Nineteen
Sebastian had last shown this careful, controlled quality—and sworn at length in French—before Milly had married him. Since Michael Brodie had come striding through the middle of the crowd in the bailey, the entire night had been a series of sacre bleu’s and worse.
“Why aren’t you in bed?” he growled, prowling across the great hall. “I recall sending you up to bed more than an hour ago.”
At his tone, the last of the maids and footmen melted away, leaving a half-dozen trestle tables stacked against the wall in anticipation of a return to storage.
“You did send me up to bed.” After a distracted kiss good night. “You forget, however, that I am not one of your corporals, to scamper off upon your orders. Why aren’t you in bed?” She slipped her arms around him, knowing exactly what had kept him awake.
The Castle Brodie garrison was in an uproar. As a former commander, Sebastian was constitutionally incapable of resting when anyone he cared for was threatened, and he cared for Michael Brodie a very, very great deal.
As did Milly.
As did, happily, Michael Brodie’s wife.
“If you dragged me to bed, I could not sleep,” he said, wrapping Milly in a snug embrace. “Michael has gone missing, and I haven’t seen Brenna for some time either. It’s too much to hope you’ve shooed her to sleep with the proverbial wee dram?”
“She has found a far more bracing tonic in her husband’s company. Come with me, Sebastian.”
He peered down at her, looking exhausted, handsome, and worried. “Brenna’s with Michael?”
“Cook equipped them with a hamper and blankets. Michael could not have a more ferocious guard than his Brenna. She’ll see him through this night.” They’d see each other through all the nights, just as Milly and Sebastian had learned to do.
Sebastian led her to the enormous hearth at one end of the hall. The remains of a fire burned, the peaty scent oddly appealing, the warmth welcome. “You heard what Michael accused his uncle of?” Sebastian asked.
Milly pushed him into a well-padded reading chair and climbed into his lap. “He accused Angus of many things, but mostly of betraying Michael’s trust.”
“And Brenna’s trust, and the trust of every person on the estate. Michael takes his loyalties seriously.”
Thus, Sebastian could not sleep. “You did not keep him captive in London for two years, my love. You did not tie him to that infernal rock pile in France.”
Sebastian was not like some, who needed to chatter their way through conflicting arguments and confusing facts.
He was a master at keeping his own counsel and arranging details like so many chess pieces until a matter was thoroughly weighed in his mental scales.
Milly made herself comfortable upon her husband’s person, prepared to deal with his guilt when he was comfortable admitting it.
“Michael has suffered enough,” Sebastian said softly. “Do you know, in all the years of my acquaintance with him, I’ve never known him to look at another woman? The ladies were forever sending him inviting glances.”
Milly had seen how Michael looked at his wife, which was explanation enough for a soldier’s constancy to his lady. She might have remarked as much, but at the great door across the room, a troop of kilted Scotsmen spilled into the hall, their ladies still in evening finery.
“St. Clair.”
Hugh MacLogan approached the hearth, while his confreres lingered by the door. Sebastian rose, Milly in his arms, then gently deposited his wife on her feet.
“MacLogan. I’d thought the evening’s gathering displaced to the tavern. We’ve sent the servants to bed.”
The servants, as Milly well knew, had gone straight down the hill, to gossip and drink away the upset and excitement of the evening’s developments.
Hugh inclined his head in Milly’s direction, a Scotsman’s version of the perfunctory bow. Considering that Milly had never aspired to be anybody’s baroness, she made do with his civility and offered him a smile in return.
“We’ve been discussing matters down at the inn,” Hugh said. “We believe we might perform a service for our laird and his lady, but we’ll need a key. Elspeth says it’s usually kept in the laird’s study.”
Milly had seen the heavy, ornate key ring hanging in the study, and could well imagine Brenna wearing the keys at her waist, like a chatelaine of old. Sebastian reached for her hand without looking at her, a commanding officer canvassing the opinion of his trusted lieutenant.
“Listen to him, Sebastian,” she said too softly for any but MacLogan to overhear. “We’re all too overset to sleep, and Michael had the right of it: Angus wasn’t the only one to betray Brenna, and people need to make amends.”
“Come along then, MacLogan,” Sebastian said. “We’ll find your damned key, and then, by God, I’ll get my lady off her feet.”
More muttering in French accompanied his departure, but when he came back to the great hall and had sent MacLogan and his fellows on their way, he also brought Milly a warm cloak.
“Where are we going, Sebastian?”
“Down to the dower house and then to the loch. It’s not a celebration, by any means, but they’ll drink, and MacLogan thought—” He settled Milly’s cloak around her shoulders and fastened the frogs. “I can see you up to bed if you’d rather. We can’t have you becoming fatigued.”
He kept his hands on the lapels of her cloak, so Milly wrapped her fingers around his knuckles.
“What are we about, Sebastian? You need your rest too.” And Milly slept ever so much better in her husband’s arms.
“You were right: I did not hold Michael prisoner in London, and I did not chain him to that infernal pile of rocks in the French Pyrenees, but something or someone did.”
“It’s not your fault if a grown man, married to a woman he apparently adores, spent years wandering—”
He kissed her, which in addition to distracting Milly could also be counted on to make her hush.
“Something or someone banished Michael or held him captive, and I want to do what I might to end his sentence.”
This undertaking meant going to the dower house, where Angus had dwelled. Milly kissed her husband, because he hated being helpless, and he looked so worried for the man who might be his only true friend.
“I want to help too. Let’s be about it, shall we?”
The moment had all the elements of sweetness—Michael’s wife was snuggled to his chest, the summer night air was fragrant with the scent of crushed clover, a lament drifted down from the pipes played up on the parapets, and the moon hung rosy and smiling in the sky.
Michael held on to his wife lest sorrow sunder him from his soul.
Brenna had led the way, finding words for the unspeakable, offering Michael two comforts: First, the comfort, dubious though it was, of the truth.
He need not torment himself with thoughts of Angus inflicting the ultimate defilement on a child, for he had accurate information about what had happened and for how long.
A very dubious comfort.
The second comfort was as substantial as the walls around the keep, as substantial as the hard Scottish earth beneath his back and the hills ringing the shire: Brenna had trusted him with her truths. Trusted him to listen, which he’d found harder by far than waging war for years on end.
Now he must afford her the same awful comforts.
“On our wedding night, I saw Angus.”
“Everybody was there,” Brenna said. “Had he not attended, it would have caused talk.” Talk was not something Brenna ever wanted to be the object of.
“He was in his Highland finery, drinking, dancing, and comporting himself as a benevolent uncle—for all he’d tried to speak against you to me privately.”
“You didn’t listen to him.”
“I wanted to call him out.” For the first time in Michael’s life, he’d seen his uncle as an opinionated, self-interested, interfering old besom who’d needed a good hiding. “But neither did I put him in his place.”
Brenna levered up to undo Michael’s clan sash, then went after the buttons of his shirt.
“You’d expose me to the night air?”
“I’d expose you to your wife.” She subsided onto his chest, her cheek against his throat, and Michael rearranged the blankets over her. Next she wedged an arm under his neck. “You were saying?”
“It was late, I was hoping I might slip upstairs with you, and I went in search of my father, who would offer the parting toast.”
“I saw you disappear and thought you were stepping out to the jakes. When the whisky flows…”
“I’d hardly had anything to drink, because drink can dull a man’s—” The memory made him ill now. “I wanted to give a good account of myself when we consummated our vows, wanted a clear head. I expect you simply wanted the wedding night over with.”
She smoothed his hair back and spoke right in his ear. “You expect wrong. I loved you then, and I desired you. I was nervous, aye—we were both nervous—but I had few qualms about joining you in that bed.”
“Few qualms” was a far cry from no qualms, goddamn it. “I took that from you. Took away your display of courage and trust, and tossed it aside.”
He waited for his wife to admit that yes, he’d wrecked their wedding night even more thoroughly than he knew, waited for her to express some honest disappointment in him. A lot of honest disappointment.
“You must be patient, Michael, and determined. This situation of ours can be described in a few minutes of blunt speech, but it has been years in the making. We’ll not find our way through it overnight. I’ve learned that.”
The piper shifted to another tune, the rhythm different, though still in minor key. A ballad, not a tune for dancing.
“What have you learned, Brenna? For I feel without any wisdom whatsoever. I am all sorrow and confusion and anger.”
And hurt, of course. Mostly for her. But some for them as well.