Eighteen #3
She cried for herself, for the child who’d trusted none to protect her, who hadn’t entirely understood the wrong being perpetrated on her.
She cried for the woman she was, who could see with adult eyes the magnitude of the damage inflicted on a lonely girl behind a closed door, in a walled garden, and in small, quiet moments that arose without warning whenever Angus saw opportunity.
“You made it stop,” Michael said, long moments later. “Somehow, you made it stop.”
The pipes went on, still sad, but softer, as if the wind had shifted.
Michael would desperately need to hear this part, to be reassured that his wife had not drifted from victimized child to victimized adult, and Brenna could give him those assurances.
“You made it stop, at least in part,” she said.
“More and more, you took to following me about, and I realized—I finally realized—that as long as I stayed around people—as long as I stayed near you, in particular—Angus did not dare approach me. I learned to stick close to the keep, and I made friends with your sisters. I did my lessons in the kitchens, because somebody’s always coming and going in the kitchens, and I became your mother’s right hand. ”
“I felt like an idiot,” Michael said. “I was, at sixteen and seventeen, a young man. You were a child, and yet, I liked you. I liked to tease you. I liked to watch you embroider. It wasn’t the same liking I had for my sisters, though I was protective of you all, and yet…”
Brenna struggled to raise herself from his chest.
“What you felt for me was the opposite of what Angus felt. In some way, I sensed that. To you I was a person to be cherished until I could take my place as your wife. To him I was a pleasure to be hoarded up and exploited as long as womanhood eluded me. I asked your mother if I could share a room with Bridget, and then I asked her if Erin might join us.”
Michael gently gathered her back onto his chest.
“Because Angus was looking at Erin the way he’d looked at you. She was shy and sickly, and easily overlooked. Do you think my mother guessed?”
He didn’t ask her if she’d ever gone to Lady Catherine—a kindness to all concerned.
“I don’t know what your mother knew, what she guessed, what she knew without admitting even to herself, or what she confronted your father with in private.
She took your sisters to Ireland, though, and Erin rallied.
She also made sure we girls had a lock on our bedroom door, and said young ladies must never quibble at demanding privacy when they needed it. ”
Brenna’s hip ached, and she had that wrung-out, floaty feeling that came with spent tears. She pushed Michael to his back and cuddled down into his embrace.
“Angus was furious with me. He found me collecting eggs one morning and told me he knew what I’d done, asking to share a room with your sisters and trailing after you like a trained hound.
He ranted and railed, and told me I was growing ugly anyway, losing any appeal I’d ever had.
I was no end of pleased to hear that part. ”
“But he threatened you.”
“Oh, of course. If I ever accused him of untoward behavior, he’d see me sent from the castle. I’d never be allowed to marry the laird’s heir if I told such tales. The laird’s heir, especially, deserved a wife who hadn’t allowed a man into her bed without a peep of protest.”
Michael flipped the blankets up around them.
“War is a delight compared to such diabolical manipulation of a young girl’s fears. Perhaps I shall lead a life of wickedness, so I might meet my uncle in hell, there to inflict upon him every misery I can devise and a few hundred I haven’t thought of yet.”
Hell would be a wondrous lively place, if Michael’s tone of voice were any indication.
“Thoughts of revenge can comfort for a time,” Brenna said. “Knowing it would never happen again was of greater comfort yet. Angus did not feel for grown women what he did for children.”
“And then Maeve showed up. Merciful, everlasting God in heaven. She was lonely, out of place, shy, and ill at ease.” Michael was so quick to grasp a pattern that in Brenna’s case had gone unnoticed for years.
The wool Michael had wrapped around them, and Michael beneath her, made a cozy haven for Brenna, and increasing lassitude meant she must complete her confession before sleep and the blessed pleasure of Michael’s embrace overtook her.
“I was not Angus’s first victim, but I think his attentions to me were the most sustained.”
His chest heaved up and down with a sigh, like the waves on the loch yielding to a passing wind.
“My dearest wife, I know. And Angus didn’t limit his perversions to little girls. I had thought that young men were his preferred victims—his only victims, in fact.”
Young men. Michael had been a young man. He’d been a braw, bonny fellow, who’d left for his regiment at the first opportunity. All the wool in Scotland could not have kept Brenna warm as that realization washed over her. She sat up, the blankets falling away as she searched her husband’s face.
“Michael, how could you know that Angus did not limit his wickedness to little girls?”