The Laird (Captive Hearts) (33 page)

And what if it isn’t?

Fifteen

“Now I know how to get you to picnic with your husband,” Michael observed, brushing Brenna’s fingers aside and tying the ribbon at the end of her braid into a snug bow. “All I have to do is set half the village to scrubbing, dusting, and cleaning the ballroom’s chandeliers and windows, and you’ll flee the premises.” He used Brenna’s braid to tug her closer. “I think the noise disagrees with you so badly, you might even have joined me for a walk along the Dee or an afternoon on a shady blanket.”

The preparations for the celebration at week’s end had turned Brenna’s day upside down and left her too tired for any confrontations with her husband as they prepared for bed.

“I would have gone with you, Michael. I’d have stolen away with you and spent the day anywhere quiet.” Provided Elspeth spent the day with Maeve, and Cook kept Lachlan from straying. Brenna slid her arms around Michael’s waist and leaned into him.

“You were like that as a girl,” he murmured, wrapping her in a loose embrace. “You had a knack for finding quiet corners, for going unnoticed.”

Until Angus had found her in those quiet corners, and now the damned man seemed to be lurking in a corner of Brenna’s very mind.

“Why the sigh, Wife?”

“I’m tired, Husband.” Some distraction was in order, because a tired woman might say things she dreaded saying to a patient, affectionate husband. “You looked very braw without your shirt today. The ladies made little progress cleaning the ballroom as long as you were working with the fellows on the stair railing.”

“Sawing oak is sweaty work.” He hitched her closer. “We can’t have our guests tumbling into the ballroom when a railing gives way, and I gather the ballroom hasn’t been used much since Mama took the girls to Ireland.”

“I like the scent of fresh-cut oak.” Brenna had also liked the scent of her husband’s exertions, liked the taste of his kiss after he’d taken a wee nip, liked the look of him, a few flecks of sawdust in his hair, muscles bunching and rippling as he’d traded good-natured insults with the other men.

“I had fences to mend,” Michael said. “I waxed a bit pontifical when Dingle handed out the mail yesterday.”

Brenna might have stepped back, except Michael’s arms prevented it. “Elspeth told me.” As had Hugh, and even Cook had reported a second- or third-hand version of events. “Do you fear I’ll scold you for scolding them, Michael?”

He kissed her on the mouth, the gesture tasting of husbandly fatigue laced with exasperation.

“I’d understand if you needed to scold me, but Brenna Maureen, these people can’t have it both ways. You’re there to post their bail when they lack opportunity here in Scotland or can’t pay their rents, and for solving that problem, those left behind resent you. Have they seen the privations faced by the families trying to eke out an existence in the cities? Do they ever stop to wonder how they’d fare without your generosity to protect them?”

Had Michael ever wondered how Brenna had fared without him?

He
had.
Between nuzzling his throat and kissing his chin, Brenna realized that his scolds were not so much for the village as they were for himself.

“Michael, it’s late. We’re tired, and while I appreciate your indignation on my behalf, you must be patient. To many people, grudges can be as dear as children.”

Some of the bewilderment seemed to seep away from him as his embrace shifted and became more intimate.

“As dear as grandchildren,” he said, his hips snuggling in low against Brenna’s belly. “
You
are full of dearness, Brenna Brodie.”

This small moment at the end of a long, busy day was full of dearness. Michael shared his frustrations with Brenna comfortably, with the same ease as he hung his waistcoat over the back of the reading chair each night or draped his cravat over the door to the wardrobe.

“You are full of blather,” she said, her mouth landing on his in what she’d intended as a reciprocal end-of-day kiss.

Except Michael was ready to change the subject, apparently. He was done grumbling about stubborn grudges, done letting the past intrude on the present. Instead, he took her end-of-day kiss and turned it into a Start-of-Something-Else-Entirely kiss. The shift resulted in Michael’s entire body becoming subtly alive against Brenna, as if her nightclothes had melted away in response to the change in his focus.

Brenna kissed him back, a challenge for a challenge, which provoked him to smile against her mouth and gently swat her bottom.

“Into bed with you, Brenna Maureen. You need your rest.”

“I need my husband.”

He’d stepped away, toward the privacy screen, and paused while turned partway from her.

“Brenna?” His posture said he was braced for her to deliver that scold, but he was hopeful too, that she might take him up on that Something-Else-Entirely kiss.

“I want my husband,” Brenna said, surprised both to hear the words coming from her own mouth and that they were such a relaxed, casual statement. Surprised as well that she’d guessed accurately.

The combination of desire, affection, and loneliness roiling about inside her was…a need for Michael. A perfectly acceptable, even commonplace need of a wife for her husband—and that, too, was dear.

“Unless my husband is too tired?”

“Never,” Michael said, dropping into the reading chair and getting to work on the laces of his boots. “I’ll never be too tired to love you, Brenna Brodie. Never too tired to listen to you or hold you or walk the banks of the Dee or”—he wrestled the second boot off—“throw you onto that bed.”

“Set those boots in the corridor,” Brenna said. “You’d make a racket loud enough to wake our guests if you pitched me onto the bed.”

He managed it quietly enough, Brenna’s soft “oomph” being the only audible evidence of his exertion.

“Hang the boots,” he said, unfastening his kilt. “I wasn’t sure we were to risk having children, not after last night’s”—Brenna tossed her night robe to the foot of the bed—“discussion.”

His kilt came undone in the next moment. He draped it over the chair so he stood by the bed wearing a puzzled smile and shadows cast by the firelight. Bless the man, even in the dim light, his interest in Brenna’s invitation was abundantly evident.

“I don’t know about children,” Brenna said, drawing her nightgown over her head. “We can talk more about children, and we probably should. What I know is the day has been long, and even when I was in the ballroom arguing with Goodie MacCray about how many candles should go on each chandelier, and you were teasing Hugh about wanting to show off for Elspeth, I felt an ache, Michael. For you. Twenty paces between us, half the village looking on, work to be done, and I felt an ache.”

The mattress dipped as Michael sank one knee on the bed.

“Did you now? An ache? For me? Even when there was work to be done? Where did you ache, Wife?”

In her heart. “Inside. In wifely places.”

He flopped to his back beside her. “Come here, and tell me about these wifely aches.”

“I am married to a great, silly man,” Brenna groused, shifting to hike a leg over her husband. “One who teases when I confess to him that I’ve a need of him. One who tosses me about like so much laundry in my own bed—”

Michael’s hands, large and warm, settled on her breasts. “Go on. I am ever willing to listen to your confessions, dear heart.”

The banter went out of Brenna as she realized she hadn’t had to ask Michael to love her in this position. He’d learned already that she couldn’t be comfortable on her back beneath him, not yet.

“I love how you do that,” she said, her spine melting with his caresses. “You seem to know—”

He stroked her gently, finishing with a slight pressure to her nipples. “I need you too, Brenna. That’s what I know.”

Lest he say more, Brenna kissed him. His words ceased, and yet he did say more. Said he loved how freely she offered him her breasts, how aroused she became for him, and how snugly their bodies fit together when he eased his way into her damp heat.

And with his sighs and caresses, he told her he treasured both the pleasure they shared and he treasured
her
.

“Stop holding back,” he whispered. “You don’t need to hoard your satisfaction away, as if the supply is limited, Brenna. I will always be here for you.”

Oh, why must he say those words now? Tonight they were man and wife, sharing a simple and profound intimacy, but tomorrow they might find themselves again separated, and by nothing so easily explained as war on the Continent.

“Will you always be here?” She panted the question, because the dratted man had shifted beneath her, the angle of his thrusting taking on a diabolical effectiveness.

He gathered her close, so close she could not see his face, and that was a mercy.

“I love you, Brenna Brodie, and I’m home to stay.”

His words, low, hoarse, and passionate, drove her past all restraint, so that tears and pleasure deluged her in the same procession of endless sweet, awful moments. When she lay battered and drifting on Michael’s chest, he kissed her cheek and withdrew from her body in a slow, hard slide.

“Michael?”

“Hush. Hold me.”

She could not hold him, hadn’t the strength, hadn’t the wits. Instead, she cuddled close as, a few slow, undulating moments later, he groaned softly beneath her, and a wet warmth slicked their bellies.

The scent of spent lust joined the lavender of the bed sachets and Michael’s vetiver soap, a married bouquet, and not an entirely happy one.

As they lay breathing in counterpoint, Brenna took Michael’s earlobe into her mouth, a small comfort against the sense of emptiness his withdrawal had left. She knew why he’d done it. He loved her, and he was home to stay, but her welcome—despite their present posture, despite vows, despite all the tenderness she felt for him—was still in doubt.

When she ought to have told him she loved him, Brenna fumbled for the handkerchief on the night table instead.

A woman who truly loved her husband would find a way to share not only her body with him, but the truth as well.

***

“You’ve been seen taking carrots to the stables, my girl, and now half my carrots are missing. What am I to put in today’s stew, I ask you?”

Cook’s great arms were folded over her chest, her apron sported streaks of dried blood, and no hint of a smile suggested to Maeve that this was anything other than the start of a birching or worse.

“I don’t steal,” Maeve said, knowing Lachlan lurked in the pantry and could hear every word. “I don’t even like carrots.” What’s more, Cook had freely given her the only two carrots she’d taken to the stables.

The scullery maid scrubbing sand into the bottom of an enormous pot over at the sink shot Maeve a pitying look.

“Maeve, everybody knows you nip out to the stables without permission, and Wee Bannock could put away half a bag of carrots in nothing flat. If you admit you took the carrots, I’ll not go to your brother about it.”

Her brother? The brother who could not be bothered to do more than quiz Maeve about her day if he happened to glance her way at supper? The brother who seemed to spend all his time mooning after a woman he’d been married to since before Maeve had been born?

“I do not steal,” Maeve said, “and I do not lie, and I do not like carrots.” Besides, Uncle Angus kept a bag of carrots in the saddle room, but Maeve didn’t say that. Uncle had told her the stash of carrots in the stable was one of their secrets, and secrets must be kept.

The scullery maid went back to her scrubbing, but from the butler’s pantry, Maeve heard something scrape and clank as if one of the boxes that held the cutlery had been shifted.

“Are you saying that Lachlan took the carrots?” Cook asked. “Or young Kelsey over there? Are you saying
I
took carrots from me own kitchen, Maeve? Lying is not an attractive habit for a wee lass to fall into.”

Maeve would never eat shortbread again, not if this fat, unfair old woman was the one to make it.

“It’s your kitchen, and that means you should know where your carrots are. I did not steal them, and I want to go home to Ireland.”

Whatever Lachlan was doing in the butler’s pantry, he wasn’t minding it very closely, because a loud clatter suggested he’d made a mess in there.

Cook drew in one of those offended-grown-up breaths through her nose, growing larger as she inhaled. The strings holding her apron closed disappeared at her waist as hips and ribs met on the tide of her indignation.

“This is my kitchen, young lady, and that saucy talk will not be allowed.”

“Whose saucy talk is holding up my luncheon?” a man’s voice asked from the back hallway. “I cannot have Cook’s sweet temper tried, or the castle will go hungry.”

Michael came sauntering in, his kilt flapping against his knees, his hair sticking up like somebody had messed it. He was smiling, which was good, though he wouldn’t be for long.

“Maeve snatched a bag of carrots,” Cook said, her accusation full of the tsk-tsk tone any child would loathe. “When I confronted her, she denied her misdeeds, refused to apologize, and told me in my kitchen I should be able to keep track of every wee thief who comes darting through the root cellar.”

“That’s not what I said!”

Michael’s smile vanished as if snatched away by piskies.

“You’ll keep a civil tongue in your head, Maeve Brodie, particularly when addressing your elders.”

Where else would she keep her tongue but in her head? “Cook is lying. I did not take the carrots, and it
is
her kitchen.”

Cook—blast her to the Bad Place—shook her head in dismay, though Maeve had spoken nothing less than the truth—three truths in fact.

“Go to your room.” Michael said this in the same tones Kevin used to talk to a hound who’d made a mess on the carpets.

The hounds knew to slink away, tail tucked, but Maeve wasn’t a hound, and she hadn’t piddled on any carpets.

“I haven’t done anything wrong!”

Michael crossed the kitchen and stood over her, looking about ten feet tall.

“You compound your errors, Maeve, when you take that tone with me. Apologize to Cook for your disrespect, and we’ll discuss your thievery later.”

Maeve nearly countered that
Cook
should be apologizing to
her
, and that when Michael respected his youngest sister enough to spend two minutes with her outside the dining parlor, then Maeve would listen to his orders.

Lachlan saved her from a slap or worse, for when grown-ups made up their minds, they became unreasonable. Maeve had ended up in Scotland on the strength of just such stupid, stubborn, grown-up thinking. Had she tried to argue with Michael further, a birching would surely have come her way.

But the sound of crockery smashing in the butler’s pantry turned all heads in the direction of the hallway.

“I didn’t take the carrots,” Maeve yelled, darting toward the back door. “You’re all mean. You’re unfair, you don’t listen, and
I
want
to
go
home
!”

She pelted past Lachlan, who stared in dismay at the shards of porcelain all around his feet, pelted past the look of horror he aimed at her, and scampered up the winding stairs that would take her away from the only place she’d felt comfortable in the entire stupid castle.

***

“You’re raising a little girl,” Michael observed as he and Hugh ambled across the bailey.

“Aye. My Annie. She’s the spit and image of her dear ma.” Hugh’s tone said he took vast comfort from the girl’s resemblance to her departed mother.

While Maeve’s look was unique, not fair like Michael, not dark like Erin and Bridget. In the kitchen, the child had been a small red-haired pillar of righteousness, chin quivering with outrage, her meager stores of childish self-restraint flung on a pyre of righteous self-defense.

He’d been reminded of Brenna as a girl. For all her quiet, Brenna had been stubborn, and still was.

“How do you know when Annie’s lying?” Michael asked, because Cook had been certain the carrots were missing, and in fairness to Cook, Maeve had been the logical suspect.

“Annie doesn’t lie. Young children usually have to be taught to lie. What is this errand we’re about, Laird? I have work to do.”

“Let your brothers do it. We’re searching Angus’s quarters.” Saying the words did not make the job any more appealing. Hugh paused in their progress across the bailey and made a pretense of surveying granite walls that had stood for centuries.

“Are you turning me into a thief? I’ll not do it.”

“We’ll take nothing that belongs to Angus, but I’ve been asking myself who benefits from discrediting my wife? Who stood to gain the most from turning the entire estate against her?” Who had subtly undermined Michael’s respect for Brenna from the very day he’d returned home?

“Anybody would benefit from a year’s profit on the wool,” Hugh snorted. “I don’t like Angus, and my brothers purely hate him. Neil in particular can’t abide the man, but even Neil would balk at searching a fellow’s private quarters.”

No, Neil would not. Left to his own devices, Michael suspected Neil might burn Angus’s home cheerfully, with Angus locked inside it.

“Have you ever asked Neil why he hates Angus?”

“I have not, though Annie had her suspicions,” Hugh said, striding off at a rapid clip. “If we’re to riffle Angus’s linen, then let’s be about it. I assume you’ve sent him off on some errand?”

“I sent him down to Aboyne to lay in some supplies for the coming festivities, and his household help has a half day today,” Michael said, catching up to Hugh. “I’m exercising a landlord’s reasonable right of reentry to inspect my property. Angus believes in upholding the law. What did you mean about children being taught how to lie?”

They passed over the drawbridge, the boards solid beneath Michael’s boots in a way stone could not be.

“Annie is a good girl. She’d rather admit she’s misstepped than lie and have the weight of a guilty conscience dragging around wherever she goes. As long as my punishments are reasonable, she’ll tell me readily enough when she’s done wrong. If I flew into a rage, hurt her, or kept every transgression hanging before her eyes like some martyr on a cross, then she’d learn to lie well.”

Hugh’s parenting methods comported exactly with what Michael had found to be the case with adolescent recruits in both French and English armies. Minor crimes weren’t worth lying over, and yet, in a sense, Lachlan had lied by remaining silent in the pantry rather than coming forward with what he knew.

While Maeve had been telling the goddamned truth.

“This is a lovely property,” Hugh said as they approached the three-story stone dwelling Michael’s father had built as the dower house. “Needs flowers, though.”

Granite could be pretty. Much of Aberdeenshire was built of granite, a soft gray available in local abundance. Stone didn’t burn; it didn’t creak and shift with the endless freezing and thawing of the changing seasons.

And yet, it was cold to look at and cold to dwell in. Michael led the way through a wooden gate painted white and streaked with mud.

“Cook accused Maeve of stealing carrots.”

“Oh, that makes nothing but sense,” Hugh said, closing the gate behind them. “Show me a child who steals vegetables, and I’ll show you a child wrongly accused.”

“Cook has no children, so your reasoning might not occur to her, but Maeve does like to visit the stables.” Alone, when she’d been told not to.

When her brother ought to be the one taking her there.

“The old carrots are reserved for the stables,” Hugh said as Michael fished a heavy iron key out of a pocket. “The carrots that get tough and hairy before they’re dug up. Cook ought to know that.”

Michael hadn’t known that. Lachlan, Maeve’s timid young champion, had had to explain it to him after Maeve had pelted off in high dudgeon.

“I’m surprised Angus even locks his door.” Michael had to use a bit of force to get the tumblers to turn. “Doesn’t he trust his own people?”

“He shouldn’t,” Hugh replied, following Michael through the door. “We sure as hell don’t trust him.”

Lachlan had known that too. He’d explained to Michael, through tears and a boy’s ineffective attempts to sweep up shattered porcelain, that Angus appropriated the good carrots for the saddle room whenever he pleased, and—Lachlan had added, chin jutting—“nobody crosses Angus Brodie. Not even when he needs crossin’.”

Even Brenna didn’t cross Angus, and what did that say?

“Shall we stand about here, breathing old pipe smoke, or have a look about?” Hugh asked.

The place reeked of pipe smoke, and not in the pleasant lingering fragrance Michael associated with the winter evenings of his boyhood.

“Somebody needs to air this damned place out. No dower property should reek of pipe smoke.”

Based on the front hallway, the house was tidy enough. The floors were clean, the rugs freshly beaten, the corners and windowsills free of cobwebs, and yet, an unlived-in quality persisted.

“Unless you’re planning on dying in the near future,” Hugh said, fingering a dark wool cloak hung on a peg, “this house won’t have to serve as a dower property anytime soon. Even the clothing stinks of that damned pipe.”

“Then we’d best not linger here, or we’ll bear the stench ourselves.”

Though Michael wanted to head right back out the front door rather than snoop through his uncle’s belongings.

“What are we looking for?” Hugh asked, heading for the back of the house.

They were looking for a truth nobody had wanted to find.

“Angus probably keeps ledgers and diaries, that sort of thing. My uncle is not stupid. He won’t leave a confession in plain sight, but he might leave enough evidence that I can piece together what happened.”

The first parlor, the most spacious and traditionally the most formal, was largely as Lady Catherine had left it. Furniture upholstered in the Brodie plaids, a thick Axminster carpet, and a large fieldstone hearth would make the room cozy in winter. Cutwork and embroidery were framed on the walls, some of it done by Lady Catherine, but much of it less sophisticated.

When Michael moved closer to study one framed, lacy little circle, Hugh remained in the doorway.

“Anne hadn’t the patience for cutwork. Said it would ruin the eyes.”

“Brenna did this one.” The patterns cut into the paper weren’t as delicate or as intricate as Lady Catherine’s pieces, but Michael recognized the paisley motif. “She did this one too.”