Eleven #2
“I’m Milly, and baronessing is quite a lot of uphill work, even when one is madly in love with one’s baron. Why won’t the midwife come?”
Old hurt flattened Brenna’s lovely mouth. She withdrew a silver flask from a skirt pocket and uncapped it. “Shall you?”
“No, thank you.” Though Milly’s estimation of Highland hospitality rose further.
“The midwife has reason to hate me, and in the seven years since that reason arose, has shown no sign of relenting in her ill will, nor is she alone in her lack of regard for the lord’s wife.”
Milly nibbled on her scone, and wondered what it must be like, to be lady of the manor, newly reconciled with your lord, honor bound to try for some heirs, and on the outs with the only midwife in the shire.
“Have some tea. Did you flirt with her husband? Dress her sons down for swearing in the churchyard?”
“I cost her her sons. She’s not likely to assist me in bringing mine into the world.”
Her ladyship—Brenna—showed no sign of making herself a cup of tea, so Milly fixed one for her. “You killed her sons? I find this difficult to believe.”
And yet, clearly, Brenna believed it, or something every bit as bad.
“It has to do with money,” Brenna said, accepting the cup of tea. “It all has to do with money. I was eighteen and trying to make the point that I was the laird’s wife, though Michael had been gone for two years. I asked my cousins to escort me into Aberdeen with the wool harvest.”
Aberdeen was a good sixty or seventy miles to the east and no easy journey.
“Drink your tea,” Milly said, finishing her scone and deciding that she’d share the next one with her hostess.
Brenna held the teacup before her, like a chalice or a serving of woe.
“We traveled to the coast easily enough—the weather held fair—and we got a fine price for the wool, because we’d so much to sell at once. I was very pleased.”
Milly set half a buttered scone on a plate, drizzled it with honey, and passed it over. “And then?”
“And then as I was riding home, I went ahead of my cousins. They were in want of one more pint to celebrate our success, while I sought to get home and brag on my bargaining abilities. Angus had scoffed at me, of course. I was too young, I was a woman, nobody would take me seriously, and the city was a dangerous place.”
“I do not like this Angus fellow. Who is he?” Milly liked Scottish scones though, liked them quite well.
“Nobody likes Angus except Michael. Angus is the devil incarnate, the self-appointed land steward for the Brodie holdings, and my husband’s only surviving male family.”
Brenna’s tone was defeated, and Milly’s dislike for Uncle Angus blossomed into loathing. “Eat your scone and tell me what happened.” Though Milly could guess all too easily.
“I was set upon by thieves, and every groat, every last coin, and my purse as well, were taken from me.” She tore the scone to sweet, buttery crumbs, then licked her thumbs and fingers.
“I rage when I think about all the money stolen from our people, but I cry when I recall that purse. Michael gave it to me when I turned fifteen. He made it himself—nearly cut off a finger working the leather—and I don’t know how I’ll tell him I lost it. ”
“You didn’t lose it. It was stolen from you.”
Wool was the lifeblood of the Highlands, though. Sebastian took a keen interest in agricultural trade, enough that Milly understood what the loss of a year’s revenue would do to an entire village.
Brenna dusted her hands together. “No, it was not stolen from me at all. Thievery is an odd crime. If nobody witnessed the theft, and you are one of those shifty MacLogans whose own husband hasn’t a care for her, then you lose the village’s livelihood.
It is not stolen from you. In the space of a muttered aside at the tavern you are transformed from a victim to a victimizer. ”
Milly set her teacup down with a bang. “They accused you of stealing the money?”
Brenna nodded, her gaze going to the tidy stacks of ledgers on the desk.
“I made it worse. I do not get on well with Angus, so I kept my books separate from his, and what extra I had from time to time—from selling piecework, Cook’s extra preserves, spices from the kitchen gardens, and so forth—I’ve used to help those in need.
Guilt money, they call it in the village, and they’re not exactly wrong. ”
“I still do not see how you’re responsible for the midwife’s difficulties.”
Though Milly already had a sense that Scottish logic was subject to the more compelling sway of clan loyalties and old hostilities.
“Mairead and her boys put everything they had into sheep, as Angus nigh insisted they do. Nobody here trusts the sheep, but raising sheep is all Angus knows. Sheep are easy, biddable, stupid, without defenses—”
Brenna stared off into space, as if an insight befell her that would require much study under solitudinous conditions.
“So the midwife’s family lost a lot of money,” Milly said, because all of the pieces of the puzzle were still not on the table.
Brenna rose and returned to the desk, where one ledger yet lay open. She was apparently one of those people who enjoyed numbers, something else Milly could like about her.
“I gave both of Mairead’s sons passage to Canada. They were hard, hard workers, and they deserved better than to slowly starve in Aberdeen, looking for work and finding none, while their mother did nothing but worry and grow old fretting over them.”
“You lost money too, I take it?”
Brenna ran a finger down a page of her ledger, as if answers lay in these neat columns and tidy figures. “The Brodie lands lost money. That would be in Angus’s ledgers. Angus has certainly not let me forget that we’d have much more coin were it not for my carelessness.”
“Bad enough that criminals are forever blaming their victims,” Milly said. “Worse yet when the family who should protect you takes the same position.”
Her ladyship took another nip from the pretty little flask.
“I like you, Baroness St. Clair, and I am very glad you’ve come to visit. Let’s get you up to your chambers, and I’ll fetch Mairead Dolan if I have to drag her here by the hair.”
“I feel better,” Milly said, surprised to find it was the truth. “Perhaps all I need is rest.” And to talk with her husband.
“Then rest you shall have,” Brenna said, rising. “Travel is fatiguing under the best of circumstances, just ask wee Maeve.”
They chatted their way up to Milly’s rooms, about the small child who’d recently come to visit from Ireland, about the difficulties of getting acquainted with a husband who’d left not twenty-four hours after his wedding.
As Milly parted from her hostess at the bedroom door, she considered that Sebastian had arranged this journey north on the strength of a mere hunch, a conviction clothed as a whim, that Michael Brodie needed an ally.
Sebastian hadn’t been wrong. Michael Brodie needed an ally badly, as did Michael Brodie’s baroness.
“We’ll take them shopping,” Michael announced, snagging St. Clair by the arm. “What fellow doesn’t gain his lady’s approval when he takes her shopping?”
St. Clair came peaceably, which was fortunate, because Michael knew not what else he could propose in the face of St. Clair’s worries.
“Milly might not have the energy for shopping,” St. Clair said. “She spent much of yesterday abed, and my baroness is not a woman to idle about.”
My baroness—how casually St. Clair referred to his relatively new wife.
Michael led his friend across the cobbled bailey, finding St. Clair’s anxiety both endearing and irritating—for it matched his own.
“My baroness says travel is fatiguing, as does my wee sister. Your lady needed a day to recover, and now a frippery or two will put her in charity with you, or allow her a bit of revenge for being dragged the length of the Great North Road and beyond. You never fretted like this over your garrison in France.”
St. Clair wrestled free of Michael’s hold, and abruptly, a pretty Scottish summer morning became fraught.
“I fretted. I fretted nigh incessantly over the damned men, their damned families, the damned supplies and lack thereof, the damned prisoners, you—”
St. Clair’s role in France had been difficult and complicated, while Michael’s had been difficult and simple: Michael’s job had been to watch over St. Clair.
He’d been damned relieved to turn that responsibility over to Millicent St. Clair.
“And you’re fretting over me still?” Michael hazarded. What else could explain this impromptu journey of hundreds of miles, without an invitation, and the lady in an interesting condition?
The clip-clop of heavy, iron-shod hooves ricocheted off the walls of the bailey like so many pistol shots.
“That is an enormous horse,” St. Clair remarked as Bannockburn was led out of the stables.
“Named for an enormous battle—or for breakfast,” Michael replied. “You need not fret over me, St. Clair. My Brenna has taken over the post and does a better job than you ever could. Come along, and you can buy me a frippery to restore my good graces.”
St. Clair belted him on the arm—a goodly smack but not too hard. “You never once said you were married.”
And thus they reached the foundation of St. Clair’s worries. Michael resumed walking rather than air more linen where any boot boy or lady’s maid might come by.
“I never said I wasn’t married. What color hair ribbon shall I buy for my Brenna?”
St. Clair laughed, which was the object of such a ridiculous question between former soldiers. A hint of that humor lingered in the baron’s eyes when Michael announced to the ladies that a sortie would be made to the village after lunch.
“To the village?” Rather than offer him an approving smile, Brenna’s question was careful. The way she patted her lips with her serviette was careful too.
“We’ll stop at the tavern and enjoy some of the finest summer ale in the Highlands,” Michael said with a wink—while the ladies exchanged a glance that was also careful.