The Laird Read online

  He strode off, the tassels on his sporran bouncing against his thick thighs, while Brenna shook droplets of water off the end of her finger.

  “Does my uncle often cross swords with you?”

  She wiped her finger on her plaid. “He does not, not now. He leaves the castle to me. I’m sure your arrival is the only thing that tempted him past the door. What are you hungry for?”

  He was hungry for her smiles. A soldier home from war had a right to be hungry for his wife’s smiles.

  “Anything will do, though I’ve a longing for a decent scone. The English can’t get them right, you know, and they skimp with the butter and must dab everything with their infernal jams, when what’s wanted is some heather honey.”

  Compared to the little curve of her lips he’d seen earlier, this smile was riveting. Brenna had grown into a lovely woman, but when she aimed that smile at Michael, he had the first inkling she might be a lovable woman too. Her smile held warmth and welcome, maybe even a touch of approval.

  “A batch of scones has just come out of the oven, Michael Brodie. If we hurry, you can get your share before the cousins come raiding.”

  He followed her into the depths of the house, watching her skirts twitch, and entertaining naughty, husbandly thoughts.

  Until he recalled that the blue bedroom where Brenna was sending his baggage was a guest chamber, across a cold, drafty hallway and several doors down from the laird’s apartments.

  ***

  He was Michael, and he was not, this Viking come calling. His table manners were still fastidious—some might say elegant—without being pernickety, his eyes were the same shade of green, and he still bore a light scent of vetiver… And yet he was not the man she’d married.

  Brenna buttered him another scone—his third—and set it on his plate. “I have tried without success to hate you, you know.”

  He paused, a bite of roast grouse speared on his fork. “To what do you attribute your failure?”

  Good of him, not to scold her for raising the topic when he’d been home less than an hour. “I used to like you.” She had not meant to sound so wistful.

  His smile was the same as her many memories of it, tipping up at the right side of his mouth first, and revealing a dimple in his right cheek. “One hopes you married a fellow you liked.”

  She would have married nearly anybody who’d offered. “You used to tease me, but you were never mean about it.”

  He’d also kept his hands to himself—hands that didn’t sport dirty fingernails, no matter how hungry he’d been when he came to the table.

  He offered her the scone she’d just buttered. “You’ve been watching me eat for nigh half an hour, my lady, and the food is ambrosial. Please have at least a nibble.”

  Brenna accepted the scone, tore off a bite with her fingers, and set the rest back on his plate. Before she took a bite, she tried to steer the discussion in the direction it needed to go. “I wondered if you regretted our marriage.”

  “Never.”

  She popped the bite of sweet into her mouth, mostly to give herself time to digest his answer, for it had been as swift and certain as a bolt from a crossbow. “Then why did you leave me a maid, Michael?”

  “So I would not instead leave you a mother.” He spoke gently and held out another bite of scone to her, his fingers glistening with butter and honey.

  His green eyes used to be full of laughter and confidence, and now they held shadows. He wasn’t lying, but neither was he being entirely honest. Brenna took the food from his hand, realizing she was hungry too, and dinner still some hours away.

  “We eat late this time of year. The days are so long, and the nights so short.”

  He went back to cleaning his plate, suggesting he was prudent as well as hungry. “Do I have time for a bath before the meal?”

  “You do.” Brenna dispatched her bite of scone, licked her fingers, and caught her husband watching. “I’ll order you a bath.”

  She scooted her chair back, and Michael was on his feet with a speed that astonished.

  “You needn’t observe the parlor courtesies with me, Michael. I’ve been doing without somebody to hold my chair for years.” She moved away, she did not scurry.

  “When you remind me of that, you don’t mean it as a scold, but I hear it was such. Will you assist at my bath? One anticipates a wife might perform that service for her husband.”

  He was reminding her that their separation had not been entirely easy for him either, drat the man.

  “I’m not scolding. I’m…” She was hungry and tired, and not a little resentful of her husband now that he had returned—though she’d also resented his absence. Part of her wanted to assist at that bath, to touch him and make sure he was real. Another part of her nearly hated him.

  Nearly.

  “I did not wake up this morning anticipating that my husband might come home today. I got out of the habit of wishing for that, and now here you are, and what’s to be done with you?”

  What’s to be done with us?

  In some fashion understood only by soldiers who’d seen years of death, did he nearly hate her and all who’d spent those same years at peace?

  He slid her chair back to its place at the table. “We will talk about what’s to be done, but first I’ll wash the dust of the road from my carcass, have a wee tot with Angus, and then a ramble around the castle. My thanks for the food. It’s the best I’ve had since leaving home.”

  He seemed sincere, but that was the problem with men—they could so easily seem sincere. Or maybe, and this was an old conundrum, the problem was Brenna’s discernment.

  She took herself off to the kitchens, both to relay the laird’s compliments and to arrange his bath. Under the circumstances, Angus might have assisted at his nephew’s bath, but Brenna couldn’t stomach such a notion.

  Angus hadn’t even used the front door to come into the castle, but had let himself in through the kitchens, as if he still lived here or was perhaps anticipating living here again.

  Which he might do, over Brenna’s dead body.

  Brenna was Michael’s wife, and Michael had asked her to assist him at his bath. She was prepared to meet that challenge until she found the tub, not in the blue bedroom, but in the laird’s very bedchamber.

  The presumption of it, that he’d countermand her orders, added more than a dollop of rage to her near-hatred.

  “You’ve changed things in here too,” Michael said as the maids dumped the last of the water into the tub, all the while stealing glances at the prodigal laird. “My wife likes our home light and cheery. This is fortunate, because I do too.”

  Did he expect a light and cheery marriage? With her?

  “Give me your boots, sir. Hugh’s eldest does a wonderful job with them. Have you a shaving kit that I can fetch from among your things?”

  He settled into the rocking chair where Brenna preferred to do her embroidery at the end of the day. The chair was old and quite heavy—like much about the castle—and yet it creaked under Michael’s weight.

  “I shaved this morning. Do I still have a kilt somewhere on the premises? I have a dress kilt among my things. I assume I’ll wear that tomorrow when we review the staff.”

  A dusty boot came off, revealing a stocking-clad, muscular calf and a big right foot.

  Brenna pretended to test the temperature of the water, which was wonderfully hot. “You haven’t developed a taste for southern attire?”

  “I’ve had a bellyful of southern everything. I’ve missed home, missed it terribly.” The second boot came off, and he held them out to her.

  He hadn’t missed her terribly, and while that ought to be a relief, it also rankled. Exceedingly.

  Brenna took his boots and found wee Lachlan waiting for them outside the door, which denied her the excuse of taking the boots all the way down to the kitchen.

  “Thank you, Lachlan, and mind you do a good job. Fetch me one of your da’s work kilts and a clean shirt from the lau
ndry, and leave them in the sitting room before you start on the boots.”

  The boy scampered off, his grin revealing two missing front teeth. Behind her, Brenna heard her husband rising from the rocking chair.

  “You will be happy to know you’re a baroness,” he said, unbuttoning his waistcoat. “Or you will be shortly. I was hoping to escape with a mere knighthood, or a baronetcy, but the Regent gets sentimental about his soldiers.”

  “I’m a baroness?” If he’d told her she was with child, she could not have been more surprised. “You’re to be given a title?”

  He draped the waistcoat over the shoulders of the rocker, where it looked both odd and cozily appropriate. “When you heard I’d gone over to the enemy, I was in fact on the King’s business, or so my superior officer would have it. Would you help me with this knot?”

  Brenna crossed the room and stood before him as he raised his chin. “Conducting the King’s business in Toulouse could not have been very safe, Michael Brodie.” She loosened the knot, which he had indeed yanked into something entirely unfashionable.

  Staring at the breadth of his shoulders, Brenna was abruptly reminded that in addition to being her errant husband—and now a peer of the realm!—Michael Brodie was the smiling, teasing, decent man who’d married her when he might have repudiated the bargain their fathers had struck years ago.

  How many times had he cheated death in the past nine years?

  A queer feeling assaulted her knees as she studied his throat. “I would not have liked to find myself your widow.”

  Whatever emotions she was battling—anger, resentment, bewilderment, relief—any of them was a better bargain than sorrow.

  His arms as they came around her were tentative, but surprisingly welcome. “One is cheered to hear this.”

  “You sound English,” she said, pulling back but smiling to be able to insult him. “You dress English.”

  “And yet, the English could barely understand me, at first.” He passed her his wrinkled cravat, which she hung over his waistcoat. “You are not pleased about being a baroness.”

  The voluminous linen shirt he unbuttoned probably cost enough to feed a crofter and his family for months, and yet, Michael expected her to be pleased about this title business.

  “A title is another surprise, and I do not like surprises. Have you ambitions to join the Scottish delegation?”

  “No, I do not. Those poor bastards must mince about London for much of the year, pretending they have some influence with a group of lords who’ve never dug a potato or imbibed decent whisky in their fat, pampered lives. No more French for me, no more English, and I’m not entirely keen on the Irish or the Germans at present, either.”

  The shirt came off over his head, which necessitated that Brenna test the water again. It had not cooled in the least. “Your mother was Irish, sir, and the daughter of an Irish earl. A true lady.”

  And his sisters had been sent to Ireland not long after he’d left the castle.

  “As Wellington is Irish,” he said, tossing her his shirt, “though His Grace disdains mention of it. It was the duchess’s friendship with Mama that brought me to Wellington’s notice.”

  Brenna folded the shirt, an extravagance of pale fabric, meticulous seams, and tiny stitches, a shirt she might have made for him had he remained at home. A shirt he might have died wearing.

  This peculiar, domestic conversation juxtaposed with increasing displays of Michael’s bare skin had anxiety cresting up toward panic in Brenna’s belly.

  “Are you used to ladies assisting you at your bath?” Because she was surely not used to this casual disrobing he accomplished all too quickly. Maybe a soldier learned this lack of modesty, along with how to march and shoot. Michael’s chest and shoulders rippled with muscle, his arms were roped with it, and his belly… She draped the shirt ever so carefully over the chair back.

  Michael paused, his hands on his falls. “I am not used to having anybody’s assistance with a bath. For months, the only places I could bathe were ponds and streams, and to do so was to risk the loss of my clothing, if not my liberty or my life.” He undid a couple of buttons on each side of his breeches and shot her a puzzled look. “Are you shy, Brenna Maureen?”

  He’d gone a bit Scottish on her. Are ye shy?

  While she’d gone a bit red in the cheeks. “I’ve seen many a naked man, more than I’ve ever wished to.”

  She shouldn’t have said that, and not because it piqued her husband’s interest.

  “Oh, have you now?” He prowled across the room. “So if I drop these breeches you won’t be torn between the urge to shamelessly stare at the long-lost family jewels and the inclination to run from the castle in a maidenly fright?”

  In the next room, somebody opened the door, then a moment later, closed it.

  “That will be Lachlan with your clean clothes.”

  Brenna might have ducked past her husband, but he stood there, naked to the waist, his tone not quite teasing, and his mouth not quite smiling. “Brenna Maureen?”

  She’d always liked the way he said her name, musically, like an endearment. Now was an inconvenient moment to recall such a thing.

  And yet, as angry as she was with Michael, she did not want to hurt him avoidably, not even for the sake of her pride.

  “I see my cousins and the fellows from the village bathing in the loch all the time. They know good and well when Elspeth and I are on the parapets or in the solar, and those men have no modesty. Elspeth finds them vastly entertaining. She fancies Lachlan’s papa, though I doubt he’s aware of her feelings.”

  Michael peered down at her. “What does Lachlan’s mother think of a devotion to cleanliness that requires strutting and pawing in the altogether before decent women?”

  “Annie’s been gone five years, Michael.” Brenna moved off to the wardrobe, where she stored her soaps and flannels. She rummaged longer than necessary, trying to locate her emotional balance and failing.

  “Would you mind fetching my clean clothes?” Michael asked. “You’ll have to make me a list of who’s left us, who’s been born or wed. I ought to know these things before I start on my tenant calls.”

  He sounded neither resigned nor resentful, but perhaps resolute. Brenna left the room, starting that list in her head, for many families had departed for the New World, and in nine years, any family seat would see its share of deaths—also a few births. When she returned to the bedroom, Michael was ensconced in the tub and busily lathering his chest.

  Which was a kindness on his part, truly it was.

  Two

  If Brenna had strayed during the years of Michael’s absence, she hadn’t wandered very far or very often. Judging from her excessive modesty, she’d done her frolicking in the dark of night under several blankets and without a single candle lit.

  Which in one sense was a pity—virgins and their near equivalent were rumored to be a howling lot of work—and in another was a sweet, sweet relief.

  “I think I’ll shave after all,” Michael said when he’d rendered himself cleaner than he’d been in days. “Perhaps you’d retrieve my kit for me?”

  His wife left the room as if a squad of dragoons were galloping down on her, which allowed Michael time to climb out of the tub, towel off, and pin on the plain, dark work kilt. The only assistance he’d asked of his wife was to rinse his hair when he’d made use of her soaps, and even this had provoked blushes from her.

  And silence. Brenna had been a quiet girl; she was a silent woman.

  “Thank you,” Michael said, taking his kit from her and moving to the window. Castle Brodie was in truth an Elizabethan manor with a stone keep anchoring its central wing, but in deference to Highland winters, the walls were thick throughout.

  Michael unrolled grooming scissors, a razor, comb, whetstone, and shaving brush, the last of which he swished in the tub and lathered up using Brenna’s soap.

  “You scent the soap with heather and what else?” he asked, because small talk
seemed the safest undertaking with a wife who had reason enough to hate him.

  “Lavender, a bit of rosemary, a drop of vetiver. I use what’s on hand, and what’s in season. The rose oil I save to make gifts.”

  Michael wet the razor and lifted his chin. “What time should we muster the castle staff tomorrow? They’re impatient to inspect me, I’m sure.”

  In the mirror, he saw that his wife had stopped tidying up in the vicinity of the tub—or stopped pretending to tidy up. He’d been careful not to splash a single drop on her floors. She instead watched him as he scraped whiskers off his throat.

  “We’ll get that out of the way early. There’s work to do, and the weather should be fair.”

  Early by Highland summer standards was not a sanguine thought for a man who’d traveled hundreds of miles on horseback. “Early it is. Is auld Maudie still keeping house for us?”

  “She is.”

  “And does Dabnich mind the tenants and farms?”

  Brenna’s expression gave away nothing, which piqued Michael’s curiosity.

  “Angus has taken on those responsibilities. Dabnich’s boys moved to Boston, and he and the missus followed.”

  Michael considered this while tending to his upper lip. “Would you mind if I grew a beard?” He hated beards. They itched and made eating a fussier undertaking. He was becoming none too keen on conversation with his wife either.

  “You must do as you please.”

  “Have you time to trim my hair then?”

  Because he was determined that she not spend their entire marriage across a room from him, and even as a very young lady, Brenna had not easily abided untidiness.

  “I like your hair.”

  He nicked himself on the jaw. “You like my hair?”

  She opened the wardrobe to put away her scents and soaps. “Aye. There’s more red in it now. Two red-haired people usually have red-haired children.”

  Because she might turn and see his face in the mirror, Michael did not smile, but she’d recalled the color of his hair when he’d departed years ago, and she contemplated procreation with him.