The Laird

by Grace Burrowes

  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 extr
avagance. “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.”

  He rolled over, giving her his back. She’d seen his bare back earlier in the day, when he bathed, and she knew the skin over his shoulder blades would be smooth, the muscles along his spine lean and graceful.

  Brenna rolled over too, so they were back to back, and any stray temptation to touch him less likely to overtake her good sense. “Good night, Husband.”

  Why had he kissed her, and why hadn’t she panicked? “Michael?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I feel safer with you here.”

  He said nothing, did not ask if she meant safer with him back home, safer with him in the castle, or safer with him in the same bed.

  He also did not ask what or who she felt safer from.

  Three

  Army life, whether in a French garrison or among British troops in Spain and Portugal, was intimate. Michael had seen a woman giving birth in the snow along the road to Corunna, and rejoiced with his entire unit when he’d learned mother, child—and father—had safely made it aboard the evacuation ships.

  He’d also seen a couple lying in the snow, arms about each other, both dead of the exhaustion and exposure that had claimed many on that hellish retreat.

  Combat held worse intimacies yet, as when a French officer whom one chanced upon foraging with his men along a riverbank—and shared a bit of gossip and commiseration with—showed up the next day at the business end of a bayonet charge.

  The garrison in France had been no different, with domestic squabbles, short rations, and news of the occasional victory or defeat equally shared by all. Thus, it should not have bothered Michael to spend the night in the same bed with his wife, to hear her sighs and murmurs, and feel her stirring in the dark.

  “You sleep like a recruit after his first forced march,” Michael said, untangling himself from the sheets. “Though you don’t snore, and you smell a good deal better.”

  Like roses, and like home.

  “This time of year, nights are short, days are long.” Brenna sat on the bed with her back to him, wrapping herself into a wool dressing gown. She wouldn’t even cross the room without donning as much armor as the situation might afford her.

  “Why do you wear the hunting plaid?” The darker hues flattered her vivid coloring more than the red everyday plaid would, but it was still an odd choice.

  “This pattern doesn’t show the dirt as easily, and the colors suit me better.” Still, she sat with her back to him, as if the knot of her sash required all of her attention.

  “Brenna, I’m decently covered.”

  She peeked over her shoulder. “So you are.”

  And yet, she blushed to find him wearing pajama trousers, though they were held up by a properly knotted drawstring rather than a morning salute from his cock.

  “Do you break your fast here, or go down to the kitchen?” He could not imagine her putting the staff to the effort of serving her a solitary breakfast in a dining parlor.

  “I take a tray, something light, though I’ll talk to Cook about preparing more substantial fare now that you’re back. I’m sure the tray will be sitting outside the door, along with your boots.”

  Still, she did not move. She was, instead, watching him the way the French had watched Michael for months after he’d shown up at their gates, professing a mostly sincere disgust of all things English.

  Michael fetched the tray—his boots could wait—and brought it to the bed, setting it down beside Brenna, and taking a place at the foot of the bed. Butter, honey, a basket of scones wrapped in snowy linen, and a pot of tea were arranged just so.

  “The staff knows how to welcome the laird home.”

  Her chin came up. “The staff takes its direction from the lady.”

  Michael buttered a flaky, warm scone, set it on a plate, and passed it to her.

  “I was once assigned the job of keeping track of an enemy patrol in the mountains.” An English patrol, which detail he did not share. “Those fellows were part mountain goat. They went up this track and down that defile, and I was supposed to follow without letting on I was in the area.”

  Brenna paused with the scone two inches from her mouth. “Because they would have captured you?”

  They would have shoved him off the bloody mountainside and told him to give their regards to Old Scratch.

  “Something like that.” He possessed himself of her hand, helped himself to a bite of her scone, and resumed his tale rather than laugh at the consternation on her face.

  “I eventually figured out that the way to execute my assignment was to get above them. You shouldn’t waste good food, Brenna.”

  He saw the temptation to smile flirt with the corners of her mouth, and saw her battle it aside as she took a bite of scone.

  “So when darkness fell, I began to climb. Gets cold in the mountains at night. Colder.”

  Brenna paused in her chewing. “Would you like some tea?”

  “Please. So there I was, clinging to the side of some damned French mountain, or possibly Spanish—there being little distinction when a fellow’s teeth are chattering and he has to piss—darkness falling, and me waiting for the moon to rise. Then the clouds came in. Sound can travel in odd ways in terrain like that, so I could hear the patrol below me, hear them laughing about the idiot thundering along behind them, smell the meat cooking over their campfire.”

  Brenna stirred cream and honey into his tea and passed him the mug.

  “It was a long night?”

  “It was an interminable night, and that was before it began to sleet.”

  He took a sip of pure heaven, the
kind of heaven that had both tormented and comforted his memory on that mountainside.

  “Is that how you feel now, Michael? As if you’re clinging to a mountainside in hostile territory, bitter weather coming in, night coming on, and the enemy laughing at you from behind their loaded guns?”

  He passed her the mug of tea and took the last bite of her scone.

  “I meant no disrespect to you when I complimented the kitchen staff, Brenna.”

  She did not give his mug back, but cradled it in her hands.

  “I anticipate criticism. It’s freely handed about here, for decisions made, not made, made too late, made too soon. I did not know what you’d want for breakfast, where you’d want breakfast, and a wife should know these things. I forgot to ask, and then you were asleep.”

  Cold, dark mountainsides were apparently in ample supply in the Scottish Highlands, and Michael dared not belittle her concerns. An angry cook or a vindictive laundress could cause much suffering among the objects of her ire, regardless of pesky male nonsense like a war to be waged.

  “For breakfast, I would like my wife’s company. I care little about what’s served, provided she shares it with me, but hot tea and fresh scones will never go amiss with me.”

  Brenna took a sip from the mug and held it out to him, then busied herself slicing, buttering, and drizzling honey on a second scone. She put half on her plate, half on his, and passed it to him.

  The day gained a measure of hope.

  Michael had found a ledge on their marital mountainside. A small, narrow ledge, but one they could share.

  ***

  Brenna fetched her husband’s boots rather than linger over the last cup of morning tea in hopes he’d tell her another story.

  “You have your da’s way with a tale,” she said, passing him the mug of tea and taking the tray to the corridor. “I could listen to that man spin a yarn time after time, the same story, the same ending, and yet, I hung on his every word. Winters grew longer when he passed away.”

  Michael unrolled his shaving kit on the windowsill and set up his folding mirror. “Angus has some of the same ability, particularly when the whisky’s on hand.”