. “A firm grip is best, so your fellow doesn’t wander off midway through the festivities. If you think he’s entertaining such a notion, you can grab him by the hair instead.”

“Like this?” She seized him above his nape in a beguilingly firm grip. No wandering off allowed.

“Exactly. Once you’ve got him in hand, so to speak, you look him over, and don’t be shy about it. Men can be dense, and shy glances won’t penetrate their—are you laughing at me?”

“You daft beast, you wouldn’t know anything about how to kiss a man, would you?”

The question flummoxed him, utterly. He stepped closer, between her legs, and dropped his forehead to hers.

“I want to do this right, Brenna. I want to kiss you so a feeling more blessed than the sun beaming in that window fills your heart and lightens your every step. I want to share a kiss with you that means this desk stays in the family for generations, because long ago, Great-Great-Grandda Michael came home from war and kissed his Brenna while she sat upon this desk, laughing at him.”