***
In Millicent Danforth’s experience, the elderly, like most stripes of human being, came in two varieties: fearful and brave. Her grandmother had been fearful, asking incessantly for tisanes or tea, for cosseting and humoring. Like a small child, Grandmother had wanted distracting from the inevitability of her own demise.
By contrast, Lady Frederica, Baroness St. Clair, viewed her eventual death as a diversion. She would threaten the help with it, lament it gently with her many friends, and use it as an excuse for very blunt speech indeed.
“You are to be a companion, not a nursemaid. You will not vex me with your presence when I attend my correspondence after breakfast. You will appear at my side when I take the landau out for a turn in the park. Shall you write this down?”
Milly returned her prospective employer’s beady-eyed glower calmly.
“I will not bother you after breakfast unless you ask it of me. I will join you when you take the air in the park. I believe I can recall that much, my lady. What will my other duties involve?”
She asked because Mr. Loomis at the agency had been spotty on the details, except for the need to show up at an unseemly early hour for this interview.
“A companion—you keep Lady St. Clair company!” he’d barked. “Step, fetch, soothe, entertain. Now, be off with you!”
The way he’d smoothed his wisp of suspiciously dark hair over his pate suggested more would be involved, a great deal more. Perhaps her ladyship tippled, gambled, or neglected to pay the trades—all to be managed by a companion whom the baroness might also forget to regularly compensate.
“You will dine with me in the evening and assist me to endure the company of my rascal of a nephew if he deigns to join us. What, I ask you, is so enticing about a rare beefsteak and an undercooked potato with a side of gossip? I can provide that here, as well as a superior cellar, but no, the boy must away to his flower-lovers’ club. Never mind, though. He’s well-mannered enough that he won’t terrorize you—or no more than I will. Are you sure you don’t need to write any of this down?”
Yes, Milly was quite sure. “I gather you are a list maker, my lady?”
Blue eyes lit up as her ladyship reached for the teapot.
“Yes! I am never so happy as when I’m organizing. I should have been a general, the late baron used to say. Do you enjoy the opera? One hopes you do, because nothing is more unendurable than the opera if one hasn’t a taste for it.”
Her ladyship chattered on about London openings she’d attended, who had conducted them, and what she had thought of the score, the sets, the crowd in attendance, and the various solos, duets, and ensemble numbers. Her diatribe was like a conversational stiff wind, banging the windows open all at once, setting curtains flapping, papers flying, and lapdogs barking.
“You’re not drinking your tea, Miss Danforth.”
“I am attending your ladyship’s recitation of my duties.”
The baroness clinked her teacup down on its saucer. “You were estimating the value of this tea service. Jasperware is more practical, but it’s so heavy. I prefer the Sèvres, and Sebastian likes it too.”
Sebastian might well be a follower. Milly had stolen a moment while waiting for this audience to glance over the cards sitting in a crystal bowl on the sideboard in the front hall. Her ladyship’s social life was quite lively, and by no means were her callers all female.
“The service is pretty,” Milly observed, though it was more than pretty, and perfectly suited to the pastel and sunshine of her ladyship’s breakfast parlor. They were using the older style of Sèvres, more easily broken, but also impressively hued. Her ladyship’s service boasted brilliant pink roses, soft green foliage, and gold trim over a white glaze. “Meissen or Dresden aren’t as decorative, though they are sturdier.”
The baroness used silver tongs to put a flaky golden croissant on a plate. “So you are a lady fallen on hard times?”
She was a lady who’d blundered. Paid companions did not need to know that fifteen years ago, Sèvres was made without kaolin, fired at a lower temperature, and capable of taking a wider and more bold palette of hues as a result.
“My mother was a lady fallen on hard times. I am a poor relation who would make her own way rather than burden my cousins any further.”
“Kicked you out, did they?” Her ladyship’s tone suggested she did not approve of such cousins. “Or perhaps they realized that underneath all that red hair, you’re quite pretty, though brown eyes are not quite the rage. One hopes you aren’t delicate?”
She passed Milly the pastry and shifted the butter a few inches closer to Milly’s side of the table.
“I enjoy excellent health, thank you, your ladyship.” Excellent physical health, anyway. “And I prefer to call my hair auburn.”
The baroness snorted at that gambit, then poured herself more tea. “Will these cousins come around to plague you?”
They would have to bother to find her first. “I doubt it.”
“You wouldn’t be married to one of them, would you?”
Milly nearly choked on soft, buttery pastry. “I am not married.” For which she might someday be grateful.
“Then I will regularly scandalize your innocent ears and enjoy doing it. Eat up. When Sebastian gets back from his morning ride, he’ll go through that sideboard like a plague of locusts. If you prefer coffee, you’d best get your servings before he comes down in the morning. The man cannot abide tea in any form.”
“The plague of locusts has arrived.”
Milly’s head snapped around at the mocking baritone. She beheld…her opposite. Whereas she was female, short—petite, when the occasion was polite—red-haired, and brown-eyed, the plague before her was male, tall, green-eyed, and sable-haired. The divergence didn’t stop there.
This fellow sauntered into the parlor, displaying a casual elegance about his riding attire that suggested time on the Continent. His tailoring was exquisite, but his movement was also so relaxed as to approach languid. The lace at his throat came within a whisker of being excessive, and the emerald winking from its snowy depths stayed barely on the acceptable side of ostentatious, for men seldom wore jewels during daylight hours, and certainly not for so mundane an undertaking as a hack in the park.
This biblical plague had…sartorial éclat.
Again, the opposite of Milly, who generally bustled through life, wore the plainest gowns she could get away with, and had never set foot outside London and the Home Counties.
“Aunt, you will observe the courtesies, please?”
This was the rascal of a nephew then, though as Milly endured his scrutiny, the term rascal struck her as incongruously affectionate for the specimen before her.
“Miss Millicent Danforth, may I make known to you my scamp of a nephew, Sebastian, Baron St. Clair. St. Clair, Miss Danforth—my new companion. You are not to terrorize her before she and I have negotiated terms.”
“Of course not. I terrorize your staff only after you’ve obligated them to a contract.”
If this was teasing, Milly did not regard it as humorous. Her ladyship, however, graced her nephew with a smile.
“Rotten boy. You may take your plate to the library, and read your newspapers in peace.”
His lordship, who was not a boy in any sense, bowed to Milly with a Continental flourish, bowed again over Lady St. Clair’s hand, tucked some newspapers under his arm, and strolled from the room.
“He’s been dueling again.” The baroness might have reported that her nephew had been dicing in the mews, her tone truculent rather than aghast. “They leave the poor boy no peace, those gallant buffoons old Arthur is so proud of.”
For all his smoothness, something about St. Clair had not sat exactly plumb, but then, what did it say about a man if he could face death at sunrise and appear completely unaffected by the time he downed his morning coffe
e?
“How can you tell he was dueling?” For ladies weren’t supposed to know of such things, much less small elderly ladies who lived for their correspondence and tattle.
“He’s sad. Dueling always makes him sad. Just when I think he’s making some progress, another one of these imbeciles finds a bit of courage, and off to some sheep meadow they go. I swear, if women ruled the world, it would be a damned sight better place. Have I shocked you?”
“Several times, my lady.”
“Excellent. Have another pastry.”
Milly munched away on a confection filled with chocolate crème—one could learn to appreciate such fare all too easily—while Lady St. Clair waxed enthusiastic about the affairs of Wellington—for who else could “old Arthur” be?—and his officers.
And still, something about the Baron St. Clair lodged in Milly’s awareness like a smudge on her spectacles. He was quite handsome—an embarrassment of handsome was his to command—but cold. His smile reached his eyes only when he beheld his elderly aunt.
Perhaps dueling had taxed his store of charm.
“…and the ladies très jolie, you know?” Lady St. Clair was saying. “Half the fellows in government claimed they needed to go to Paris to make peace, but the soiled doves of London went into a decline until the negotiations were complete. Making peace is lusty work, methinks.”
“I’m shocked yet again, my lady.” Though not by the baroness’s bawdy talk.
St. Clair—a baron and peer of the English realm—had spoken with a slight aristocratic French accent.
“Excellent. We shall get on famously, Miss Danforth, provided you aren’t one to quibble about terms.”
“I have not the luxury of quibbling, my lady.”
The baroness peered at her over a pretty teacup. “Truly odious cousins?”
“Very. And parsimonious in the extreme.”
“My condolences. Have another pastry.”
The Laird
“Elspeth, I believe a Viking has come calling.”
At Brenna’s puzzled observation, her maid set aside the embroidery hoop serving as a pretext for enjoying the Scottish summer sun, rose off the stone bench, and joined Brenna at the parapets.
“If Vikings are to ruin your afternoon tea, better if they arrive one at a time,” Elspeth said, peering down at the castle’s main gate. “Though that’s a big one, even for a Viking.”
The gate hadn’t been manned for at least two centuries, and yet, some instinct had Brenna wishing she’d given the command to lower the portcullis before the lone rider had crossed into the cobbled keep.
“Lovely horse,” Elspeth remarked.
The beast was an enormous, elegant bay, though its coat was matted with sweat and dust. From her vantage point high on Castle Brodie’s walls, all Brenna could tell about the rider was that he was big, broad-shouldered, and blond. “Our visitor is alone, likely far from home, hungry and tired. If we’re to offer him hospitality, I’d best inform the kitchen.”
Highland hospitality had grown tattered and threadbare in some locations, but not at Castle Brodie, and it would not, as long as Brenna had the running of the place.
“He looks familiar,” Elspeth said as the rider swung off his beast.
“The horse?”
No, Elspeth hadn’t meant the horse, because now that the rider was walking his mount toward the groom approaching from the stables, Brenna had the same sense of nagging familiarity. She knew that loose-limbed stride, knew that exact manner of stroking a horse’s neck, knew—
Foreboding prickled up Brenna’s arms, an instant before recognition landed in a cold heap in her belly.
“Michael has come home.” Nine years of waiting and worrying while the Corsican had wreaked havoc on the Continent, of not knowing what to wish for.
Her damned husband hadn’t even had the courtesy to warn her of his return.
Elspeth peered over the stone crenellations, her expression dubious. “If that’s the laird, you’d best go welcome him, though I don’t see much in the way of baggage. Perhaps, if you’re lucky, he’ll soon be off larking about on some new battlefield.”
“For shame, Elspeth Fraser.”
A woman ought not to talk that way about her laird, and a wife ought not to think that way about her husband. Brenna wound down through the castle and took herself out into the courtyard, both rage and gratitude speeding her along.
She’d had endless Highland winters to rehearse the speech Michael deserved, years to practice the dignified reserve she’d exhibit before him should he ever recall he had a home. Alas for her, the cobbles were wet from a recent scrubbing, so her dignified reserve more or less skidded to a halt before her husband.
Strong hands steadied her as she gazed up, and up some more, into green eyes both familiar and unknown.
“You’ve come home.” Not at all what she’d meant to say.
“That I have. If you would be so good, madam, as to allow the lady of the—Brenna?”
His hands fell away, and Brenna stepped back, wrapping her tartan shawl around her more closely.
“Welcome to Brodie Castle, Michael.” Because somebody ought to say the words, she added, “Welcome home.”
“You used to be chubby.” He leveled this accusation as if put out that somebody had made off with that chubby girl.
“You used to be skinny.” Now he was all-over muscle. He’d gone away a tall, gangly fellow, and come back not simply a man, but a warrior. “Perhaps you’re hungry?”
She did not know what to do with a husband, much less this husband, who bore so little resemblance to the young man she’d married, but Brenna knew well what to do with a hungry man.
“I am…” His gaze traveled the courtyard the way a skilled gunner might swivel his sights on a moving target, making a circuit of the granite walls rising some thirty feet on three sides of the bailey. His expression suggested he was making sure the castle, at least, had remained where he’d left it. “I am famished.”
“Come along then.” Brenna turned and started for the entrance to the main hall, but Michael remained in the middle of the courtyard, still peering about. Potted geraniums were in riot, pink roses climbed trellises under the first-floor windows, and window boxes held all manner of blooms.
“You’ve planted flowers.”
Another near accusation, for nine years ago, the only flowers in the keep were stray shrubs of heather springing up in sheltered corners.
Brenna returned to her husband’s side, trying to see the courtyard from his perspective. “One must occupy oneself somehow while waiting for her spouse to come home—or be killed.”
He needed to know that for nine years, despite anger, bewilderment, and even the occasional period of striving for indifference toward him and his fate, Brenna had gone to bed every night praying that death did not end his travels.
“One must, indeed, occupy oneself.” He offered her his arm, which underscored how long they’d been separated and how far he’d wandered.
The men of the castle and its tenancies knew to keep their hands to themselves where Brenna MacLogan Brodie was concerned. They did not hold her chair for her, did not assist her in and out of coaches, or on and off of her horse.
And yet, Michael stood there, a muscular arm winged at her, while the scent of slippery cobbles, blooming roses, and a whiff of vetiver filled the air.
“Brenna Maureen, every arrow slit and window of that castle is occupied by a servant or relation watching our reunion. I would like to walk into my home arm in arm with my wife. Will you permit me that courtesy?”
He’d been among the English, the military English, which might explain this fussing over appearances, but he hadn’t lost his Scottish common sense.
Michael had asked her to accommodate him. Brenna wrapped one hand around his thick forearm and allowed him to escort h
er to the castle.
***
He could bed his wife. The relief Michael Brodie felt at that sentiment eclipsed the relief of hearing again the languages of his childhood, Gaelic and Scots, both increasingly common as he’d traveled farther north.
To know he could feel desire for his wedded wife surpassed his relief at seeing the castle in good repair, and even eclipsed his relief that the woman didn’t indulge in strong hysterics at the sight of him.
For the wife he’d left behind had been more child than woman, the antithesis of this red-haired Celtic goddess wrapped in the clan’s hunting tartan and so much wounded dignity.
They reached the steps leading up to the great wooden door at the castle entrance. “I wrote to you.”
Brenna did not turn her head. “Perhaps your letters went astray.”
Such gracious indifference. He was capable of bedding his wife—any young man with red blood in his veins would desire the woman at Michael’s side—but clearly, ability did not guarantee he’d have the opportunity.
“I meant, I wrote from Edinburgh to let you know I was coming home.”
“Edinburgh is lovely in summer.”
All of Scotland was lovely in summer, and to a man who’d scorched his back raw under the Andalusian sun, lovely in deepest winter too. “I was in France, Brenna. The King’s post did not frequent Toulouse.”
Outside the door, she paused and studied the scrolled iron plate around the ancient lock.
“We heard you’d deserted, then we heard you’d died. Some of the fellows from your regiment paid calls here, and intimated army gossip is not to be trusted. Then some officer came trotting up the lane a month after the victory, expecting to pay a call on you.”
Standing outside that impenetrable, ancient door, Michael accepted that his decision to serve King and Country had left wounded at home as well as on the Continent.
And yet, apologizing now would only make things worse.
“Had you seen the retreat to Corunna, Brenna, had you seen even one battle—” Because the women saw it all, right along with their husbands and children. Trailing immediately behind the soldiers came a smaller, far more vulnerable army of dependents, suffering and dying in company with their menfolk.
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