The Captive (35 page)

“Several times, my lady.”

“Excellent. Have another pastry.”

Milly munched away on a confection filled with chocolate crème—one could learn to appreciate such fare all too easily—while Lady St. Clair waxed enthusiastic about the affairs of Wellington—for who else could “old Arthur” be?—and his officers.

And still, something about the Baron St. Clair lodged in Milly’s awareness like a smudge on her spectacles. He was quite handsome—an embarrassment of handsome was his to command—but cold. His smile reached his eyes only when he beheld his elderly aunt.

Perhaps dueling had taxed his store of charm.

“…and the ladies
très jolie
, you know?” Lady St. Clair was saying. “Half the fellows in government claimed they needed to go to Paris to make peace, but the soiled doves of London went into a decline until the negotiations were complete. Making peace is lusty work, methinks.”

“I’m shocked yet again, my lady.” Though not by the baroness’s bawdy talk.

St. Clair—a baron and peer of the English realm—had spoken with a slight aristocratic
French
accent.

“Excellent. We shall get on famously, Miss Danforth, provided you aren’t one to quibble about terms.”

“I have not the luxury of quibbling, my lady.”

The baroness peered at her over a pretty teacup. “Truly odious cousins?”

“Very. And parsimonious in the extreme.”

“My condolences. Have another pastry.”

“Elspeth, I believe a Viking has come calling.”

At Brenna’s puzzled observation, her maid set aside the embroidery hoop serving as a pretext for enjoying the Scottish summer sun, rose off the stone bench, and joined Brenna at the parapets.

“If Vikings are to ruin your afternoon tea, better if they arrive one at a time,” Elspeth said, peering down at the castle’s main gate. “Though that’s a big one, even for a Viking.”

The gate hadn’t been manned for at least two centuries, and yet, some instinct had Brenna wishing she’d given the command to lower the portcullis before the lone rider had crossed into the cobbled keep.

“Lovely horse,” Elspeth remarked.

The beast was an enormous, elegant bay, though its coat was matted with sweat and dust. From her vantage point high on Castle Brodie’s walls, all Brenna could tell about the rider was that he was big, broad-shouldered, and blond. “Our visitor is alone, likely far from home, hungry and tired. If we’re to offer him hospitality, I’d best inform the kitchen.”

Highland hospitality had grown tattered and threadbare in some locations, but not at Castle Brodie, and it would not, as long as Brenna had the running of the place.

“He looks familiar,” Elspeth said as the rider swung off his beast.

“The horse?”

No, Elspeth hadn’t meant the horse, because now that the rider was walking his mount toward the groom approaching from the stables, Brenna had the same sense of nagging familiarity. She knew that loose-limbed stride, knew that exact manner of stroking a horse’s neck, knew—

Foreboding prickled up Brenna’s arms, an instant before recognition landed in a cold heap in her belly.

“Michael has come home.” Nine years of waiting and worrying while the Corsican had wreaked havoc on the Continent, of not knowing what to wish for.

Her damned husband hadn’t even had the courtesy to warn her of his return.

Elspeth peered over the stone crenellations, her expression dubious. “If that’s the laird, you’d best go welcome him, though I don’t see much in the way of baggage. Perhaps, if you’re lucky, he’ll soon be off larking about on some new battlefield.”

“For shame, Elspeth Fraser.”

A woman ought not to talk that way about her laird, and a wife ought not to think that way about her husband. Brenna wound down through the castle and took herself out into the courtyard, both rage and gratitude speeding her along.

She’d had endless Highland winters to rehearse the speech Michael deserved, years to practice the dignified reserve she’d exhibit before him should he ever recall he had a home. Alas for her, the cobbles were wet from a recent scrubbing, so her dignified reserve more or less skidded to a halt before her husband.

Strong hands steadied her as she gazed up, and up some more, into green eyes both familiar and unknown.

“You’ve come home.” Not at all what she’d meant to say.

“That I have. If you would be so good, madam, as to allow the lady of the—
Brenna
?”

His hands fell away, and Brenna stepped back, wrapping her tartan shawl around her more closely.

“Welcome to Brodie Castle, Michael.” Because somebody ought to say the words, she added, “Welcome home.”

“You used to be chubby.” He leveled this accusation as if put out that somebody had made off with that chubby girl.

“You used to be skinny.” Now he was all-over muscle. He’d gone away a tall, gangly fellow, and come back not simply a man, but a warrior. “Perhaps you’re hungry?”

She did not know what to do with a husband, much less
this
husband, who bore so little resemblance to the young man she’d married, but Brenna knew well what to do with a hungry man.

“I am…” His gaze traveled the courtyard the way a skilled gunner might swivel his sights on a moving target, making a circuit of the granite walls rising some thirty feet on three sides of the bailey. His expression suggested he was making sure the castle, at least, had remained where he’d left it. “I am famished.”

“Come along then.” Brenna turned and started for the entrance to the main hall, but Michael remained in the middle of the courtyard, still peering about. Potted geraniums were in riot, pink roses climbed trellises under the first-floor windows, and window boxes held all manner of blooms.

“You’ve planted flowers.”

Another near accusation, for nine years ago, the only flowers in the keep were stray shrubs of heather springing up in sheltered corners.

Brenna returned to her husband’s side, trying to see the courtyard from his perspective. “One must occupy oneself somehow while waiting for her spouse to come home—or be killed.”

He needed to know that for nine years, despite anger, bewilderment, and even the occasional period of striving for indifference toward him and his fate, Brenna had gone to bed every night praying that death did not end his travels.

“One must, indeed, occupy oneself.” He offered her his arm, which underscored how long they’d been separated and how far he’d wandered.

The men of the castle and its tenancies knew to keep their hands to themselves where Brenna MacLogan Brodie was concerned. They did not hold her chair for her, did not assist her in and out of coaches, or on and off of her horse.

And yet, Michael stood there, a muscular arm winged at her, while the scent of slippery cobbles, blooming roses, and a whiff of vetiver filled the air.

“Brenna Maureen, every arrow slit and window of that castle is occupied by a servant or relation watching our reunion. I would like to walk into my home arm in arm with my wife. Will you permit me that courtesy?”

He’d been among the English, the
military
English, which might explain this fussing over appearances, but he hadn’t lost his Scottish common sense.

Michael had
asked
her to accommodate him. Brenna wrapped one hand around his thick forearm and allowed him to escort her to the castle.

***

He could bed his wife. The relief Michael Brodie felt at that sentiment eclipsed the relief of hearing again the languages of his childhood, Gaelic and Scots, both increasingly common as he’d traveled farther north.

To know he could feel desire for his wedded wife surpassed his relief at seeing the castle in good repair, and even eclipsed his relief that the woman didn’t indulge in strong hysterics at the sight of him.

For the wife he’d left behind had been more child than woman, the antithesis of this red-haired Celtic goddess wrapped in the clan’s hunting tartan and so much wounded dignity.

They reached the steps leading up to the great wooden door at the castle entrance. “I wrote to you.”

Brenna did not turn her head. “Perhaps your letters went astray.”

Such gracious indifference. He was capable of bedding his wife—any young man with red blood in his veins would desire the woman at Michael’s side—but clearly, ability did not guarantee he’d have the opportunity.

“I meant, I wrote from Edinburgh to let you know I was coming home.”

“Edinburgh is lovely in summer.”

All of Scotland was lovely in summer, and to a man who’d scorched his back raw under the Andalusian sun, lovely in deepest winter too. “I was in France, Brenna. The King’s post did not frequent Toulouse.”

Outside the door, she paused and studied the scrolled iron plate around the ancient lock.

“We heard you’d deserted, then we heard you’d died. Some of the fellows from your regiment paid calls here, and intimated army gossip is not to be trusted. Then some officer came trotting up the lane a month after the victory, expecting to pay a call on you.”

Standing outside that impenetrable, ancient door, Michael accepted that his decision to serve King and Country had left wounded at home as well as on the Continent.

And yet, apologizing now would only make things worse.

“Had you seen the retreat to Corunna, Brenna, had you seen even one battle—” Because the women saw it all, right along with their husbands and children. Trailing immediately behind the soldiers came a smaller, far more vulnerable army of dependents, suffering and dying in company with their menfolk.

“I
begged
you to take me with you.” She wrenched the door open, but stepped back, that Michael might precede her into the castle.

She had pleaded and cried for half their wedding night, sounding not so much like a distressed bride as an inconsolable child, and because he’d been only five years her senior, he’d stolen away in the morning while she’d slept, tears still streaking her pale cheeks.

He searched for honest words that would not wound her further.

“I prayed for your well-being every night. The idea that you were here, safe and sound, comforted me.”

She plucked a thorny pink rose from a trellis beside the door and passed the bloom to him.

“Who or what was supposed to comfort me, Michael Brodie? When I was told you’d gone over to the enemy? When I was told you were dead? When I imagined you captured by the French, or worse?”

They stood on the castle steps, their every word available to any in the great hall or lurking at nearby windows. Rather than fret over the possibility that his wife had been unfaithful to him—her questions were offered in rhetorical tones—Michael stepped closer.

“Your husband has come home, and it will be his pleasure to make your comfort his greatest concern.”

He even tried a smile, letting her see that
man
and
wife
might have some patching up to do, but
man
and
woman
could deal together well and very soon.

She looked baffled—or peevish. He could not read his own wife accurately enough to distinguish between the two.

“Have you baggage, Husband?”

Yes, he did. He gestured for her to go ahead of him into the hall. “Last I heard, the coach was following, but I haven’t much in the way of worldly goods.”

“I’ll have your things put in the blue bedroom.”

When she would have gone swishing off into the bowels of the castle, Michael grabbed her wrist and kept her at his side. She remained facing half-away from him, an ambiguous pose, not resisting, and not exactly drinking in the sight of her long-lost husband, either.

“What’s different?” He studied the great hall he’d stopped seeing in any detail by his third birthday. “Something is different. This place used to be…dark. Like a great ice cave.”

And full of mice and cobwebs.

She twisted her hand free of his.

“Nothing much is different. I had the men enlarge the windows, whitewash the walls, polish the floors. The room wanted light, we had a bit of coin at the time, and the fellows needed something to do.”

“You put a balcony over the fireplace.” She’d also had the place scrubbed from the black-and-white marble floor to the blackened crossbeams, freeing it of literally centuries of dirt.

“The ceilings are so high we lose all the warmth. When we keep the fires going, the reading balcony is warmer than the hall below it.”

She’d taken a medieval hall and domesticated it without ruining its essential nature, made it…comfortable. Or comforting? Bouquets of pink roses graced four of the deep windowsills, and every chair and sofa sported a Brodie plaid folded over the back. Not the darker, more complicated hunting plaid Brenna wore, but the cheerful red, black, and yellow used every day.

“I like it very much, Brenna. The hall is welcoming.” Even if the lady was not.

She studied the great beams twenty feet overhead—or perhaps entreated the heavens for aid—while Michael caught a hint of a smile at his compliment.

That he’d made his wife smile must be considered progress, however miniscule.

Then her smile died. “Angus, good day.”

Michael followed her line of sight to a sturdy kilted fellow standing in the doorway of the shadowed corridor that led to the kitchens. Even in the obscure light, Michael recognized an uncle who had been part older brother and part father, the sight of whom now was every part dear.

“Never say the village gossip was for once true! Our Michael has come home at last.” Angus hustled across the great hall, his kilt flapping against his knees. “Welcome, lad! Welcome at long last, and God be thanked you’re hale and in one grand piece, aren’t you now?”

A hug complete with resounding thumps on the back followed, and in his uncle’s greeting, Michael found the enthusiasm he’d hoped for from his wife.

From anybody.

“Surely the occasion calls for a wee dram,” Angus said. His hair was now completely white, though he was less than twenty years Michael’s senior. He wasn’t as tall as Michael, but his build was muscular, and he looked in great good health.

“The man needs to eat before you’re getting him drunk,” Brenna interjected. She stood a few feet off, directly under crossed claymores that gleamed with the same shine as the rest of the hall.

“We can take a tray in the library, woman,” Angus replied. “When a man hasn’t seen his nephew for nigh ten years, the moment calls for whiskey and none of your fussy little crumpets, aye?”

Brenna twitched the tail of her plaid over her shoulder, a gesture about as casual as a French dragoon swinging into the saddle.

“I will feed my husband a proper meal at a proper table, Angus Brodie, and your wee dram will wait its turn.”

Angus widened his stance, fists going to his hips, suggesting not all battlefields were found on the Continent.

“Uncle, Brenna has the right of it. I haven’t eaten since this morning. One glass of good spirits, and I’d be disgracing my heritage. Food first, and then we’ll find some sipping whiskey.”

Brenna moved off to stick her finger in a white crockery bowl of roses, while Angus treated Michael to a look of good-humored disgruntlement.

“She runs a fine kitchen, does our Brenna. Do it justice, and find me in the office when you’ve eaten your fill. I’m that glad you’re back, lad.”

He strode off, the tassels on his sporran bouncing against his thick thighs, while Brenna shook droplets of water off the end of her finger.

“Does my uncle often cross swords with you?”