He wanted to find her…his mother. He wanted to show her what he had become. And then he wanted to leave her with the knowledge that he would never think of her again.
Perhaps it was selfish. Brandt didn’t care.
It was too close. A few days ride, and he would have the answers he’d sought for so long. Answers his father had never been able to truly explain. He’d had an affair with a married woman, but had he loved her? Had he asked her to run away with him, and had she dismissed him without care, as she had clearly dismissed her own infant?
One night, during one of the rare times Monty had been in his cups, Brandt had made the mistake of questioning him and had gotten answers that had cut him to the bone. Loosened by drink, Monty had sobbed, bits and pieces of truth spilling out in incoherent parts. That Brandt’s birth mother had been a Scottish highborn lady. That Monty and Brandt had both been sent away from the clan and begged never to return.
When Monty sobered, Brandt had confronted him with his ramblings, but he had resumed his staunch refusal to talk about the land of his birth or his clan. Only to say that Brandt’s mother hadn’t wanted either of them to come back, and that Brandt had been a mistake she could never recover from.
A mistake.
The knowledge had ruined him.
After that day, Brandt had stopped asking. He’d finally accepted that Monty would never part with the whole truth, and that perhaps, it was for the best. But Anne, even with all the things his stepmother had done to care for him and Monty until she’d died, had still not been Brandt’s mother. He hadn’t seen the same love and adoration in her eyes the way he would when the Duchess of Bradburne would look upon Archer. She hadn’t hugged Brandt, or kissed him good night. She had provided. She had made Monty smile from time to time. And she had never raised her voice, or her hand, to Brandt, but there had always been something missing.
It had settled inside of him, that vacancy. He knew meeting his birth mother would not fill it, but the need to lay eyes upon her was undeniable. Especially now that he knew she was so close. Or at least, her clan. His clan, if the vicar was right. The yearning he’d experienced as a child seemed to return in full force. It boiled down to one thing after all these years; he wanted to know why. He wanted answers. How could any mother abandon her own child?
On his own deathbed, Monty had confessed again. His body had been frail with fever, his eyes rheumy, but he’d beckoned Brandt close. “Sorry, lad,” he’d wheezed. “I never…got chance…tell…truth.” A violent spasm of coughing had rocked through him. “Ye’re…cough, cough…ye must ken…cough, cough…yer mother…”
“All is well, Father,” he’d said, tears falling down his cheeks. “I know what she did. I won’t go looking, I promise.”
“Nae…forgive…I’m no’, no’…”
But words had failed Monty then. Words and then breath. And as the light left his eyes, Brandt didn’t care about what he’d been trying to say. Consumed with sadness, he’d simply wept at the loss of the only family he’d ever known.
Brandt felt a dull stinging in his eyes as streaks of lightning brightened the sky over some distant hills. He blinked, and they were gone. He hadn’t thought of the night he’d lost his father for a long time. Until now. A few moments later, a rumble of thunder made Lockie whinny and rear wildly. Sorcha reached forward to stroke his mane and neck, trying to calm him with some whispered words, but the gray kept tossing his head.
Still without a word, Brandt rode to her side. Having Ares canter beside Lockie seemed to calm the gray, and the two mounts rode in time, ignoring another flicker of lightning and the answering toll of the heavens.
“We should find shelter,” Sorcha said when another jagged fork cleaved the sky in two, the white light tearing long fingers into the rapidly condensing fog. Ares reared up onto his hind legs, which was uncharacteristic for him. Brandt frowned, calming the animal with a soothing click of his tongue, but ignored what should have been a clear warning and urged Ares forward. He scanned his surroundings.
They seemed to have ridden into a rocky valley, with two mountainous hills rising on either side. The misty clouds had dropped to obscure the tops of the hills, as well as smoke trailing up from any nearby homesteads, and the Highland fog was already starting to thicken. Monty used to tell him stories of men who had gotten lost in the mists over the moors with only a few misplaced steps. Soon, they would not be able to see two lengths in front of them. Brandt did not want to put Sorcha in danger, but a different furor kept driving him forward.
“A bit farther,” he managed to say, kicking up his speed. Ares shot forward, with Lockie staying close on his heels.
“We aren’t going to get there tonight!” she shouted.
She meant Montgomery lands. Of course she would know what was consuming his thoughts.
Brandt kept riding, determined to reach the end of this narrow crevasse between the two sharply angled slopes. There had to be something ahead, some barn or ruin, a place for them to spend the night. And by the look of the sky and the thunder and lightning crawling ever closer, it would likely be a long, wet, and dangerous night.
Spitting rain flecked Brandt’s cheeks and forehead, and then within seconds, it seemed, the drops fattened, striking his eyes as he rode straight into a wall of rain. It soaked them almost immediately, their mounts galloping at full speed through the quickly muddying ground as more thunder shook the earth. The sound of it echoed off the hills surrounding them, reverberating in Brandt’s ears, and was made even more ominous by the suffocating mist that wrapped them in thick, heavy bands. The wind had picked up, too, howling a mournful sound like an animal lost in the wilderness. It made the hackles on the back of his neck rise and Ares toss unsteadily beneath his seat.
They needed shelter. Now. Finally, a curve in the terrain opened up to show a stretch of valley, the mists moving low over the grassland.
“There!” Sorcha shouted, and when Brandt followed the direction of her pointed finger, he saw what looked to be a small hut ahead. It was a squat stone lean-to, likely built for sheep or goats wanting shelter from either sun or wind or rain. It would have to do, at least until the worst had passed and the fog had cleared.
He and Sorcha rode pell-mell for the shack. He could barely see three feet in front of him by the time they dismounted. The shed was not empty. Two drenched and forlorn-looking sheep stood huddled in one corner, bleating their terror at each cracking peal of thunder. Brandt led Ares and Lockie next to them, and he and Sorcha took up refuge in the opposite corner. The hut provided more protection from the rain and wind than he’d expected. The fourth side was not fully open, and though it let in some wind, for the most part, it kept the rain out.
Brandt stood, his head nearly touching the stone slab of the roof, and inhaled his relief. He nearly gagged. The stench was unbearable, and not just because of the wet sheep. It stank to high heaven of fermented animal excrement. His eyes met Sorcha’s and she wrinkled her nose with a light shrug.
“It’s not that bad,” she said. “You get used to it.”
“You are the strangest female I’ve ever known.” He arched an eyebrow, surprised at her nonchalant response, though he did not know why. He had known that Sorcha was unlike any other woman of his acquaintance. Any other lady would have shrieked or swooned, but not his fierce Highland bride.
A plucky grin rose to her lips, her face illuminated by a bright slash of lightning. Her face was ghostly in the strange gloom left behind from the flash and the undulating mists. Brandt couldn’t help thinking that she looked like a woodland fairy with her wild hair and shimmering eyes.
“When we were children, my mama always used to say no weeping for shed milk.” She shrugged. “We’re here and we have to make the best of it. It could be worse. We could be out there in that, unable to see our heads from our arses.”
Brandt laughed. Somehow, he could not imagine ever losing sight of that particular asset belonging to her. He’d practically memorized it on the
way to the monastery. “Speak for yourself, lassie. I have eyes in the back of my head.”
“Bold words for an Englishman.”
His humor faded. Not English. Scottish. Montgomery Scottish.
Sorcha must have seen the expression falter on his face in the eerie pale gloom, because she busied herself with feeding the horses some mash from the abbey. Once they were settled, she moved back to the corner with two extra plaids from her saddlebags wrapped over one arm and a bundle of sticks in the other.
“Where did you get those?” Brandt asked, eyeing the sticks.
“I learned the hard way when I was hunting with my brothers to always keep a stack of firewood wrapped in oilskin with my tack. The rain and the mists can roll in quicker than you can blink, and without heat, the Highlands are a frigid mistress. We can probably start a small fire in that corner,” she said pointing to the unoccupied space. “It’s out of the rain and cold. But we’re both going to have to get out of our wet clothes or risk the chill setting in.”
Amazed at her foresight and calm, he nodded, and a few moments later, Brandt could hear Sorcha undressing behind him as he set himself to task with the fire. He tried not to pay attention to the intimate rustling sounds or imagine the glow of her pale skin by storm light. She would look like a pagan Celtic goddess. It took every ounce of willpower he possessed not to turn around and see for himself. When she moved to settle in beside him, bundled in one of the Maclaren plaids, he saw that she had hooked her damp dress and underthings to a nail that jutted out on the wall.
“I’ve left a plaid for you there,” she said and turned her face away.
Brandt noticed the rosy tinge of her cheeks—clearly, she was as potently aware of him as he was of her. And for good reason. She was stark naked beneath that covering. Gritting his teeth, he ignored the dangerous knowledge that made lust simmer to life within him.
He removed his own clothes swiftly and found other nails on which to hang them. By the time he was finished, Brandt was shivering, but the warm woven plaid felt like heaven as he squatted beside Sorcha.
“How long do you think the storm will last?”
“Hard to tell with squalls like these. Sometimes they can last for minutes, other times for hours.” She peered through the door opening. “This one looks like it means to stay a while.”
“We should get some rest, then,” Brandt said. He rose and went over to the horses, where he unrolled the pallet he had saved from Ronan and spread it on the hard, filthy ground behind them. He was grateful for it, mostly for Sorcha’s sake. She might have been accustomed to rough conditions, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t appreciate the small comfort. He also grabbed two apples and handed her one.
“Thank you.”
Sitting together, they ate the fruit in silence, watching the small flames that fought valiantly against the occasional burst of wind that slivered through the entryway. They threw the two cores to the horses. It had become only marginally warmer, even with the body heat of four animals and two humans, as well as the meager heat from the fire, and Brandt noticed that Sorcha was still shivering. He drew her toward him.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her eyes going wide.
“Warming you,” he said. “And me.”
Even through the layers of two plaids, her body was like a slab of ice. Her damp hair had already started to dry in tangled curls, but it seemed that the chill had already sunk into her bones.
“You’re so warm,” she breathed, wriggling closer.
“I spent many cold nights in the stables as a lad. I suppose my body got used to it.”
Brandt tried not to react to her closeness and the faint lavender scent of her—vastly preferable to the other smells surrounding them. She sighed contentedly, snuggling against him. The loose plaid pressed between them was not much of a deterrent to his stiffening body, but Brandt steeled himself. He wasn’t a beast, driven by rutting. She needed warmth, and he was simply providing it so she wouldn’t catch a chill.
Or so he told himself.
“What do you know of the Montgomerys?” he asked, his tone gruffer than he’d intended.
Sorcha went slightly rigid beneath his arm. “Not much. My father used to know the prior Duke of Glenross quite well. Ronan said the old duke used to visit Maclaren on occasion before I was born when he was a lad. But when the new duke—his brother—took his place, things changed. The Montgomerys keep to themselves.” She shrugged, her shoulder pushing into his rib cage. “Much like many other Highland clans, even Brodie. It’s normal…only…”
She glanced up at him, something warring in her expression.
“Only what?” he asked.
“They don’t like strangers.”
His eyes narrowed. “How do you mean?”
Sorcha chewed her bottom lip and sighed quietly. “Well, I suppose you should hear it if they are indeed your kin. There were rumors surrounding the death of the old laird, the Duke of Glenross. He died in a suspicious accident. He was thrown by his horse and fell to his death in the quarry on Montgomery lands, and the one to find him was his younger brother, Rodric.” Brandt stared at her, and she rushed to continue. “Ronan said he heard from Papa that it was near an old mining trench that they used to play in as children. Robert, the old duke, knew that land like the back of his hand. He knew all the traps and the dangerous parts, and yet he fell into a sinkhole.”
“Was it murder?”
“It was never proven, but it was strange that Rodric inherited the title and went on to marry his brother’s widow.” Her voice went quiet. “He’s known throughout the Highlands as the Mad Montgomery because of his rages. Ronan used to tease Finlay, Evan, and me when we were little that the Mad Montgomery was going to come and steal us away in the night.” She shuddered slightly. “I do not know that we will be welcome there, Brandt, even if they are your kin.”
“You will be safe, Sorcha, I promise you,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.”
She drew a slow breath. “I’m not afraid, but I do fear that you won’t find the answers you seek.”
Brandt wasn’t sure he would, either. But it was closer than he’d ever gotten to the truth of who he was. He owed it to himself, and to Monty, to pay his respects. And if he wasn’t welcome, then he would leave.
After a while, they fell into silence, and as her weight slumped into his side, Brandt realized that she had fallen asleep. Gently, he lowered her to the pallet and tucked the plaid around her body. The small fire had already burned out to red embers, so he lay back next to her. Seeking his warmth with a soft sigh, Sorcha turned to fling one arm over him, and his entire body went taut as her forearm draped over the prominent bulge at his groin. He’d sported an inconvenient erection the minute she’d undressed, and now, at her unknowing touch, it swelled further. Christ. Even in sleep, she was going to be the death of him.
He loosed a shaky breath, and angled his hips a quarter turn so that her hand was no longer resting on top of him. And damned if he didn’t miss the slight, innocent pressure of it. God, he was bitterly depraved if that was what he had sunk to. Moving quietly, he shifted his body so that he was resting on his side away from her. Instinctively, Sorcha followed the movement—and the source of heat—snuggling into his back and tightening her hold against his abdomen.
Brandt closed his eyes and tried to ignore the press of a luscious pair of breasts against his back and the spooning cradle of warm female thighs against his buttocks. He groaned as his groin tightened to the point of pain.
It was going to be a bloody long night.
Brandt moaned softly, awakening to warm wet lips nibbling on his chin…and to the sound of low laughter. Opening his eyes, he blinked, and a very large horse’s head came into view as Ares tried to swallow his nose. He pushed the horse away and propped himself up. Sorcha had already risen and dressed and was grinning at him while munching on an apple, her gaze bright with amusement. “Nice dreams?”
“They were quite pleasant until a minute
ago, thank you.”
Brandt pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and stretched, the plaid falling to his waist. Sorcha’s gaze riveted on his bare chest and stomach before she turned hurriedly away toward Lockie. He half wondered what she would have done had he risen upright. His lower half was in no way relieved from the tortures of the night.
“He’s hungry,” she said, and Brandt blinked twice before realizing she was talking about Ares. “But I didn’t want to let him graze without checking with you first. Seems he had the same idea.”
“By eating my face?”
“He was simply bidding you good morning with a kiss,” she said with an irrepressible wink over her shoulder.
He’d have vastly preferred a kiss from her in the vicinity of his lap.
Smirking at the bawdy thought, Brandt grabbed the tartan and stood, making no move to disguise the conspicuous tent at his hips. He was rewarded with a smothered gasp as he strode from the shack. Take that, Highland sprite.
Outside, dawn was breaking across the cloudless skies in bright, pinkening touches. The storm had left everything washed and gleaming. Even the grass seemed greener and the patches of heather more purple. Tucking the plaid around his waist and throwing one end over his shoulder in a loose imitation of what he’d seen on Ronan, Brandt inhaled deeply and moved around to the back of the hut to take care of his morning needs.
“The plaid suits you,” Sorcha said when he returned. Her voice had taken on a husky quality, no doubt from the eyeful she’d gotten.
“It’s a bit too free for me,” he said, grinning and arching an amused eyebrow. It had the intended effect. Her cheeks went scandalously pink as she caught his meaning that he was bare-arsed beneath the fabric.
My Scot, My Surrender (Lords of Essex) Page 15