Six #2
“I think it’s Brenna who’s nervous,” Hugh observed. “More nervous, poor lass.” He stopped fussing with the fire—peat took its own time to catch—and peeked in on the children, both sleeping soundly.
“What has Cousin got to be nervous about?” Dantry took down a cribbage board and a worn deck of cards from the mantel.
The deck sported thistles and unicorns, which had always put Hugh in mind of the hardship and beauty that was Scotland. “Neil, will you join us?” Hugh asked.
Neil, ensconced before the fire in the household’s only rocking chair, shook his head. The children said he told the best stories, but Hugh’s theory was the bairns were that impressed to hear their older uncle speak at all.
Hugh took a seat at the table where they’d eaten their supper two hours earlier.
“Cousin has a husband on her hands she likely never thought to see again. He’ll go poking his lordly nose into every nook and cranny, and be listening at the keyholes of a night.
The wrong keyholes, if I know Angus Brodie. ”
“Which,” Dantry said, taking a seat at the table, “we do, to our sorrow and shame.”
“Our damned inconvenience,” Hugh rejoined, shuffling the deck as quietly as it could be done. “Thank God we’ve most of us paid our rents. Angus was that close to burning out Alexander MacIntosh. Now the man will have a chance to bring in a crop and sell off some fall lambs.”
“Unless the laird burns him out anyway.”
The silence that rose as the cards were dealt was sorrowful. The worst of the landlords burned their people out in autumn, when the crop was harvested, the livestock was fat, and winter was bearing down.
As Hugh’s preoccupation and fatigue resulted in a gradual loss to his youngest brother, Dantry got around to the real point of the conversation.
“Lachlan is tired of cleaning boots and pots. The boy is ready to work in the stable, and he’s old enough.”
He would also make more than the few coins Hugh allowed Brenna to pay him.
“The stables are Angus’s province,” Hugh observed. “No son of mine will be working for Angus Brodie, and no daughter either. Play your hand, Dantry, and stop agitating.”
“A little more coin couldn’t hurt,” Dantry said, tossing out an eight of clubs.
“Fifteen two,” Hugh countered, with the seven of diamonds. “If Lachlan can work the stables, he can work the fields with us.”
“A pair is twenty-two,” Dantry countered, playing the seven of clubs. “Working the fields brings in no coin, Lachlan will be more bother than help, and every groat makes a difference.”
“Twenty-nine for six points,” Hugh said, laying down the seven of hearts. “And a go, for seven, and last card is eight.”
Dantry sat back, staring at the pile of cards on the table. “You’re not being practical. Angus has refused in-kind payments when he wants to make a point. The lease specifies rent in coin, and—”
“The stables are the laird’s province,” Neil said, getting up and heading down the hallway. “Not Angus’s. Angus could end up being the one turfed out, and it’s about damned time. The man needs a dirk between his ribs.”
The rocking chair moved in his absence, coming to a standstill eventually, as Hugh gathered up the cards and passed them to Dantry.
“Remind me never to cross our brother,” Hugh said. “And no more about Lachlan working where Angus Brodie has a say. I’m the boy’s father.”
Either Dantry was holding decent cards, or he recognized unassailable logic when it threatened to turn emphatic. Neil’s door closed quietly, and the rest of the game was played in silence.
Michael was learning to study Brenna’s expressions because, in the details of her physiognomy, she hinted at her emotions. A certain angle of her brows suggested curiosity, another skepticism, another suppressed ire.
But a man could study only those expressions he could see, so Michael rounded the corner of the privacy screen and beheld his wife in her shift, stays, and stockings. He slipped past her to the basin in the washstand in the corner.
“I did not enjoy the climate in Spain,” he said. “The days were blisteringly hot much of the year, while the nights were bone-chillingly cold. The French mountains were uniformly cold, but that’s at least predictable. Do you make this soap?”
In the mirror above the washstand, Brenna’s eyebrows suggested utter bafflement.
“I do. We do, the women and I.”
She watched him brush his teeth and wash the parts that counted. When Michael reached under his kilt to tend to the parts that also counted if one shared a bed with his wife, she turned away and started taking down her hair.
Her hands shook, and Michael felt like a bully—like a hopeless bully.
“You never did answer my question. How shall you woo me, darling Brenna?”
“Don’t ever call me that.” A hairpin went skittering to the floor.
“Darling is a bit of a stretch, I admit,” Michael said, picking up the pin. “We are not the darling type, I’m thinking.” He set the pin down near her hairbrush. “Perhaps we could exchange hints about this wooing business.”
“You are ridiculous. Can you not allow me some privacy?”
He lounged back against the wall, which was cold against his bare shoulders, but he did not leave the small space behind the privacy screen.
“I woke up with you today, Wife, but within twenty minutes, you’d flown away to confer with Cook—again—or Elspeth or Goodie MacCray or the birds on the parapets.
I hardly had a chance to speak with you, because Maeve has been dropped in our midst and my dear uncle has chosen today to take the gloves off, so to speak, and give my conscience the drubbing it deserves, and then dinner was—”
“Angus Brodie has no right to pummel your conscience,” Brenna said, whirling and marching up to him. “That man has done nothing but prosper in your absence, and if Castle Brodie still stands, it’s despite him and his overbearing ways, not because of them.”
Better, much, much better to see the fire in Brenna’s eyes and the determination in the angle of her chin. Michael eased forward and did his best to loom over her.
“He said I’d neglected my wife. Angus said you could not be blamed for growing headstrong in my absence. He said the kindest thing I could do was take you in hand sooner rather than later.”
Brenna’s hand snaked out, as if to slap Michael for conveying that sentiment. He made no move to stop her. He was too glad to see uncomplicated rage pouring from her in every line of her posture.
Her hand slowly returned to her side, but she remained before her husband, a pillar of feminine outrage in shift and stays.
“Your uncle has no business commenting on any aspect of our marriage. Not now, not ever.”
“Exactly what I told him.” Michael pulled a stray pin from bright red curls near Brenna’s right ear and presented it to her, like a flower. “He didn’t take it well.”
She blinked at the hairpin, then snatched it from his hand. “Thank you.”
Michael had the sense she was not thanking him for the hairpin, and left her a bit of privacy, the better for him to ponder her reaction.
Angus was an interfering old besom who’d been allowed to run tame on the property for too long.
Of course, he’d have marital advice for his only nephew.
Angus was at best an indifferent rider, but he’d barked orders to the stable lads left and right, half of which, Michael had quietly countermanded in Angus’s absence.
Angus also had decided opinions about raising cattle, though he’d no cows of his own, when all over the shire, the larger holdings typically kept a fold of Highlands, at least.
Angus would need some reminding of his place, was all.
Just as Brenna needed reminding of hers.
“Are you hoping I’ll fall asleep before you join me, Brenna Maureen?” Not Brenna darling, not ever that, apparently. Michael spotted the tray of shortbread and popped a bite into his mouth.
“Yes,” came the response from behind the privacy screen. “Go to bed and warm up the covers like a good husband, why don’t you? You’ve had a long day, so don’t wait up for me. I insist.”
He held the plate over the top of the privacy screen but resisted the urge to peek.
“All that wifely concern can leave a lady peckish. Have some shortbread.” He felt her take a piece, as delicately as a mouse purloins the cheese without springing the trap, which might be a first step in the direction of somebody wooing somebody else.
“Shortbread counts as wooing,” he informed her, setting the plate on the night table. “At least it does if you put lavender in it. Now you must give me a hint, Brenna my dear, and tell me something I’ve done that counts as wooing in your eyes.”
She stirred around behind the screen then emerged, wrapped in a nightgown, night robe, and her hunting tartan. Her hair was in a single thick plait down her back, and her feet were bare. She looked wary, tired, and uncertain.
And he craved her. Craved her in her layers of nightclothes and her layers of pride. He craved her body, and even more, he craved her trust. She was home to him in a way he could not explain, not with words.
“That kilt is dusty. You are in want of your drawers,” she said in the same tone she might have reminded him to get his elbows off the table.
“I know they’re clean, because we did laundry today.
” She crossed to the wardrobe as if to search out his prodigal drawers, but Michael moved up behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders.
“I am in want of my wife. Come to bed, Brenna.” He led her to the bed, unwrapped the plaid from her shoulders, then waited while she handed him the night robe. “In you go.”
She climbed onto the bed and hitched up against the pillows, pulling the covers to her chin as Michael moved around the room, blowing out candles.
He came to the last lit candle, the one on his side of the bed, and made a decision.
“Will you sleep in your kilt tonight?” Brenna asked, smoothing a hand down the quilt.
Michael turned his back to his wife, unpinned the wool, and let the kilt fall to the floor. “No, I will not.”