Three #2
“Because you bear the scent of flowers, because your unbound hair makes my hands itch, and because it’s early morning on a beautiful day. I don’t have to kill anybody today, and I don’t have to prevent anybody from being killed.”
Such was a soldier’s definition of a beautiful day.
Brenna closed her eyes rather than look upon his smile. “Kiss me then.”
A wife expected to endure her husband’s kisses—at least—and he couldn’t tarry at it too long, because he was soon to be out in the bailey, greeting his staff.
“Such bravery,” Michael said, and Brenna heard a smile in his voice. His arms came around her, slowly, not a pillaging embrace but more of a stealthy reconnaissance. She did not—could not—relax.
“You might offer your husband a hug of a morning.”
He was still smiling, but a feeling other than patient resignation stole up from nowhere and wrapped Brenna more tightly than her husband’s arms. She had seen plenty of flirtation and carrying on in the great hall and in the tavern in the village.
When Lachlan’s mother had been alive, she’d been in her husband’s arms frequently, holding his hand, touching his hair or his sleeve.
Even Davey MacCray’s wife sat in his lap, kissed his cheek, and carried on with him when he wasn’t too drunk.
While Brenna understood none of it.
“You put your arms around me,” Michael whispered. “You lean on me, and you know I rejoice to take your weight against me, because the feel of you in my arms alone gives me pleasure.”
He was instructing her in the basics of marital affection, and Brenna was grateful for his guidance. Pathetically grateful. She looped her arms around his trim waist and swallowed past a lump in her throat.
“Lean, Brenna Maureen. Lean on your husband.”
His arms were around her loosely. She could whirl away and grab her hairbrush; she could scold him for keeping her from her appointed tasks. He wanted more from her than a simple hug. He wanted trust, courage, good faith, and hope.
Michael’s hand stroked over Brenna’s unbound hair, a patient, soothing caress that landed like the blow of a claymore on her heart.
“Michael, I don’t know—”
His hand caressed her again, smoothing down her hair, gently, slowly. Then again.
She leaned.
Something was amiss with the Baroness Strathdee.
Michael had come to this conclusion as he, Angus, and the baroness had worked their way down the line of maids, footmen, laundresses, gardeners, and other retainers standing at attention in the morning sunshine.
Brenna knew each of the thirty-some souls by name, but had limited her participation in the ritual to the occasional terse comment.
“Jeannie Fraser, make your curtsy. Thomas Brodie, son of Ella and Daniel Brodie, make your bow to your laird.”
And when the inspection was complete, Brenna had excused herself with unceremonious speed.
“I am puzzled by something,” Michael said as Angus ambled with him toward the stables a short while later.
“Life is a puzzling proposition most of the time. Whisky helps. Ale is seldom a bad idea. A good night’s rest can have a fine effect on a man’s outlook.”
He peered over at Michael, as if inspecting him for evidence of that last.
“Why do we have so many working at the castle, if Brenna lives there alone?”
“It’s a big place, the castle, and your mother was the one who trained Brenna how to run it. The ladies have their standards, and a prudent man doesn’t interfere if he can help it.”
“I’m not a prudent man, I’m the laird. You tell me we’re barely scraping by, and my wife has nigh three dozen people to do her bidding.” And yet, Michael would not on his least charitable day have accused Brenna of idleness.
Neither, apparently, would Angus.
“You ride a fine beast,” Angus remarked as they walked into the long stone barn. “Is he English?”
“German,” Michael said, pausing outside Devil’s stall. “Found him at Tattersall’s, though he was said to be too crazy to ride.”
“He doesn’t look crazy, but then, the worst of ’em seldom do. Like old Davey MacCray. Sweet as the day is long until he gets to brooding.”
“I’ll take Boru out,” Michael said to a groom. “It’s Patrick, isn’t it?”
“Pat will do, Laird.”
The boy had the lanky grace of the born horseman, and the red hair common to plenty of Brodies. He soon brought out a rangy gray wearing Michael’s saddle, and a glossy black gelding as well.
“Who’s this?” Michael asked, letting the black sniff his glove.
“Campbell,” Angus said. “So when I put the crop and spurs to him, I’m striking a blow for the clans.”
Boru was not as elegant as Campbell, but several inches taller, and more heavily boned. “This was my father’s favorite mount?”
“Aye.” Angus swung up. “Bastard will jump anything he’s faced with, including things he shouldn’t. Where are we off to?”
“Let’s ride the banks of the Dee.”
“You don’t want to start on your tenant calls? They’ll be expecting you.”
Michael climbed aboard the gray and gathered up his reins. He should call on his tenants, all three dozen of them. He really should.
“Give the women a day to sweep their hearths and bathe the children. After nearly ten years, another day won’t matter much.”
Angus looked like he wanted to argue, but instead delivered a stout whack to Campbell’s quarters and cantered out of the stable yard.
When Michael returned two hours later, he’d satisfied himself that Brenna was riding a safe, sane, and even trustworthy mount, and he’d satisfied himself as well that the River Dee still sounded beautiful on a summer morning, and still reflected sunlight more brightly than any jewel.
“How many tenants did my father have?” Michael asked as he and Angus handed their horses off to young Patrick.
“Too many,” Angus said, slapping his crop against his boot.
“When snow is a possibility any month of the year, the land isn’t intended to support huge tribes of people.
The English have grasped this concept more clearly than we do ourselves.
The hardier breeds of sheep are the answer, though some still debate it. ”
Memories abruptly punctuated the soft morning air, of Michael’s father roaring at Angus on this same topic.
“We seem to have plenty of sheep.”
If the sheep, one of God’s least intelligent creatures, could eke out a living in the Highlands, then a stout Scotsman with his wife and family would be even better suited to the challenge—or so the old laird had bellowed.
“We could have more,” Angus said as they crossed the bailey. “But that discussion can keep for another day. I delighted to see you in proper attire this morning, lad. The neighbors would probably find it a fine sight too.”
Two years in London refined certain instincts that all the battlefields in the world could not.
“Are you suggesting we hold a ceilidh in honor of my arrival?”
Angus turned a guileless smile on his nephew.
“A party, ye say? A celebration? With fine food and drink, and dancing into the night? Everybody sporting about in their plaids? The children hiding under the tables, and the pipers drinking like lords? Now why would I go and suggest such a lot of bother as that?”
He tromped off, swinging his crop as if he were conducting an orchestra, whistling some tune designed to get a man’s toes tapping.
Even the army had understood the need for an occasional celebration, though Michael wasn’t sure what Brenna would make of the notion. He found her in the solar, a room his mother had tacitly declared the province of the ladies.
“Greetings, Wife. What mischief are you up to on this bonny day?”
“Ledgers,” she said, not rising. She’d changed out of her finery and was once again in a high-waisted smock, the hunting-plaid shawl around her shoulders. “Have you any idea when the rest of your baggage will arrive?”
“Any day.” Michael advanced into the room, which he’d neglected on his ramblings yesterday. In an otherwise dark, solid edifice, this room was light and airy, its ceiling a good ten feet, its windows plentiful.
The air bore the scent of lavender and roses, and the walls held framed memories. “We were handsome children.”
He studied a painting done of him with Brenna and two of his sisters, Bridget and wee Erin. “I’d forgotten how hard it was to sit still for this. You girls made it look easy.”
Brenna set aside her quill pen.
“I loved to hear your mother reading. She could have read sermons to us instead of those old fairy tales, and I would have held still by the hour. Your da once told me he’d fallen in love with her brogue.”
Because Brenna sat at an escritoire, Michael could not appropriate a place beside her, so he peered over her shoulder.
“You’ve a tidy hand. What are all these figures?”
“Expenses.”
Something in her manner suggested the topic was sensitive, and yet, a man needed to understand the finances of his own household.
“Can you explain them to me?”
“Of course.”
“I meant now. We could take this ledger and a picnic, find a shady spot by the river, and catch a nap.” The plan struck him as a brilliant combination of work, play—and wooing.
“Or you could pull up a chair. When I’m done with the ledgers, Cook wants menus from me, because plain fare will not do now that his lordship is home.
I’d like to take your measurements too, and cut out some kilts for you, though the ladies from the village are happy to help stitch them up.
I should also write to your sister Bridget and let her know that you’ve arrived safely, because I doubt you’ll think to do it, and somebody needs to take a basket to Goodie MacCray, because this time, I don’t think old Davey’s bellyache is a simple matter of too much drink. ”
She might as well have laid into him with Angus’s riding crop, so acutely did guilt assail him—also resentment.
“You have to do all that today?”
“I was planning on doing it before luncheon.”