The Laird (Captive Hearts) (36 page)

“You have already endured much as my wife, Brenna. I am more sorry for that than I can say.”

“You’re daft.” Brenna cuddled up to his side and slid an arm under his neck. “You haven’t been home long enough to properly try my patience.” She kissed his cheek. “Go to sleep, and when we’ve rendered every man, woman, and child in the shire feeble with drink, and the old ladies have danced the lads under the table, we’ll clear up a few matters.”

She kept her arms around him, though he was inert in her embrace. He’d survived the retreat to Corunna and worse, and yet, Brenna felt as if she held not a veteran, but a casualty.

For the cheek she’d kissed had been wet with tears.

***

“What has you planted here, quiet as a tomb?” Hugh put the question to his laird, because Elspeth had bid him to keep close watch on the man. Without any intention on Hugh’s part, the entirety of the previous day’s awful developments had come spilling forth in Elspeth’s hearing, and when she’d finished swearing and stomping about the clearing—Hugh had become very fond of this little clearing—she’d charged Hugh with keeping watch over the laird.

While Elspeth tried to split her vigilance between the child Maeve, and a very busy Brenna.

Michael tossed a sprig of mutilated heather off into the undergrowth. “You were right.”

Neil often spoke in the same fashion—a handful of words wrenched from him, leaving the listener to puzzle meaning as much from the silence as the syllables.

“I am frequently right, though my brothers are loath to admit it.” Hugh took the place beside Michael on the bench. “I am guessing, though, in this case, I will rather I was not such an infallible fellow.”

He would rather his laird had started in drinking, as the men in the village had earlier in the day. A Highland celebration that did not start until sundown would start far too late in the day, and waste hours that might be spent dancing and eating.

“You are a good fellow,” Michael said, rising. “What you were right about is I should have searched all of Angus’s effects when I had the chance. Something sticks in my mind about the contents of that wardrobe.”

The contents of that wardrobe would stick in Hugh’s mind when he was an old blind man.

“These are yours,” he said, fishing some letters out of his sporran. “I didn’t read them.”

He hadn’t had to, because they were letters a young soldier sent home to his even younger wife. They would have been full of love and longing, like every letter Hugh had ever written his Anne.

“These were…”

“With that other,” Hugh said, the word “sketchbook” having acquired connotations worse than any curse word. “I don’t think your lady wife ever received this correspondence.”

The clearing was a peaceful place, particularly in late afternoon when the golden summer sun slanted down through the trees, birds flittered about, and a lone squirrel chattered high above. Hugh had made some wonderful memories with Elspeth here, and it was good to have those memories now, when Michael rose off the bench and kicked a sizable rock many yards away.

“I am full of murder,” Michael said softly. “As full of murder as if my regiment had just broken another endless siege, and every soldier fallen outside the city walls is screaming from his unshriven grave for vengeance against the enemy. I am not full of justice, Hugh, I am full of murder. Sick with it, and I fear I’ll find no cure.”

Crazy talk, but the man had cause. “You cannot do murder. You have a party to host.”

Michael sent another rock hurtling down the slope. A deer went crashing up the path a moment later, and the squirrel ceased making a sound.

“Brenna wants to talk to me. The only reason I am standing here in my lordly finery, the only reason I am not sharpening my dirk and hunting my uncle down like the traitor to decency he is, is because my wife has old business to discuss with me.”

“Then you’ll put aside your murder long enough to listen to her.”

The fight—the murder, disgust, rage, whatever—ebbed enough that Michael’s shoulders dropped.

“It’s myself I want to kill most, you know. I’ve puzzled out that much.”

Hugh was far out of his depth, and yet, Elspeth had raised a few questions, about that sketchbook and Neil, and the names—four younger fellows, two lasses—penciled on those six leases set aside from the others.

“How will taking your own life help Brenna now?”

“It won’t. I am sick and reeling, Hugh, but you needn’t worry that I’ll end my life and leave Angus Brodie laird of anything or anyone I care about. I’m the worst husband that ever took a wife, a poor friend, and a miserable excuse for a man, but I’m not that craven.”

For all he was tall and handsome in his fancy dress, for all that his wife probably shared none of those conclusions, the laird was imperiled by what he’d learned yesterday.

“Angus is down at the pub,” Hugh said, rising from the hard little bench. “Every spare servant is getting the castle ready for the gathering this evening, and that means Angus’s house is again deserted. I’ve wondered where the money came from that supports Angus’s fancy mistress in Aberdeen.”

“I know where the money came from,” Michael said, turning his face up to a shaft of sunlight and closing his eyes. “I know exactly where it came from, though now more than ever, proof is necessary.”

He might have been a saint transfigured by remorse, so sorrowful did the sunlight render his features, and in that sylvan, peaceful, fraught moment, Hugh understood something more painful, even, than what he’d seen in those awful drawings.

“A part of you still loves your uncle.”

Michael opened his eyes. “He taught me the dances, Hugh. He taught me to sketch and to fish. So often, when my father could see nothing except that I would be laird someday and must be tough and strong, Angus was the one who made sense of my childhood injuries to pride and distracted me from my sulks. I cannot…”

This was what imperiled an otherwise strong man, a contradiction of the heart so powerful, Hugh could find no words to comfort the one suffering it.

“What will you do, Laird?”

Michael spoke gently. “If it had been Annie in those drawings, Hugh, what would you do? Or Lachlan?”

Hugh said nothing, for the question was rhetorical and the answer was…murder.

“Exactly,” Michael said, heading for the path. “Keep an eye on Brenna for me, please. The guests will soon assemble, and my wife will expect me to open the dancing with her.”

He strode off through the undergrowth, not along the path, but in a direct line up through the bracken and heather toward the empty dower house.

Seventeen

The day had been busy, lovely as only a Scottish summer day could be, and nerve wracking as hell, for Brenna had hardly seen her husband.

“Where’s Michael?” Brenna asked Milly St. Clair. “I thought he was with your baron.”

Milly and her baron were both in borrowed Highland finery, sporting Stuart plaid, as loyal subjects of the Crown were entitled to wear. Through the passage into the great hall, St. Clair and the musicians were adding a table to the buffet already groaning with food.

“He might be among the crowd outside,” Milly said, peering through a window. “Every man, woman, and child has gathered in the bailey, and it’s quite colorful.”

“Michael and I will open the dancing.” Brenna stole her hundredth glance at the clock and wondered why she and Michael hadn’t practiced dancing together. “If he hasn’t left the shire.”

Would her request for some time to clear up old business have sent him away? Could he have known she’d meant for him to learn of her past with Angus?

“You must not look so worried,” Milly chided softly. “This is a party. It’s Michael’s welcome home, and his first celebration as laird. Everybody is intent on enjoying themselves.”

Elspeth was intent on ordering the menfolk around as she had them pick up the empty table and carry it to the other end of the buffet.

“Have you seen Maeve?” For Brenna had delegated keeping track of the girl to Elspeth and hadn’t spotted Maeve since midday.

“She’s probably out among the neighbors, making all manner of new friends with their children,” Milly replied. “We should be out there too.”

Making small talk, while Brenna wanted nothing more than to find her husband and ask him why, after barely speaking to her before bed, he’d slept with his arms wrapped around her through the entire night.

If he’d even been sleeping.

“Elspeth, you’ll cease giving orders now,” Brenna called. “Let the musicians tune up, tell MacDowell to tap the first keg, and get you out into the bailey to snabble Hugh for the first dance.”

Somebody set his corner of the table down on somebody else’s toe, or near enough to occasion foul language, and Brenna’s impatience coiled more tightly. Violence was an aspect of many celebrations, at least once the whisky had been flowing for a few hours and the children all put to bed.

“Come, you two,” St. Clair said, winging an arm at each lady. “The Baron Strathdee will be along any minute, and if we’re not out visiting in the bailey when he arrives to collect his baroness, my life will be forfeit.”

“Or your toes,” Brenna muttered. “Where
is
the Baron Strathdee?”

St. Clair suffered a minute hesitation in his progress toward the French doors opening onto the bailey. “He’s on his way, I assure you.”

“Are we in a hurry, Baron?” Brenna asked, for St. Clair had resumed his escort at a brisk pace indeed.

“We are not, but the evening is pleasant, and I’m sure you’ll want to show off your finery as much as I want to show off my wife.”

What Brenna wanted was to be done with the entire gathering, to find Michael and dragoon him off to share a blanket under the stars. A woman could explain some things better that way, with a wee dram at hand and no castle walls to hear her tales.

“There’s your baron,” Milly said as they emerged from the ballroom onto the terrace. “He looks splendid in his formal attire.”

Michael looked…splendidly furious. Coldly, beautifully furious as he strode up the path from the dower house.

“Stay near me,” St. Clair muttered, sliding an arm around his wife. “Both of you women, stay near me.”

Michael was carrying something. Brenna couldn’t see what, though the crowd parted near the back to make way for him.

“Angus Brodie!” Michael bellowed. “Show yourself now!”

Foreboding rose up inside Brenna, a foreboding that had slept beneath her heart for years.

“Michael,” she called, “now is not the time.”

He gave no sign he’d heard her, no sign he could hear any words of reason.

“Angus Brodie, show yourself to your laird!” Michael’s words rang out over the crowd, who came to an uneasy, milling quiet.

“I’m here,” Angus said, sidling through the throng to mount the steps not six feet away from Brenna. “Are we to have a disagreement before the drinking has even started?”

His attempt at brusque jocularity fell as flat as if it had been dumped over the parapets above.

“We are to have an explanation,” Michael said with soft menace. “All of us here are ready to listen to your explanation.” He spoke from the middle of the crowd, and even as angry as he was, Brenna wanted him closer—wanted him where she could look into his eyes, where she could clap a hand over his fool mouth lest years of silence come to an end in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Something went sailing over the heads of the crowd to land at Angus’s feet.

“Explain that, Angus Brodie,” Michael spat.

“It’s a leather satchel,” Angus said without glancing down. “I suspect half the folk gathered here have owned something similar, and they would not trespass on my privacy to locate this one.”

And abruptly, Brenna was glad for St. Clair’s steadying hand on her arm. Neil MacLogan was at her back, and Hugh on her other side. Wherever Maeve was, Brenna prayed she’d stay there, because the mood of the crowd was anything but festive.

“That,” Michael said, marching up the steps, “is a leather satchel I made for my dear intended years ago with my own hands. It’s a clumsy effort, a boy’s effort, but I labored over it long, wanting the young lady to have the finest gift I was capable of giving her. The leather on the shoulder strap doesn’t match the hides I used to make the bag, because I could not afford to make the entire satchel of the better leather, and I put extra knots in the lacings, so the bag would be sturdy.”

Hugh swore viciously under his breath, while Brenna sustained a discordant sense of relief: Michael was confronting Angus about a stolen birthday gift, not bringing up years of intimate perversion.

Then a sensation like vertigo seized her, for that very bag—

“You stole from your own people,” Michael said, his voice a low, vicious lash. “You took a year’s worth of wool money, saw Brenna and her cousins blamed for your larceny, cast tenants off their holdings when your thievery meant they couldn’t pay their rents, and presented yourself to me as the relation who’d held my estate together when I was soldiering far from home.”

“I recall that bag,” Hugh MacLogan said, staring at Angus’s feet. “I recall how Brenna treasured it, for all it was a homely thing for a lady to carry her belongings about in. And you spent the money you stole from us on your expensive whore down in Aberdeen, didn’t you, Angus Brodie? We went cold and hungry so you could cavort in style, while all held Brenna in contempt for being your victim.”