Eleven #3
Reinforcements arrived a heartbeat too late from St. Clair. “I’ve a notion to stretch my legs, and a ramble to the village would suit—if my lady is up to the exertion?”
Brenna rose so quickly Michael barely stopped her chair from toppling. “We’ll take the carriage.”
For a ramble down the hill?
St. Clair’s lady was on her feet as well. “I’ll need to change my shoes. Sebastian, Michael, if you’ll excuse us?”
The ladies departed, though neither had finished her meal.
“What was that about?” St. Clair asked, helping himself to a chicken leg from his wife’s uneaten portion.
Michael scraped the last bite of mashed potatoes from Brenna’s plate. She had Cook flavor them with butter, cheese, and chives, an improvement over the army’s version of the same offering.
“Probably consulting each other on the preferred color of hair ribbon.” Though all Brenna’s ribbons were green, and Michael had never noticed what color Baroness St. Clair preferred.
When the ladies assembled on the front steps, Brenna pulled Michael over to the climbing trellis of pink roses. “This will be a short outing, Husband.”
“You are not pleased with the prospect of spending some coin on yourself?”
She gave him the sort of look that in an instant conveyed both incredulity and expletives.
“The baroness is in a delicate condition, ye daft mon. She canna be haring all over the shire at her fellow’s whim.”
Milly St. Clair had been dragged the length of the realm at her husband’s whim, suggesting Brenna’s anxiety was ill-placed.
“I want to spoil you a bit,” Michael said, plucking her a rose and getting stuck in the thumb with a thorn for his troubles. “I want to show you off and assure the world we’re in charity with each other.” Because they were—in charity with each other.
He was almost sure of it.
And he wanted to buy her a hair ribbon that wasn’t green, but he passed her the rose and kept that silliness to himself.
“What am I to do with you?” Brenna said, sniffing at the rose.
“Does that mean you love me too?”
She smacked him across the cheek with the little rose, but smiled as she did, and then climbed into the waiting coach without allowing him to assist her.
The ladies bought hair ribbons, they bought muffins, and they each dropped a coin in the poor box when Michael suggested they sit for a moment in the churchyard to take advantage of the shade.
The day was the sort of summer day Michael enjoyed most—warm in the sun but almost cold in the shade—and yet, the outing was not going according to plan.
The baker had not added that free, thirteenth muffin intended to curry a customer’s favor.
The apothecary’s thumb had hovered a quarter-inch above the scale when he’d weighed out the ladies’ peppermint tea.
Michael’s raised eyebrow had kept that thumb from adding a larcenous bit of weight to the scale.
“Let’s have that ale,” St. Clair said, rising from his bench and offering his hand to the baroness.
The doting looked good on a man who was a caretaker at heart. When Michael offered Brenna his escort, she put her hand on his arm gingerly, like a debutante at her first ball.
Perhaps they needed more practice with the business of procuring fripperies, because the visit to the village felt off.
“Why do you buy only green ribbons for your hair?” Michael asked as they ambled toward the tavern. “The truth, Brenna, or I will kiss you right here in the churchyard.”
His threat provoked a snort. “That churchyard has seen more souls made than saved, according to Goodie MacCray. I’m your wife, perhaps I’ll kiss you.”
He kissed her cheek without breaking stride, and the outing became cheerier.
“I thought you liked green ribbons in my hair,” Brenna said quietly, as if St. Clair, who was nigh plastered to the baroness’s side, might have been eavesdropping on this great confidence.
For it was a great confidence.
“I like your hair in a green ribbon. I also like it unbound. I especially like it in complete disarray and spilling down your back while I love you.”
“Hush.” She bussed his cheek before he could kiss her again, and that would have put Michael in charity with the entire world, except the tavern went quiet as he ushered his lady and their guests to the snug.
“Let’s try this summer ale you’ve boasted about,” St. Clair said, assisting his wife to the bench along the wall. St. Clair scooted in beside the baroness, and for all the bonhomie in his words, his eyes were hard.
Whatever was amiss, St. Clair had picked up on it too.
“I’ll place our order at the bar,” Michael said. “Ladies, if you’ll excuse me?”
As Michael wended his way between tables, he assured himself that an English peer was not likely to meet with a warm welcome in the wilds of Aberdeenshire.
The ’45 was as close in memory as Davey MacCray’s most recent ballad, and in Michael’s childhood, he’d known old men who’d claimed to recall the battle in all its tragic, gory detail.
While every family in Scotland could recall the hardships and butchery following Culloden.
“Two pints of summer ale, and two ladies’ pints,” Michael told the barkeeper.
No polite banter followed, no small talk about the weather. When Michael left coins on the polished oak surface of the bar, the barkeeper hesitated a moment before scooping them into a pocket.
“My thanks,” Michael said, and because he took a moment to thread his fingers through the handles of four mugs, Michael overheard Dora Hennessey’s muttered aside to one of the Landon sisters.
“Had to bring her fancy coach down the hill, didn’t she? Had to throw her coin around on frivolities and go strutting about with her English friends.”
He tarried, as if his hands were too clumsy to manage four mugs, but it was his mind that felt clumsy.
The parsimony of the baker and the apothecary, the odd looks at the lending library, the absence of greetings from anybody passing by the churchyard—this rudeness was not a function of prejudice against the English in general, but rather, was animosity directed solely against Brenna.
His dear and beloved Brenna, whom he’d left behind when he went off to war.
Michael marched over to the biddies hunched over their tea along the far wall, like a pair of broody hens unwilling to leave their nesting boxes.
“Ladies, Brenna thought you might enjoy a summer ale. She’s ever so considerate, is our Brenna. For example, she insisted the coach be brought out for Lady St. Clair’s use, knowing how limited a woman’s energy can be when she’s traveled far in a certain condition.”
He thunked the two smaller mugs down on the table, when he’d rather have upended them and smashed the crockery.
“Th-thank you, Laird,” the Landon besom managed.
“Thank my wife.”
Michael stomped off, growled an order for two more lady’s pints to the barkeeper, and rejoined his party in the snug.
When he saw the ladies across the room were sending him wary looks, he kissed his wife’s cheek and saluted with his mug.