Six
“Come along,” Michael said, picking up the plate of shortbread with which the evening meal was to have concluded.
Brenna did not like his tone, but she would wait to tell him that until they were in the privacy of their rooms. He came around the table and held her chair for her, so she added that to the list of items they’d discuss in private.
“I don’t recall either of my sisters having a sense of self-possession to match Maeve’s,” Michael said as they climbed the stairs. “It unnerves one.”
“A girl without parents faces a choice. She can either cower away from life, wondering which loved one will be taken from her next, or she can meet life head-on.”
Michael paused on the landing, and by the flickering light of a mirrored wall sconce, Brenna caught him studying her. She plucked a bite of shortbread off the plate and marched up the steps.
“Maeve is bright,” Brenna added. “She’ll manage.” Or she wouldn’t, and there was nothing Brenna could do about it. The thought ached bitterly.
“She’s young, to be shuttled back and forth like this.”
“She’s likely the same age I was when I came to the castle.” Brenna shoved the shortbread into her mouth lest she make more irrelevant observations.
“Nearly. She will be very pretty.” His tone suggested a brother’s wary concern, rather than a stupid man’s glee that another pretty female would be larking about the realm.
Brenna waited while Michael opened the door to their sitting room. “So it’s a good thing her brother is a baron, right?” she asked.
“It’s a good thing her brother’s a big fellow with a stout right arm.
In ten years, I should also be able to dower her adequately, if we can enforce a few economies.
” He closed the door behind them and set the shortbread down.
“Would you object very strenuously if I put my arms around you right now?”
Men were a fickle lot. Brenna placed her uneaten bite of dessert back on the plate. “Not very strenuously.” Not at all, in fact.
Michael enveloped her in a simple sturdy hug. He smelled of good things—the outdoors, cedar, and clean wool—and his embrace offered the same sanctuary it sought. “We’ve had an eventful day.”
Brenna’s fingers drifted through the soft hair at his nape.
“Another eventful day, but guests are a pleasure, and your wee sister should know her only brother.”
Something about his embrace shifted, and then he drew away.
“Maeve is not a guest. Prebish had a letter for me from Bridget, all brisk and sensible. The good Lord has finally seen fit to bless my sister’s union with the probability of a child, and the baby must claim Bridget’s focus.”
He accepted that reasoning? “Balderdash. A woman can love more than one child, particularly her little sister and her own baby.”
Michael took a lit candle down from the branch on the mantel. “She can, but Bridget’s husband does not approve of Maeve’s forwardness, and isn’t about to take on the expense of tutors, governesses, a pianoforte, and the other necessities of a young lady’s upbringing.”
Brenna felt cold without her husband’s arms around her, and yet, a fire this time of year would be an extravagance. “Are we to incur those expenses?”
“We’ll find a way to manage them.”
He disappeared into the dim recesses of the bedroom. Brenna had no choice but to grab the plate of shortbread and follow him, because the discussion was not finished.
“This castle is no place for a little girl. She’ll have no playmates.”
“You managed. In a house notably devoid of girls your age, you managed just fine. Besides, Hugh’s Annie is about Maeve’s age, and there are bound to be other girls in the village Maeve can play with. This isn’t England, where the lord in his castle doesn’t associate with his own people.”
Brenna put the shortbread on the night table, when she wanted to pitch the entire plate at her husband.
“I did not manage. I endured, and I had no choice. Hugh will never let his Annie spend time under this roof.”
As if nothing were amiss, as if Brenna’s words mattered not at all, Michael unknotted his cravat and draped it over the open door to the wardrobe.
“When a man doesn’t pay his rent, he’d best not disdain the hospitality of his laird’s home.”
“What?”
He pulled his shirt over his head. “Angus says if the tenants paid timely, we’d not be short of cash. Your cousins are among the delinquent accounts.”
Brenna took his shirt from his grasp.
“They pay, Michael. What is your uncle going on about? Every family pays, though many pay in kind, and some need a little extra time.”
He sat to pull off his boots, the candlelight illuminating the powerful musculature and bones of his back. “I can’t pay taxes with blankets and bread, Brenna. Angus was very clear about that.”
Angus. Of course, Angus was clear.
She hung her husband’s shirt up, needing to turn her back on his casual nudity and on the fatigue his posture revealed.
“You’re to evict the slackers and run more sheep?”
“Brenna, please come here.”
Please. He held out a hand to her, as if in entreaty, though he’d issued an order. She put his boots in the hallway first, for show, then approached the big rocker where he sat wearing nothing but his kilt.
“Here,” he said, patting his bony knee. “I was in the middle of a rousing argument with Angus when Maeve’s coach pulled up. He tried to resume hostilities before dinner, and I am not capable of having any more differences of opinion with my family just now.”
This could not end well. Angus was Michael’s family, but Brenna was his family too. She crossed the room on dragging feet, uncertain what exactly Michael had in mind.
He rose, scooped her against his chest, and sat. “I tried to tell Angus that diversifying our sources of income is smart. If all we have are sheep, then one year some stupid blight or disease can come through and wipe them all out.”
“Or a fancier breed with finer wool can become more popular,” Brenna said, finding her husband’s lap an oddly comfortable place to be.
“The tenants work hard, they’ve been loyal when you were not here, and Angus is set in his ways.
He’ll say his way is the only way to avoid ruin, but his way is what has brought matters to the present pass. ”
More than that, she could not say, especially not when cuddled against Michael’s bare chest.
“I told Angus I will make no decisions for the present. He ranted and stomped and lectured, but I can recall him carrying on with my father in a similar vein. Angus needs a wife.”
God pity any woman foolish enough to marry Angus Brodie.
“Can we also delay a decision regarding Maeve, Michael? She may not settle in here well, and she really will be lonely.” To posit the decision as one they shared was presuming, but for the child’s own sake, Brenna could not afford to waver.
Michael’s cheek rested against Brenna’s hair. “Bridget has made a decision, and my place as head of the family is to provide for my younger sister.”
“See if she settles in,” Brenna said, unwilling to let Michael think the battle over. “A small child can be very disruptive, and she’s not yet been here a day.”
“While I’ve not yet been here a week.”
A moment of thoughtful silence passed, while Michael set the chair to rocking slowly and Brenna held a growing list of problems at bay: Maeve could not stay at Castle Brodie, taxes could not be paid in blankets and bread, and Angus could not stop bullying and annoying what few tenants remained.
And that was the least of the problems Angus Brodie could cause.
“Promise me something,” Michael said.
Another softly worded order. “I’ve already made promises to you, Michael Brodie, and I’ve kept them.”
He kissed her temple, and without bothering to warn her.
Neither did Brenna bother to object.
“I’m glad you kept your vows. If I haven’t said that previously, I’m saying it now. I want another promise, though, and I’m happy to give it back to you.”
He did not tell her he’d also kept his marriage vows, though he didn’t lie to her about it either, which was something.
“What promise?”
“When we come up here, to our private rooms, can we agree to leave our differences at the door? Can we set aside a few rooms of our castle to be free of strife and carping?”
Our castle? He’d been home less than a week, and it was our castle? She wished it could be so, but how could it be ours when it had never been hers or even his?
Though she wanted Maeve’s situation to be our decision.
“I cannot give you such a promise, Michael, for if I never take issue with you before others—and I will try very hard not to—then where are we to air our differences?”
“Shrewd,” he said. “Also a valid point, so I will make this promise instead: I will promise to listen to what you have to say, not only in these rooms, but especially in here. I will listen with an open mind.”
The words were not complicated, but their effect on Brenna was. She felt grateful, humbled, and despairing, for he’d guessed so easily that in her life, somebody to listen to her had been a critical lack.
If only he’d offered to listen to her on their wedding night nine years ago. “I will make you the same promise, Husband.”
“That will serve.” He gave her bottom a brisk pat—and when had his hand found its way to her fundament?—then rose and set her on her feet. “Let’s get you undressed, and I have another question for you.”
“You are a font of interrogation,” Brenna said, moving behind the privacy screen lest she behold him unfastening his kilt.
“I’m essentially a new husband,” he said as Brenna tugged her dress over her head. “We new husbands are curious fellows. My question is this: Have you given any more thought to how you’ll woo me?”
“Auld Angus must be nervous to have the laird underfoot at last,” Dantry MacLogan said.
The diffidence of his tone suggested Hugh was to oblige him with a reply. Neil, the quietest of the three, could be counted on to referee if the discussion became physical.