The Laird (Captive Hearts) (5 page)

“Why didn’t you come home, Michael? The armistice was more than two years ago, and you didn’t serve for the Hundred Days. You’ve been on British soil for more than two years, and I’ve received exactly one note from you in all that time.”

“You’re angry,” he said, his hands settling on her shoulders. “I can under—”

Brenna wrenched out from under his grasp and faced him.

“I am
not
angry, and you can
not
understand, any more than I can understand why you’d remain behind enemy lines in France, year after year, bound by some duty you haven’t taken the time to explain to your own wife.”

“One doesn’t generally advertise one’s location behind enemy lines, Brenna.”

“One doesn’t generally spend years behind those lines, then wait two more years to come home, Michael.” The light was waning, and this topic wasn’t the point of their errand beyond the castle walls.

“I had yet to discharge my duties to my satisfaction or to my superior’s satisfaction.”

Bother his superior.

“Every soldier gets leave, Michael Brodie, and yet, I had no leave from being your wife. I thought about haring off to London, you know. Presenting myself on your doorstep to see if you recognized me.”

He remained silent, did not even try to apologize or explain.

“Your parents separated for all practical purposes,” she said, because any reaction from him was better than his continued silence. “Many couples do.”

“We’ll not separate.” He sounded exactly like his father, and exactly like his uncle, too.

“You failed to consummate our union when you had the chance, went marching off to war for longer than was necessary, could not be bothered to write to your own wife twice a year, and now you come wandering home in expectation of…what? An heir on the way by Christmas?
Are
you
daft?
”

“We’ll not separate, Brenna Brodie. Angus tells me our finances are precarious, many of the tenants have left for the New World, the English pass one tax after another, and the people remaining need their laird and lady. Mother should never have gone back to Ireland.”

“You are so certain of that,” Brenna said, “and you know nothing of it, because you were not here, were you?” The bitterness in her tone must have registered, because Michael’s expression was shocked.

“Michael,” she said gently, “we
have
been
separated
for nearly a decade. I no more want to be your cast-off wife than you want to follow in your parents’ footsteps, but creating a family is not another order from headquarters to be dispatched with all haste.”

“I fail to comprehend—” He went silent, and in that silence, Brenna could see him building up a wall of masculine pride and Scottish male stubbornness. If he had his way, he’d bed her by morning, preferably more than once, and mark it off his list of obligations to be seen to.

Her soul—and her dinner—rebelled at the very thought.

“I don’t know your favorite dessert,” she said. “I don’t know which of the dances you prefer, or if you still know them. Do you fancy heather ale, or does your taste run to English drink? Will you spend days out on the moors, shooting as your father did, or have your mother’s head for figures?”

“What has that to do with begetting an heir?” he shot back, moving closer. “A soldier becomes accustomed to both the hardships and the limited comforts available in times of war. I can well assure you, madam, a man and woman need not know each other’s particulars to enjoy—”

Brenna put her hand over his mouth. “If you’re about to compare your wife to a camp follower, Michael Brodie, I suggest you rethink your words.”

He spoke around her fingers. “You find this amusing?”

She dropped her hand. The first time she’d touched him voluntarily, it had been to shut him up, and yes, she found humor in that—also hope.

“I think it’s sad that your only comfort has been whores. I, however, am not one of them.”

Brenna was damned sure of that.

“I never meant to imply you were, but Scottish baronies are not awarded every day.”

“Spare me,” she said, heading back up the path toward the castle. “You care naught for titles and pomp, particularly not the kind handed out by an English sovereign. I have been loyal to you
and
faithful to you for the duration of this farce of a marriage, Michael Brodie, and if you’re honest, you will admit many other women would not have honored their vows to the extent that I have.”

She left him in the deepening shadows, having resolved nothing, except her own position on the matter of his almighty
heirs
.

And that Michael did not agree with it.

***

“I’ve bungled things already.”

The sound of Devil’s steady chewing said the master’s clumsy handling of his wife was of no moment to the horse, but then, Devil was a gelding, and the summer grass was lush.

“She’s not the Brenna I left behind,” Michael added. “Not the Brenna I used to pray for each night, bivouacking beside my horse on the alarm grounds, waiting for death to snatch us from sleep.”

Then, as now, the steady chomp, chomp, chomp of a nearby mount was reassurance that all was well, and no raiding parties were stealing through the countryside intent on wreaking havoc on Wellington’s army.

“I don’t miss France, God knows. Don’t miss London either.”

Devil shifted a few feet away, having a nose for clover like no other horse Michael had known. Michael shifted too, trying to find a smooth patch of pasture from which to watch the stars come out.

“I do miss something.” Missing something had become a habit, a bad habit. Rather like the whisky in his flask could become a bad habit. “I should not have tarried so long in London, but St. Clair needed me.”

Michael’s wife had implied she had needed him too, though Michael was at a loss to say how. Brenna appeared as self-sufficient as a woman could be, with a ready ability to state her wishes, needs, and wants.

Also her dislikes, among which, her marriage—or her husband—apparently numbered.

Equine lips wiggled over Michael’s hair. He scratched the horse’s ear, as the beast had trained him to do.

“I failed to do adequate reconnaissance, horse. Wellington never went into battle without conferring with his intelligence officers if he could help it, and St. Clair seemed to know things the very birds of the air were in ignorance of.”

Michael did not miss his former commanding officer either, much. The damned man was wallowing in wedded bliss, for one thing.

“Angus said Brenna can be difficult.” This daunting thought required another pull on the flask. “I surmise my uncle and my wife are not in charity with each other, but then, Uncle was against the marriage.”

His father had told him that, which at the time had only increased Michael’s determination to see the wedding take place.

“I used to be protective of our Brenna. She was such a quiet, wee thing.” And pretty—she was still pretty, but no longer wee, and her quiet had become the brooding of a discontented female.

Lights winked out in the castle windows, while overhead, the night sky filled with stars.

“Uncle says Brenna will need a firm hand, and that she’s standoffish and given to strange fancies.” Though Angus had shared this reluctantly, Michael had wanted to plant the older man a facer for speaking ill of a woman who had put up with much.

He tipped the flask up rather than think of all Brenna had endured without her husband at her side.

“Bloody hot in Spain. We slept in our clothes, though.” Did Brenna sleep fully clothed, even in summer? Was she prepared for a sneak attack in the dead of night?

“I’m a bit half-seas over, you understand.” Another light went out, this one in the laird’s chamber. “’Tisn’t helping.”

Michael lay in the cool, fragrant grass and tried to recall exactly when the discussion between him and his wife had gone astray. Dinner had been delicious, abundant, and pleasant enough. Then in the clearing, Brenna had announced that he wasn’t welcome to exercise a husband’s privileges in her bed, and matters had gone abruptly to Hades.

“What did I expect?” he asked, scratching behind the horse’s chin. “Brenna had the right of it. I did not mean to compare her to a whore, but I compared coupling with her to what passes between a prostitute and her customers. A woman is entitled to expect a great deal more from her husband, or why marry the bugger?”

Something in the conversation had cheered him, nonetheless. Something about…

“She has not strayed, horse. My Brenna Maureen has not strayed even once.”

Though Angus had said she was overly partial to her widowed cousin, and cousins often married.

“Do you think she’d believe me, if I told her I hadn’t strayed either?”

The horse moved off in search of more clover, while Michael got to his feet, took a few moments to get his bearings, and then headed in to spend the night beside his wife.

To whom he had been faithful, and of whom he was still—to his surprise, pleasure, and relief—protective.

***

Sometime after Brenna had fallen exhausted into her bed, she felt the mattress dip and shift. A pleasant whiff of vetiver, whisky—and meadow grass?—came to her as her husband arranged himself two feet to her left.

The next sound was harder to decipher, but she managed—the soles of two big male feet rubbing together, the bedtime equivalent of shaking the dust of the day from one’s feet, a small safeguard in the direction of keeping the sheets clean if conducted with those feet hanging over the side of the bed.

Michael punched his pillows next, several stout blows that would have knocked wayward notions from grown men.

“Are you trying to wake me up, Husband?”

The punching stopped, and she felt him flop down onto the mattress—and heard the put-upon male sigh with which he tucked himself in.

“You did not lock the door, Brenna. My things are in this room.”

So was his wife.

“Neither one of us wants talk.” The bed was huge, and they weren’t touching, but Brenna could feel her husband thinking.

“I did not want you to conclude I was sneaking up on you.”

“You’re hard to miss when encountered in a bed, Michael. Go to sleep. Morning comes quickly.” And yet, she was pleased the pillows had taken a few warning shots on her behalf.

“You want time.”

“I want a good night’s sleep.” Though she should have anticipated that, like any man, Michael would want to beat a topic to death once broached. He could not ponder a discussion and undertake it in manageable portions; he must have done with it, regardless of the hour.

“I want time too, Brenna Maureen.”

Brenna rolled to her side, wishing she’d left a candle burning, despite the extravagance. “Time for what?”

“I was a good soldier, once I saw what was expected of me. It’s part of the reason I went to France. I was to look after my men, the same as a laird looks after his people. In France, it was much the same, though I was in a garrison with soldiers of a different nationality. We looked after one another, most of the time, and when a man lapsed in that duty, he suffered consequences.”

What was he saying, and why must he say it to her in pitch darkness?

“If I were planning to run off, Michael Brodie, I would have scarpered long since. Many and many a family has left the Highlands, including entire branches of clan MacLogan. I could easily have gone with them.” Though her own clansmen had hardly recalled where they’d stashed her, once she’d come to live at Castle Brodie.

A considering pause ensued, and then Brenna felt a single, callused finger trace down the side of her jaw.

“You might have left, but you stayed. I’m glad you stayed.”

The quality of the darkness changed, sheltering fragile dignity rather than frustrated curiosity. Because Michael had made a concession, Brenna offered him one of her own.

“You need not have come home at all. I know this. You’re a baron, or a lord of Parliament, or some such. You could have set up housekeeping in London, and you could easily have set me aside.”

He still could.

“Such a thought never occurred to me. This is my home, you are my wife, but I’m asking you to give us time, to not dismiss our marriage out of hand because we’re getting a late start on being husband and wife.”

Asking.

All day long, Brenna answered questions: What to serve for dinner, when to schedule a wedding or christening, what to put in a basket for a family suffering illness, and how to manage old Davey MacCray when he was once again three days gone with drink.

Those questions were easy, and this one was too.

I’m also glad I stayed, Michael. I’ve learned to be patient. Maybe you can learn to be patient with me, as well.”

The mattress shifted again, bobbing Brenna about as if she were a small craft on a stormy loch. She felt Michael come near, felt the shocking warmth of his bare chest against her arm, and then his lips brushing against her forehead.

Before she could flinch or bat him away, he subsided.

“Good night, then, Wife. Though I’m warning you, a man learns a deal of patience in the army.”