Eight #4
Perhaps Angus saw the speculation in her eyes. Saw that the adult woman was gradually weaning herself from the fears of the young girl.
“You daft woman, have you told your husband about the money you lost us all those years ago? Told him how bitterly we’ve struggled thanks to your arrogance and incompetence?
Why don’t you worry about that, instead of a little walk to the paddocks, which—must I remind you?
—are also visible from your parapets, among many other places? ”
He shook his head, his attitude not so much disgusted as disappointed, for which Brenna purely, cleanly hated him.
When he’d stomped off, kilt swinging for want of a sporran to hold it decently in place, Brenna stood for long moments, breathing her rage into submission.
Rage could be a fine thing. Rage had kept her alive when she’d been so ashamed she’d dreamed of flying off the parapets to a place where nothing hurt, and young girls didn’t have to endure behaviors they shouldn’t understand.
She’d been angry at Angus for years, angry at the old laird and his lady, and then angry at Michael too, though he, of all of them, was blameless. She would be angry a bit longer, despite Michael’s return, and despite his marvelous kisses.
As Brenna gathered her tartan shawl about her and pondered the scold she’d visit upon Maeve, Neil MacLogan emerged from the trees, silent as a cat. If he ever smiled, he’d be the handsomest of Brenna’s cousins. He wasn’t smiling now.
“Were you spying on me, Neil?”
“Was he bothering you?”
While Brenna’s animosity toward Angus was consistent and fortifying, Neil’s antipathy toward the older man was a seething, dangerous presence in the back of his eyes. The sight was far more attractive to Brenna than it should have been.
She started walking in the direction of the stables, much of her joy in the day contaminated by a few minutes in Angus’s company.
“He made a fool of me. I came down here prepared to tear a strip from him for leading Maeve astray, when all he’d done was carry her in from the foals’ pasture.” He hadn’t had to pluck the child from the castle, hadn’t had to entice her in the least. Angus was nothing if not patient and observant.
Neil fell in step beside her. “You won’t let me kill him.”
This was also true. “He doesn’t need killing, he needs watching.” Constantly, unceasingly.
“He seems to understand that.”
“Maybe he’s getting old.” People outgrew their wickedness, or were cut down by it. The gallows seldom ended a long life.
For the length of a paddock, Neil kept his silence, and it was too much to hope that he’d drift off without sharing more of his thoughts.
“Don’t tell yourself he’s getting old, Brenna.
Age won’t stop Davey MacCray from craving his liquor, and Angus is the same way, only worse.
He watches and waits, like an ugly sea beastie under his rock, until somebody lonely, invisible, and hurting wanders by or is late on their rent, and then he devours his prey. ”
Brenna had never asked what Neil had seen, what he’d heard in the village. This was as honest as he’d been with her, and it was more than honest enough.
“I won’t let this happen again, Neil. You need not warn me.”
And still, Neil prowled along at her side, big, dark, and quietly, lethally angry. Nobody built a stone wall as sturdy as Neil MacLogan did, or as quickly. Brute strength was part of it; he also had sheer, unrelenting focus too.
“I heard him threaten you, Brenna. Heard him threaten us.” Neil used the Highland version of us, us MacLogans. The sole remnants of the clan in these parts, which included Brenna, apparently, at least in Neil’s thinking.
“You’ve paid your rent, and Michael’s here now. Angus can’t throw you off the property merely because he’s peevish with me.”
Neil stopped her before they gained the barn. Inside, some unhappy horse kicked rhythmically against the wall, a usually docile beast turned violent for the sheer, bored hell of it.
“If Angus thinks he can’t come after us cousins, then he’s all the more likely to come after you, Brenna. He’ll whisper his lies into Michael’s ears, bring up the past as if it happened yesterday, discredit you and find ways to turn your husband from you. When that happens, you come to us.”
She should have appreciated such an offer—Hugh had never been as explicitly supportive—but instead, Neil’s words scared her.
“Michael is a good man, and he’s my husband.” Though if she had to choose between Michael and her cousins? Between Michael, and Lachlan or wee Annie?
Neil shocked her then, twice. First, he shocked her by smiling, a slow, sweet smile devastating in its sadness. Second, he kissed Brenna on the cheek.
“I was a good man once too, Brenna Maureen MacLogan Brodie, and you are a good woman.”
He sauntered away, into the barn, and soon the horse stopped its kicking, while Brenna remained between the paddocks, wondering how in the world she would tell her husband—before Angus did—that she’d betrayed her people to the tune of hundreds of pounds they could ill afford to lose.