Fifteen
“Now I know how to get you to picnic with your husband,” Michael observed, brushing Brenna’s fingers aside and tying the ribbon at the end of her braid into a snug bow.
“All I have to do is set half the village to scrubbing, dusting, and cleaning the ballroom’s chandeliers and windows, and you’ll flee the premises.
” He used Brenna’s braid to tug her closer.
“I think the noise disagrees with you so badly, you might even have joined me for a walk along the Dee or an afternoon on a shady blanket.”
The preparations for the celebration at week’s end had turned Brenna’s day upside down and left her too tired for any confrontations with her husband as they prepared for bed.
“I would have gone with you, Michael. I’d have stolen away with you and spent the day anywhere quiet.” Provided Elspeth spent the day with Maeve, and Cook kept Lachlan from straying. Brenna slid her arms around Michael’s waist and leaned into him.
“You were like that as a girl,” he murmured, wrapping her in a loose embrace. “You had a knack for finding quiet corners, for going unnoticed.”
Until Angus had found her in those quiet corners, and now the damned man seemed to be lurking in a corner of Brenna’s very mind.
“Why the sigh, Wife?”
“I’m tired, Husband.” Some distraction was in order, because a tired woman might say things she dreaded saying to a patient, affectionate husband.
“You looked very braw without your shirt today. The ladies made little progress cleaning the ballroom as long as you were working with the fellows on the stair railing.”
“Sawing oak is sweaty work.” He hitched her closer. “We can’t have our guests tumbling into the ballroom when a railing gives way, and I gather the ballroom hasn’t been used much since Mama took the girls to Ireland.”
“I like the scent of fresh-cut oak.” Brenna had also liked the scent of her husband’s exertions, liked the taste of his kiss after he’d taken a wee nip, liked the look of him, a few flecks of sawdust in his hair, muscles bunching and rippling as he’d traded good-natured insults with the other men.
“I had fences to mend,” Michael said. “I waxed a bit pontifical when Dingle handed out the mail yesterday.”
Brenna might have stepped back, except Michael’s arms prevented it. “Elspeth told me.” As had Hugh, and even Cook had reported a second- or third-hand version of events. “Do you fear I’ll scold you for scolding them, Michael?”
He kissed her on the mouth, the gesture tasting of husbandly fatigue laced with exasperation.
“I’d understand if you needed to scold me, but Brenna Maureen, these people can’t have it both ways.
You’re there to post their bail when they lack opportunity here in Scotland or can’t pay their rents, and for solving that problem, those left behind resent you.
Have they seen the privations faced by the families trying to eke out an existence in the cities?
Do they ever stop to wonder how they’d fare without your generosity to protect them? ”
Had Michael ever wondered how Brenna had fared without him?
He had. Between nuzzling his throat and kissing his chin, Brenna realized that his scolds were not so much for the village as they were for himself.
“Michael, it’s late. We’re tired, and while I appreciate your indignation on my behalf, you must be patient. To many people, grudges can be as dear as children.”
Some of the bewilderment seemed to seep away from him as his embrace shifted and became more intimate.
“As dear as grandchildren,” he said, his hips snuggling in low against Brenna’s belly. “You are full of dearness, Brenna Brodie.”
This small moment at the end of a long, busy day was full of dearness. Michael shared his frustrations with Brenna comfortably, with the same ease as he hung his waistcoat over the back of the reading chair each night or draped his cravat over the door to the wardrobe.
“You are full of blather,” she said, her mouth landing on his in what she’d intended as a reciprocal end-of-day kiss.
Except Michael was ready to change the subject, apparently.
He was done grumbling about stubborn grudges, done letting the past intrude on the present.
Instead, he took her end-of-day kiss and turned it into a Start-of-Something-Else-Entirely kiss.
The shift resulted in Michael’s entire body becoming subtly alive against Brenna, as if her nightclothes had melted away in response to the change in his focus.
Brenna kissed him back, a challenge for a challenge, which provoked him to smile against her mouth and gently swat her bottom.
“Into bed with you, Brenna Maureen. You need your rest.”
“I need my husband.”
He’d stepped away, toward the privacy screen, and paused while turned partway from her.
“Brenna?” His posture said he was braced for her to deliver that scold, but he was hopeful too, that she might take him up on that Something-Else-Entirely kiss.
“I want my husband,” Brenna said, surprised both to hear the words coming from her own mouth and that they were such a relaxed, casual statement. Surprised as well that she’d guessed accurately.
The combination of desire, affection, and loneliness roiling about inside her was…a need for Michael. A perfectly acceptable, even commonplace need of a wife for her husband—and that, too, was dear.
“Unless my husband is too tired?”
“Never,” Michael said, dropping into the reading chair and getting to work on the laces of his boots. “I’ll never be too tired to love you, Brenna Brodie. Never too tired to listen to you or hold you or walk the banks of the Dee or”—he wrestled the second boot off—“throw you onto that bed.”
“Set those boots in the corridor,” Brenna said. “You’d make a racket loud enough to wake our guests if you pitched me onto the bed.”
He managed it quietly enough, Brenna’s soft “oomph” being the only audible evidence of his exertion.
“Hang the boots,” he said, unfastening his kilt. “I wasn’t sure we were to risk having children, not after last night’s”—Brenna tossed her night robe to the foot of the bed—“discussion.”
His kilt came undone in the next moment. He draped it over the chair so he stood by the bed wearing a puzzled smile and shadows cast by the firelight. Bless the man, even in the dim light, his interest in Brenna’s invitation was abundantly evident.
“I don’t know about children,” Brenna said, drawing her nightgown over her head.
“We can talk more about children, and we probably should. What I know is the day has been long, and even when I was in the ballroom arguing with Goodie MacCray about how many candles should go on each chandelier, and you were teasing Hugh about wanting to show off for Elspeth, I felt an ache, Michael. For you. Twenty paces between us, half the village looking on, work to be done, and I felt an ache.”
The mattress dipped as Michael sank one knee on the bed.
“Did you now? An ache? For me? Even when there was work to be done? Where did you ache, Wife?”
In her heart. “Inside. In wifely places.”
He flopped to his back beside her. “Come here, and tell me about these wifely aches.”
“I am married to a great, silly man,” Brenna groused, shifting to hike a leg over her husband. “One who teases when I confess to him that I’ve a need of him. One who tosses me about like so much laundry in my own bed—”
Michael’s hands, large and warm, settled on her breasts. “Go on. I am ever willing to listen to your confessions, dear heart.”
The banter went out of Brenna as she realized she hadn’t had to ask Michael to love her in this position. He’d learned already that she couldn’t be comfortable on her back beneath him, not yet.
“I love how you do that,” she said, her spine melting with his caresses. “You seem to know—”
He stroked her gently, finishing with a slight pressure to her nipples. “I need you too, Brenna. That’s what I know.”
Lest he say more, Brenna kissed him. His words ceased, and yet he did say more. Said he loved how freely she offered him her breasts, how aroused she became for him, and how snugly their bodies fit together when he eased his way into her damp heat.
And with his sighs and caresses, he told her he treasured both the pleasure they shared and he treasured her.
“Stop holding back,” he whispered. “You don’t need to hoard your satisfaction away, as if the supply is limited, Brenna. I will always be here for you.”
Oh, why must he say those words now? Tonight they were man and wife, sharing a simple and profound intimacy, but tomorrow they might find themselves again separated, and by nothing so easily explained as war on the Continent.
“Will you always be here?” She panted the question, because the dratted man had shifted beneath her, the angle of his thrusting taking on a diabolical effectiveness.
He gathered her close, so close she could not see his face, and that was a mercy.
“I love you, Brenna Brodie, and I’m home to stay.”
His words, low, hoarse, and passionate, drove her past all restraint, so that tears and pleasure deluged her in the same procession of endless sweet, awful moments. When she lay battered and drifting on Michael’s chest, he kissed her cheek and withdrew from her body in a slow, hard slide.
“Michael?”
“Hush. Hold me.”
She could not hold him, hadn’t the strength, hadn’t the wits. Instead, she cuddled close as, a few slow, undulating moments later, he groaned softly beneath her, and a wet warmth slicked their bellies.
The scent of spent lust joined the lavender of the bed sachets and Michael’s vetiver soap, a married bouquet, and not an entirely happy one.
As they lay breathing in counterpoint, Brenna took Michael’s earlobe into her mouth, a small comfort against the sense of emptiness his withdrawal had left.
She knew why he’d done it. He loved her, and he was home to stay, but her welcome—despite their present posture, despite vows, despite all the tenderness she felt for him—was still in doubt.
When she ought to have told him she loved him, Brenna fumbled for the handkerchief on the night table instead.