“They stand for innocence.”
Well, hell. This drawing-room trivia had the tears welling again. She tossed the flower back among its kin.
“I must be—”
He took her by the arm, gently, lest she draw his cork and shout down the castle walls, because Brenna Brodie was that sensitive to a man’s mishandling of her.
“You promised me a short walk,” he said, steering her in the direction of a thriving if somewhat raggedy hedge.
She remained trenchantly silent, which lack of resistance alarmed the husband in Sebastian and appeased the interrogator. Women were not as likely to break under torture, but kindness and attentiveness could lay siege to their carefully constructed defenses, particularly when offered from an unexpected quarter.
For this lady, based on Milly’s disclosures, kindness from any quarter would be unexpected.
“Let’s sit for a moment, shall we?” Sebastian pushed open an old wooden door and led the baroness into a walled garden. She went unresisting and even allowed him to settle her on a sunny bench.
“I hate this place.” She directed her sentiments to his handkerchief, which was hopelessly wrinkled as she spread it in her lap. “I hate this garden.”
“Hating is a great effort.”
“Hating can keep one safe.”
What harm could befall a woman in a sunny, walled garden right up against the castle’s solid granite walls?
“You don’t hate your husband,” Sebastian observed, coming down beside her. “My wife says you’re besotted with each other.” Which had been a relief beyond imagining, because most of Michael’s long absence from Scotland had been on Sebastian’s behalf.
“I am besotted.” More daisies grew here, more innocence, along with pansies in a riot of cheerful colors.
“A woman usually announces such a thing with a hint of joy, a coy smile, some wonderment. What has upset you, my lady?”
She didn’t flinch at his question, wasn’t surprised by it. Her answer, however, was a surprise to Sebastian, who’d heard many unusual answers in his time in France.
“My husband loves me. He truly loves me. He defends me to my own relations when he has no proof that I’m blameless.”
When Sebastian had come to the conclusion that Milly loved him, the world had at once come right and gone spinning off its axis.
“You can’t do anything about his love for you, you know. Michael is stubborn and loyal to the bone. He might be suffering simple infatuation, though. The joy of homecoming, marital pleasures, that sort of thing?”
Michael Brodie was head over ears for his Brenna. A career prying truths from reluctant sources hadn’t been necessary for Sebastian to see that.
She swiped at her cheeks with her knuckles. “He loves me. It isn’t infatuation, it isn’t a homecoming rut, it isn’t…anything simple. I heard him giving Hugh MacLogan a verbal birching, confronting my cousin about things that happened years ago, and now my husband must campaign over old territory, and it’s all—”
Sebastian’s handkerchief suffered a mauling in the baroness’s fist.
“I learned something about your Michael when we served in France,” Sebastian said, his insides feeling rather like the handkerchief looked. “Michael is a born protector. Despite being on the wrong side of the battle lines, Michael chose to remain where fate had cast him, right by my side, even as France fell and our peril increased. Michael’s instincts are as formidable as my own when it comes to human nature. I would be quite, quite dead were it not for Michael’s tenacity.”
“Fate cast Michael into the French mountains?”
“Fate in the form of some generals, whose orders could not be denied. Nothing less would have kept him from you.” Though from the lady’s question, Sebastian concluded that Michael was the recipient of some blind faith from his wife, and blind faith was not usually given in small increments.
She held the folded handkerchief against her eyes, a small, temporary blindfold. “Michael will ruin everything with his tenacity and protectiveness. If he goes poking at hornets’ nests, all manner of horrors will result. I’ve managed here for years, made do, got by, and seen to the castle. Now…”
Now she ran out of the woods crying, and let a stranger lead her to exchanging confidences in a garden she hated.
“Now you love him, and everything is at once simple and complicated.”
Sebastian wanted to take her hand, wanted to give her some human contact to tether all of her difficult emotions, and yet, if he did, she’d probably vault over the walls after she’d laid him out flat.
“Michael is a good man,” she said, which Sebastian took for agreement with his conclusions. “A very good man.”
He could remain silent—an interrogator’s best friend was a taut, well-timed silence—but a small, solid, everyday sort of truth seemed more appropriate. “You are a good woman.”
“Michael is determined to see me thus. He’s stubborn, is Michael Brodie.”
She adored his stubbornness, for it matched her own.
“You love him,” Sebastian said again, for she wasn’t about to admit as much to him. “So what will you do? He wants your good name restored, wants you to have the respect you deserve. He’s willing to confront all and sundry on their small-mindedness to accomplish his goal.”
The lady also wielded the tactic of silence well. The garden was sheltered from breezes, but its walls could be breached by an enormous marmalade tomcat who strolled along his personal parapets, tail held high.
“Michael adores his uncle Angus,” the baroness said after a few quiet moments. “Angus is quite fond of Michael as well. Always has been.”
Foreboding prickled over Sebastian’s arms. Puzzle pieces were trying to snap into place, but he kept them on the fringes of his awareness, because the picture they’d form might result in somebody having to kill somebody else.
“Did Angus appropriate a husband’s rights in Michael’s absence?”
If so, he’d see the man quietly transported to Van Diemen’s Land, or some such sunny clime, his ballocks packed among his underlinen.
“He did not, but you are a canny fellow, Baron. I think I’d best leave you here with Preacher to enjoy the flowers and the sun.”
She rose and tucked Sebastian’s handkerchief into the pocket from which her knife had appeared. The better to give her space, Sebastian remained on the bench.
“What will you do, my lady?” And will you allow me, Milly, anybody, to aid you?
The cat leaped down onto the place the baroness had vacated beside Sebastian and nudged at Sebastian’s elbow with its head.
“I’ll have these damned walls brought down,” the lady said, striding off toward the door. “I’ll need some time to plan, and the mess will be considerable, but that won’t be my fault either. Enjoy the sunshine while it lasts, Baron.”
***
Brenna’s emotions were shifting, and like cargo broken loose in the hold of a seagoing ship, the potential for damage was great. Among the feelings careening around inside her was a determination that Maeve not fall into the trap that had ensnared Brenna.
And the way to keep Maeve safe was not only to impose reasonable discipline on the child, but also to make sure the girl knew she was valued and held dear.
“You’re quiet,” Maeve remarked as they wandered past beds of pansies under sunny midday skies.
“Pansies symbolize thoughts,” Brenna said. “I’m thinking.”
Maeve was a child, so her question was inevitable. “What are you thinking about?”
About how the castle, the grounds, and even Brenna herself felt different when Angus was sixty miles away and Neil’s responsibility. About how a little girl should be able to play safely in her own back gardens. About how another girl, abandoned by family and overlooked by kin, and even set aside by her husband, hadn’t been safe.
Though in some regard that made no sense, Brenna felt safe now.
“I’m thinking about how much I�
��d miss you if you went back to Ireland.”
Maeve’s smile was shy. “I’d miss you too. Let’s put our blanket here.”
“A fine spot.” Far finer than that damned walled garden. Brenna was already planning what she’d do with that space when those walls came down. A propagation house, maybe, or a larger conservatory. Michael might have some ideas—assuming he did not return to France or London or wherever he’d been when Brenna had needed him.
“Will you tell me a story?” Maeve asked. “Preacher likes stories too.”
The idiot cat had trailed them from the kitchen and now sat on a corner of their tartan, as if he’d lent them the blanket from his personal surplus and awaited their thanks.
“You can tell me about Ireland,” Brenna said. “I’ve never been, though I hope Michael will take us there for a visit.”
Michael, who was still somewhere in the village, wreaking havoc in the name of restoring his wife to the good graces of people whose opinion never should have mattered as much as it did.
“Why are you smiling?” Maeve asked, flopping to the blanket with a child’s abandon. “I heard you yelling yesterday. At Elspeth and Michael and Cook.”
The tone was casual, but to a little girl, the lurking question was important.
Brenna lay back beside the child, something she would not have done had Angus been on the property—damn him—unless Michael had been with them. Vigilance was that much a habit.
As was silence—another stout cable snapped in Brenna’s emotional cargo hold—though habits could be unlearned.
“Your brother was a soldier for years. A little yelling won’t bother him.” Hopefully, a lot of yelling wouldn’t bother him either.
“Bridget and Kevin yelled, and they laughed too.”
“Maybe it’s like that when you love somebody. You can yell when you need to, but you laugh too.” Because laughter was needful. Michael understood that, maybe all soldiers did.
Maeve crawled off the blanket, searching through the grass. “You love Michael?”
“Very much, though lately I forgot that.” Just as she’d forgotten the heavenly scent of a flower garden approaching its peak, and the glory of a Scottish summer sky on a sunny day.
“Let’s look for lucky clovers,” Maeve said. “How can you not know you love somebody? I love Cook. I love Lachlan, though he’s only a boy. I love Bridget and Kevin. Why do all these clovers have only three leaves?”
Maeve did not yet include her brother or Brenna on her list of people she loved, but she would, and soon.
“The three-leaved variety taste as good as the others, and for Bannock and his friends, that’s lucky enough.”
Maeve stuffed a clover in her mouth, chewed, and made a face. “I’m glad I’m not a horse.”
“So am I. I’m glad you are a little girl who has joined our household and will brighten all of our days with her presence. I’m especially looking forward to the winter holidays with a child in the house.”
Maeve shot her a bashful smile, and just like that, something snapped into place in Brenna’s heart. These were the words nobody had given her, ever, though Michael was trying to give them to her now. These were the words that might have protected her from Angus and from so much else that was painful and wrong in a small child’s life.
“Did you have whisky with your nooning?” Maeve asked, munching a white clover flower this time.
“Something like that. I’m tired of expecting everybody to turn their backs on me. You won’t run away from us, will you, Maeve? It would break my heart, and Michael’s too.”
Brenna was careful not to look at the child as she issued this challenge. If she wanted people to stop turning their backs on her—and she did, some people in particular—then she had to stop acting in a manner that invited their rejection. Michael might get the attention of the villagers and make them rethink their opinions, but it was up to Brenna to make them see.
“Prebish and I traveled forever and ever to get here,” Maeve said. “If I ran, I’d run back to Ireland, but I wouldn’t know how to get there.”
“Good. If you ran, I would be wild with worry for you, so don’t do it. Ever.”
Maeve must have liked her clover flower, for she popped another one into her mouth. “Not even when I’ve been bad?”
“You could never be so bad that we’d want you to run away,” Brenna said. “Will you eat all of Bannock’s treats?”
“Bannock isn’t allowed in the garden,” Maeve said, grinning. “He’d leave meadow muffins.”
Naughty talk, the simple, fun kind of naughty talk a child ought to enjoy. Damn Angus, though he was surely damned already, and had been for years.
“If you were planning to knock down the walled garden, Maeve, what would you do with the space when the rubble was cleared away?”
The cat curled up on a corner of the blanket, Maeve ceased searching for lucky clovers, and a game of what-if ensued—what if we planted roses? Spices? Bright red tulips?
While Brenna played a game of her own: What if my husband and I have a child? What if I can find the courage to tell him I love him too? What if his love is mine to keep?
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 privatio
ns 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.
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