The Laird (Captive Hearts) (40 page)

Somebody started up playing the pipes in the vicinity of the castle above them. Not Davey MacCray, somebody of a more lyrical, lamenting bent. Neil MacLogan, probably.

“Then he wanted to draw me, because I was so pretty. Nobody had hair the same shade as mine. Nobody had such lovely eyes, or such a charming smile. He’d steal into my room at night and draw me in my shift. It was our secret, of course. What child doesn’t think a grown-up’s confidence some sort of treasure?”

“Then he took your nightgown off.”

Michael said the words like a catechism, as if to give Brenna an example for how to simply express such base wickedness.

“Then he took my nightgown off.” And she’d hated it, hated how his gaze changed, so he saw not her, a person, but as nakedness that should be forbidden to him. Worse, she’d hated how shame and a sense of excitement had blended in a child’s heart, to leave bewilderment and powerlessness in place of self-respect.

Along with enormous fears, of abandonment, and of discovery, both.

“What else, Brenna? I know he didn’t stop there.”

Michael held her, as if his arms around her could contain all of her childhood confusion, all the sick dread that bordered on anticipation, all the fear of what might happen next.

“This despoiling took time,” Brenna said. “Months and even years of cozening and moving by degrees. Angus would take a chair by my bed, ask my opinion on this or that, and draw me sitting on my bedcovers. Then he’d take a place at the foot of the bed, until that’s where I expected him to sit when he wasn’t stealing kisses. He moved up the bed by slow degrees, like a wasting disease progresses in increments too small to measure. And one night—”

Abruptly, she could not breathe.

“Easy,” Michael whispered, smoothing a hand down her hair. “It will keep for another time.”

Brenna did not want to endure
another
time
. Though her wish was doomed, she wanted this one night under a full moon to be her unburdening, and when the sun came up, she would bury her past along with the man who’d ruined so much of it.

“This was the night I woke up, in one sense. I was about eleven, maybe twelve. Angus had been making odd comments for weeks, about the march of time, about all beauty fading. The closer he crept to me, the more I tried to resist. I told him I already knew how to kiss well enough. Told him he had enough drawings of me. Told him I was not well. He’d grow sad when I made these comments—if I didn’t hate him for what he did to me, I’d hate him for the way he manipulated with his silences and quiet looks.”

“
I
hate him. I hate him more with every word you speak. I hate that I’m related to him.” And yet, Michael’s hands on Brenna’s hair were so gentle.

“He got under the covers with me, took his dressing gown and nightshirt off, and laid on top of me. I never
saw
him, but I’ll never forget the feel of him, either. He stank of his damned pipes, and he had soft, clammy hands, and he—”

“He took his pleasure on your body, though he left your maidenhead intact.”

Those were not words Brenna could repeat. She managed a nod, and wanted so badly to go back in time and pluck the girl she’d been from the clutches of the monster who’d climbed into her bed.

“The w-worst part…” She took a slow breath, because the words must be set free. “The worst part was that he kissed my hands and told me next time it would be even better. I was crying—silently, but the tears were there—and he told me it would be even better. What sort of man, what sort of
creature
treats a child thus, so she’s crying and naked and horrified, and then offers
that
?”

Michael said nothing—the question had no adequate answer—though to speak it aloud, to cry it out to her husband, unloosed the weeping Brenna had been wrestling back for years.

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?”

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.