Five #3
Because Brenna was not preoccupied with the bathers, she’d seen what Elspeth had not noticed. A heavy traveling coach, luggage lashed to the roof and the boot, was heading for the castle along the road from the east.
“Michael’s baggage?” Elspeth suggested.
“Maybe.”
The coach clattered over the drawbridge spanning the dry moat. Footmen and grooms came out to meet it, as did Michael and Angus.
“Is he spending more time at the castle?” Elspeth asked.
The breeze dislodged a strand of Brenna’s hair and whipped it against her mouth. “Yes. With Michael.”
The coach came to a halt, the sweat on the horses and dust on the carriage testifying to a long journey.
“Tell Angus he’s not welcome.”
“Angus is Michael’s family. I cannot tell my husband to refuse his uncle the castle. Michael would think me ridiculous.”
“You tell Angus. Tell him his every wicked deed will be laid at Michael’s feet if he doesn’t keep himself away from you and your husband.”
An older woman, plump and plain, climbed out of the coach. Michael hugged her, then Angus bowed over her hand.
“You told me, Elspeth, to listen to my husband, and I will certainly make the attempt, but what’s to say he would ever listen to me? He loves Angus, he trusts Angus, and Angus is making himself appear indispensable.”
Elspeth did not point out that all of those factors had applied between Angus and Michael’s father, too.
“You have company, Lady Strathdee. Best go welcome them.”
Brenna left, and when Elspeth resumed spying on the beach, the bathers were nowhere to be seen.
“I’m not coming out.”
An odd feeling skittered down Michael’s spine as he beheld his sisters’ old nurse standing in his very own bailey. “That is a child’s voice.”
A tired, unhappy child’s voice.
“So it is,” Prebish said, still beaming at him as if he were her long-lost son—which, in a sense, he was, or as good as. “Miss Maeve, come ye out and make a proper curtsy to your brother.”
The odd feeling curled more tightly around Michael’s vitals, despite the pleasant lilt of Prebish’s County Mayo brogue. “You brought Maeve?”
He was going to kill his sister Bridget, or the King’s mail, because either a critical letter had been lost, or Bridget hadn’t done him the courtesy of writing.
As Michael had neglected to write regularly to his own wife?
“I’m not coming out. Scotland is cold and bumpy, and all they have to eat here are scones, bannocks, and fish.”
And there was Angus, watching Michael with thinly veiled curiosity.
“Ye could haul the little blighter out by her heels. Begin as ye intend to go on, I always say. Children need to know who’s in authority.”
How would Angus, a confirmed bachelor, know what children needed?
Before Michael could raise that salient point, Brenna came down the castle steps, skirts swishing and no smile in evidence. Michael climbed into the coach.
“Hello.” His youngest sister was young indeed. He’d never met her, but she was the image of Erin at her age, all big blue eyes, freckles, and coppery braids. “I’m Michael.”
“I know. It’s your fault I had to leave Ireland.”
The girl looked exhausted, rumpled, and stubborn. Exhausted and rumpled were easily remedied.
“How do you figure it’s my fault? I had no idea you were coming.”
Which was the wrong thing to say. Maeve gave him a look his mother often gave his father, and not when they were in charity with each other.
“Bridget is having a baby, and she said you’re a baron now, so here I am, and my backside hurts.”
He could haul her bodily from the coach, because the way her arms were crossed and her chin was jutting suggested nothing less would pry the child from her tantrum. Because her backside was not the only part of her aching, Michael shifted to sit beside her.
“Did Bridget give you a letter for me?”
“No. She was crying.”
A little catch in the girl’s voice portended tears looming much closer than County Mayo, so a change in tactics was in order.
“Are you hungry?”
“I am full of scones and cold tea, and I nearly retched halfway up from Aberdeen because of the stupid roads.”
Which was worse? A nauseated child or a tearful child, and why was it his business? Michael was on the point of reaching for his sister when a form darkened the coach door.
“Well, thank goodness you’re here, then.” Brenna climbed into the coach and took the seat opposite. “You look like you could use a trip up to the parapet.”
“No more trips. I hate trips.”
“Come here,” Brenna said. Her smile suggested great mysteries lay on the opposite bench, which for Michael, they rather did. “Look up. Way, way up.”
The girl switched seats and gawked out the window as Brenna pointed at the battlements. “Bridget said I’d live in a castle, like a princess.”
Live? As in grow up here? Next to where resentment stirred, Michael felt a curious pleasure, to know Bridget had entrusted their youngest sibling to his permanent care.
“I’m Brenna, and I live in that castle. So does your brother Michael.”
“Brenna the Baroness,” the child said, still craning her neck to see the stone walls soaring over the bailey. “The castles in Ireland are mostly falling apart.”
Brenna slipped an arm around the child. “This castle is in excellent repair, though it hasn’t any princesses. It does have a wonderful big kitchen, though.”
“I hate scones.”
“You are tired,” Brenna observed, and three words had never held such compassion. “Coach journeys are the worst.”
Maeve leaned against Brenna’s side. “They’re long.” Her weary, wistful tone suggested even nine years on the Continent couldn’t have been as long.
“And bumpy,” Michael added. Both females glanced over at him as if they’d forgotten he was in the coach.
“Very,” Maeve said.
Now what to say? Michael did not want to bodily overpower a small child with half the footmen, Angus, Prebish, and Brenna looking on, and yet, he wasn’t about to humor the girl much longer. She was his responsibility, after all.
“What’s needed here,” Brenna said in a considering tone, “is shortbread.”
Maeve peered up at her. “Shortbread? Not scones?”
“Shortbread,” Brenna said. “Have you ever had it with lavender in it?”
“Is it purple?”
Of course it wasn’t purple, but it was delicious.
“I haven’t had lavender shortbread since I went to Portugal,” Michael observed, casually, of course.
“Then I think it’s time we made some,” Brenna said. “Though that will require a trip to the kitchens.”
“Are the kitchens up there?” The child pointed aloft at where, oh joy, Elspeth Fraser and two other maids appeared to be watching the drama below—or watching the footmen.
“No, those are the parapets,” Brenna said. “That’s where I go to think. We can take our shortbread up there and feed crumbs to the birds.”
Lucky birds.
“I like birds. We had lots of birds in Ireland.” As if she were a bird, the child fluttered out of the coach without another word.
Michael followed then turned, intent on assisting his wife from the coach.
When he extended a hand to her, she hesitated then placed her fingers against his palm.
That inspired him to haul her down the steps so she careened into his chest.
What he should have done was express his gratitude that she’d handled the child so well. Perhaps he should have kissed her knuckles or beamed a husbandly smile of relief at her.
“Save me some shortbread.” He growled the words right in her ear, nothing husbandly or beaming about them.
“A small bite,” she said, smirking up at him.
The last of the resentment Michael felt to have a child thrust upon him—and a cranky, stubborn child at that—evaporated in the pleasure he felt at his wife’s smirk. He set her on her feet and swung the child up to his back.
“Come along, Maeve Brodie. You’re old enough to learn to make your own shortbread.”
Because a man could never have too many women mixing up batches of shortbread in his castle.
They left Angus in the bailey, his expression bemused.