Ten #3
The man at her back went still, and the breeze off the window had gone from refreshing to chilly. “Long before I married you, you were but a child.”
“Girls grow up early in the Highlands. He hasn’t dwelled at Castle Brodie for years. I’m happily married now, and we’ve guests waiting.”
Only an invasion by this particular Englishman could have served to change the subject. Michael’s arms dropped away.
“We do, but we’ll revisit this topic, Brenna Maureen.”
He disappeared behind the privacy screen, while Brenna stole a quick cup of tea for herself and made a second one to share with her husband. In a very short time, he was dressed and ready to descend to the breakfast parlor, while Brenna…
Dithered.
“Leave the damned bed for the maids to make,” Michael said. “Shall I brush out your hair for you?”
“The maids do not come into this room, the footmen either,” Brenna said, taking her turn behind the privacy screen. “I allow them into the sitting room, and they leave the coal and wood, the washing water, and the trays there.”
As Brenna patted her face dry with a towel Michael had already used—vetiver was a lovely scent in the morning—her husband watched her over the top of the privacy screen.
“You’re not a chambermaid, that you should be making beds and replacing candles.”
“I like my privacy,” she said, untangling her braid. “Sometimes you are entirely too tall, Michael Brodie.”
He moved off, and Brenna heard the wardrobe opening. “You are particularly pretty in green, and today should be nearly warm. Will this cotton frock do? And this is a lovely cashmere shawl.”
Brenna dealt with her hair, wondering why Michael had to be so eager to leave their bed and have breakfast with his Englishman. She allowed her husband to do up her hooks, her resentment mounting when he didn’t even bother to tease her with a kiss to her nape.
“You look quite fetching,” he pronounced as Brenna slipped into her shoes. Even his compliment irritated her.
“I care not for any man’s estimation of my appearance, save yours. Your English friends are welcome, Michael, but their timing is horrid.”
His smile was the sort of flirtation only a husband could turn on his wife. “Anticipation is a pleasure unto itself, my love. The sun shines at midday and afternoon as well as morning, you know.” He turned to survey himself in the mirror. “Will I do?”
He smoothed his fingers over his hair, putting Brenna in mind of the bachelors who stood milling about the punch bowl at the infrequent local gatherings.
Brenna’s husband was not eager to meet these guests; he was nervous of them. The knowledge came from the slight worry in his eyes, the brevity of his smile, the way he tugged at his handsome dark green paisley waistcoat.
“You’ll do wonderfully,” Brenna said, kissing his cheek. “My plaid shawl will serve for this occasion. The English are known to exalt appearances over practicalities, but we Scots are more prudent.”
She passed him her dark green hunting plaid and held still while he draped it around her shoulders.
When Michael offered her his arm at the head of the stairs, she wanted to roll her eyes, because they were putting on a display for the dratted English invaders. Instead, she took her husband’s arm and even allowed herself to lean on him, just a bit.
A commanding officer looked after his men, though Sebastian, Baron St. Clair, had long since accepted that one subordinate regarded St. Clair’s welfare his overriding concern—despite any orders to the contrary.
“Who’s the girl?” St. Clair asked his host as he and Michael Brodie—Strathdee, for God’s sake—ambled toward the stables.
“What girl?”
“The little red-haired sprite who poked her head into the breakfast parlor, hung about in the doorway waiting to be noticed, then flounced away in a snit.”
Michael came to a halt as an enormous draft horse was led by, silky feathers swirling about its enormous feet with each step.
“I didn’t see her. That would be my sister Maeve. Your baroness is in good looks.”
Sebastian might have bristled, to have his former valet, bodyguard, and factotum complimenting Milly’s appearance, but for two things. First, Milly was lovely. Any man with eyes in his head could see that, and she grew lovelier by the day.
Second, Michael Brodie offered his compliment as small talk and only small talk. Milly could have sported three hideous heads, horns, and a tail, and Michael would have noted that she was in good looks.
Such was the effect of reuniting this soldier with the wife he’d never mentioned in all the years Sebastian had known him.
“Are we to engage in a footrace, Michael?”
“Perhaps.” He marginally slowed their pace toward the stables. “I’m entitled to revenge for your sneak attack, St. Clair. ‘The note must have gone astray’? Even your dear wife wasn’t fooled. She’ll have a few words with you in private for your rudeness.”
Yes, she would have a few words with him in private. This penchant for private discussions was part of the reason her ladyship was in a nominally delicate condition.
“I was worried about you,” Sebastian said, and he managed this disclosure with a feigned casualness learned on the battlefields and perfected in discussions with his wife. “You repair to the North, and I get not so much as a note confirming your safe arrival. Rude of you, some might say.”
“I’ve been preoccupied.”
Many a man had enjoyed similar preoccupation; few were so fortunate as to enjoy it with their very own wife.
They gained the stables, where the early morning activity of mucking, feeding, haying, and scrubbing water buckets had given way to the more placid tasks of bringing in the stock that had pastured overnight and turning out those who’d pasture by day.
“The light is different this far north, but the smells of a stable are the same,” Sebastian remarked.
Michael stopped before the stall of a handsome, nervous bay. “You’re different too, St. Clair. Millicent agrees with you. Marriage agrees with you.”
“As it does with you.”
Michael stretched his hand out to the horse behind the bars, and the beast spared him a glance but did not leave its pile of hay.
“My wife already knows how to manage me,” he said, dropping his hand. “She grew up here from the age of eight, and had many years to study her prospective husband.”
And yet, Lord and Lady Strathdee did not appear to be a settled couple or like people long familiar with each other. “Did you ever take leave, Michael?”
“I would have used every bit of it coming and going, and other than my own home, there was nowhere I wanted to go.”
Sebastian’s specialty had been interrogation, but it took no expertise at all to see that Michael was not only preoccupied, he was worrying a problem.
“Nonetheless, you love that woman to distraction. Was it really that important that you find your way to my command, Michael? You could have taken a position at the Horse Guards, for example.”
“Patrick, mounts for his lordship and myself. We’ll ride the Dee, and we won’t need a groom.”
A stable boy moved away toward the center of the barn, where a saddle room was most likely to be found. Michael took off in the opposite direction, toward stone-fenced paddocks out behind the barn.
“I was under orders,” Michael said. “I took those orders seriously. I also had reasons to avoid my home, or I thought I did. I was an idiot.”
Had Michael not taken his orders seriously, Sebastian would likely be dead.
“Did your idiocy have to do with that lovely redhead fluttering her eyelashes at you from over her teacup?”
“When did you start mincing along like some footman showing off new livery, St. Clair? I’ve yearlings to check on, and at this rate, winter will arrive before I see them. And yes, my idiocy had everything to do with Brenna, and nothing at all.”
An oak spread over one corner of a paddock, creating shade for a bench some wise soul had built likely centuries before. The scene was restful—horses lipping grass in the lush paddocks, birds flitting about between the barn and the branches of the oak.