Two #4
“Do you think she’d believe me, if I told her I hadn’t strayed either?”
The horse moved off in search of more clover, while Michael got to his feet, took a few moments to get his bearings, and then headed in to spend the night beside his wife.
To whom he had been faithful, and of whom he was still—to his surprise, pleasure, and relief—protective.
Sometime after Brenna had fallen exhausted into her bed, she felt the mattress dip and shift. A pleasant whiff of vetiver, whisky—and meadow grass?—came to her as her husband arranged himself two feet to her left.
The next sound was harder to decipher, but she managed—the soles of two big male feet rubbing together, the bedtime equivalent of shaking the dust of the day from one’s feet, a small safeguard in the direction of keeping the sheets clean if conducted with those feet hanging over the side of the bed.
Michael punched his pillows next, several stout blows that would have knocked wayward notions from grown men.
“Are you trying to wake me up, Husband?”
The punching stopped, and she felt him flop down onto the mattress—and heard the put-upon male sigh with which he tucked himself in.
“You did not lock the door, Brenna. My things are in this room.”
So was his wife.
“Neither one of us wants talk.” The bed was huge, and they weren’t touching, but Brenna could feel her husband thinking.
“I did not want you to conclude I was sneaking up on you.”
“You’re hard to miss when encountered in a bed, Michael. Go to sleep. Morning comes quickly.” And yet, she was pleased the pillows had taken a few warning shots on her behalf.
“You want time.”
“I want a good night’s sleep.” Though she should have anticipated that, like any man, Michael would want to beat a topic to death once broached. He could not ponder a discussion and undertake it in manageable portions; he must have done with it, regardless of the hour.
“I want time too, Brenna Maureen.”
Brenna rolled to her side, wishing she’d left a candle burning, despite the extravagance. “Time for what?”
“I was a good soldier, once I saw what was expected of me. It’s part of the reason I went to France.
I was to look after my men, the same as a laird looks after his people.
In France, it was much the same, though I was in a garrison with soldiers of a different nationality.
We looked after one another, most of the time, and when a man lapsed in that duty, he suffered consequences. ”
What was he saying, and why must he say it to her in pitch darkness?
“If I were planning to run off, Michael Brodie, I would have scarpered long since. Many and many a family has left the Highlands, including entire branches of clan MacLogan. I could easily have gone with them.” Though her own clansmen had hardly recalled where they’d stashed her, once she’d come to live at Castle Brodie.
A considering pause ensued, and then Brenna felt a single, callused finger trace down the side of her jaw.
“You might have left, but you stayed. I’m glad you stayed.”
The quality of the darkness changed, sheltering fragile dignity rather than frustrated curiosity. Because Michael had made a concession, Brenna offered him one of her own.
“You need not have come home at all. I know this. You’re a baron, or a lord of Parliament, or some such. You could have set up housekeeping in London, and you could easily have set me aside.”
He still could.
“Such a thought never occurred to me. This is my home, you are my wife, but I’m asking you to give us time, to not dismiss our marriage out of hand because we’re getting a late start on being husband and wife.”
Asking.
All day long, Brenna answered questions: What to serve for dinner, when to schedule a wedding or christening, what to put in a basket for a family suffering illness, and how to manage old Davey MacCray when he was once again three days gone with drink.
Those questions were easy, and this one was too.
I’m also glad I stayed, Michael. I’ve learned to be patient. Maybe you can learn to be patient with me, as well.”
The mattress shifted again, bobbing Brenna about as if she were a small craft on a stormy loch. She felt Michael come near, felt the shocking warmth of his bare chest against her arm, and then his lips brushing against her forehead.
Before she could flinch or bat him away, he subsided.
“Good night, then, Wife. Though I’m warning you, a man learns a deal of patience in the army.”
He rolled over, giving her his back. She’d seen his bare back earlier in the day, when he bathed, and she knew the skin over his shoulder blades would be smooth, the muscles along his spine lean and graceful.
Brenna rolled over too, so they were back to back, and any stray temptation to touch him less likely to overtake her good sense. “Good night, Husband.”
Why had he kissed her, and why hadn’t she panicked? “Michael?”
“Hmm?”
“I feel safer with you here.”
He said nothing, did not ask if she meant safer with him back home, safer with him in the castle, or safer with him in the same bed.
He also did not ask what or who she felt safer from.