He strode deeper into the room, hoping that perhaps there would be a painting of the laird’s sisters. Deep down, Brandt felt that he would know his mother. But other than a few paintings of some older women and one painting of a family with two girls and two boys, one of which Brandt wagered was the laird at a young age, there was nothing that gave him any hope at all.
Frustrated, he’d turned on his heel and headed back down the gallery, when his gaze fell on a curtained portrait in an alcove at the end of the hall. Black silk hung over its surface, as if someone had wanted to banish the person in the portrait from the others. Brandt held his breath as he lifted one edge of the silk. His heart sank as his gaze took in a pair of strong male legs encased in boots and a kilt. It was not a woman.
He tugged harder on the silk, and to his dismay, the delicate fabric tore into ragged pieces and floated to the ground at his feet. But the portrait was fully exposed. It showed a man on a horse. A warrior in a Montgomery tartan with a broadsword held high and a proud look on his face. Brandt staggered back, suddenly understanding what all the clansmen had been whispering about.
Laird Robert Montgomery was Brandt in the flesh. From the deeply bronzed red of his hair to his stern features and long brawny stature. The only difference was the eyes—they were the same wintry blue of his brother’s. Brandt drew his fingers along the edges of the man’s plaid.
Had this been his uncle? Had he been the one to send Monty away with the newborn babe he’d fathered with one of the duke’s sisters? Had it been some form of revenge? Punishment? Brandt’s heart ached for his father, who’d been banished so callously from his clan for falling in love with a woman he could not have. Sisters of dukes did not marry stable masters.
And neither did daughters of dukes.
Suddenly, Brandt couldn’t care less about his parentage. His heart ached for the woman he’d left in his chambers. The one he’d cut down so callously, before she’d had the chance to offer him her misguided affection. He had nothing to offer her in return, though, and if he accepted or encouraged her esteem, she would pay the price for her foolish choices.
Just as Monty had.
Chapter Fifteen
To Sorcha’s surprise, there was a knock on the door and men waiting at Morag’s side with a wooden tub. She had just splashed her face with the cool, refreshing water in the basin, and, though she’d been grateful for the chance to wash away the half-day’s worth of travel dust, she longed for a bath. No sooner had she thought it than the knock had come. The servants emptied pails of steaming water into the tub until it was full. Some of them stared openly at her, and Sorcha resisted the urge to duck her head.
“Will ye need help, lass?” Morag asked. Sorcha shook her head, and the old woman curtsied, shutting the door behind her.
Stripping bare with a delicious sigh, she sank into the warm water, scented with rose petals and lavender. God, she missed baths. She loved riding and hunting, but being on the road took its toll. It made her long for the simple luxuries of home. After scrubbing her entire body from top to toe, she wrapped herself in a long length of toweling and sat before the fire to dry and comb her hair. She heard the chamber door open and close, but it was only Morag with a gown in hand. Still, she crossed her arms over her chest.
“Yers was filthy, so I brought ye another one.” Morag studied the pale blue muslin she held with a critical eye. “Ye’re a tall lass, but it should fit.”
“Thank you,” Sorcha said with a grateful smile as the maid curtsied and left.
She’d brought no other suitable gowns with her, and all of the clothing in her pack needed washing or mending. She hadn’t wanted to go to dinner in the laird’s hall looking like a pauper with borrowed threads from charity, but she didn’t have any other choice. At least now she would not bring shame to Maclaren. Or her husband.
Not that he would care if she appeared clothed in rags.
Sorcha blinked. She hadn’t allowed herself to think of Brandt since they departed for Montgomery. After what had happened between them at the river, she’d wanted to kick herself in the teeth. Repeatedly.
The bluntness of his response had burned through to her bared heart like hot embers upon an open wound. Even now, the memory scalded. What had she expected? That he would fall to his knees and confess his devotion? In truth, a small part of her had hoped he would. But his cruel words had shattered her girlish fantasies.
He did not want marriage. Nor did he want her.
Oh, he wanted her body. She’d felt his arousal on the way to the keep. But Brandt appeared to view any intimacy between them as weakness. Or idiocy. It seemed he was far more adept than she was at keeping his desires separate from everything else. Perhaps all men were built that way, able to take pleasure and only pleasure when it was given, without the inconvenient entanglement of feelings.
Well, no matter. Soon, they would be at Brodie, and she could put Brandt Pierce behind her for good, as he clearly wanted.
The chamber door opened and closed again, and she did not look up, thinking it was only Morag. But after a moment of strange silence, she did glance up. It wasn’t Morag. Brandt stood watching her, his face pale as if he’d seen a ghost himself. Sorcha did not want to care, but she couldn’t curb her tongue…or her sudden burst of concern.
“What is it?” she asked.
A muscle jumped in his stubbled jaw as he scraped his fingers through the bristle. “I saw a portrait of the old laird,” he said. “The clansmen were right to stare. I look like him.” He drew a slow breath. “Exactly like him.”
Brandt walked toward the bed and sat on the edge, one hand raking through his hair. Sorcha clutched the toweling tighter as she stood, setting the comb down on the chair.
“What is it you’re thinking?” she asked, her mind searching for possible explanations. The resemblance to Rodric was strong, and the stares of the Montgomery people had been too pointed to ignore. “That your mother is one of the duke’s sisters?”
She walked toward him, her bare feet cold upon the stone floor. Brandt had asked Rodric earlier about other siblings, and she had suspected that was the reason why.
“Perhaps, and she must have had a tryst with Monty,” he answered, his hand falling from the crop of hair he’d been clutching in frustration and landing upon his thigh. Without thinking, Sorcha reached for it, curling her fingers over his with a soft squeeze. He needed comfort, and she couldn’t be so cruel as to withhold it. No matter if she still wanted to throw an overflowing chamber pot at his head.
“If she’s married, she may not be here, then,” she said, thinking of her own sisters, sent far away to other lands when they’d wed.
Brandt nodded, his fingers shifting to wind around hers. “I know. My father told me my mother had already been married when I was born, but perhaps she had been staying here at the keep only for a time. I don’t know.”
It could have been the long shadows of the fading light outside and the flickering flames from the fire, but for the first time Sorcha noticed circles under his eyes. He’d been sleeping lightly in order to keep watch over their encampments every night for days on end. He had to be exhausted.
“I’ll dress, and you can bathe,” she said, attempting to pry her fingers from his. “We are eating soon.”
He held on, though, his thumb rubbing the heel of her palm in slow strokes.
“It wasn’t an act,” he whispered, looking up into her eyes. “It wasn’t just a role.”
He was speaking of that morning.
“We needn’t discuss it again,” she said, dropping her eyes and twisting her hand to free her fingers from his. He stared down at his hand, looking torn, like he wanted to say more. After a protracted moment, Sorcha expelled a slow breath. Regardless of the hurt she suffered, she knew he would need her for what was surely to come at supper, and like her touch, she would not withhold it. “I’m here for you, Brandt. With the Montgomerys.”
His eyes met hers. “How can you be so kind after I’ve bee
n such a beast?”
Kindness was the least of her worries. She wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled. She wanted to run from this dank, ugly place with its maudlin ghosts. She wanted him to let go of the past that haunted him. Sorcha shook her head and formed the brightest smile she could manage. “The only beast here is me, and don’t you forget it. Now bathe, or we shall be late.”
She kept the toweling around her as she took up the blue muslin dress Morag had left for her and moved toward a wood paneled privacy screen. She dressed and braided her hair while Brant washed. After a decent amount of time had gone by without splashing noises, a furtive peek through a thin gap in the screen showed he had finished and had dressed himself in a pair of clean buckskins and a linen shirt. Which was well and good, for if she had to look upon his sleek, muscled limbs again, the keen ache she already felt for him would have sharpened into something unbearable.
Once she’d wound her braid into a loose knot and secured it with a few of her own pins and combs, she and Brandt walked together toward the great hall. They had both agreed that it would be wise to leave her wedding ring tucked away in Brandt’s pocket. At least for the moment.
Sorcha expected to hear a boisterous cacophony of voices and laughter, along with the clink and crash of cutlery and glass as they entered the hall, but instead, she found a muted din. There were two long tables with benches set up in the hall, each one filled with Montgomery clansmen. Sorcha’s feet faltered as she and Brandt walked toward the dais at the end of the cavernous room upon which the laird’s table stood. Though there was a fire within a giant hearth, candles on every table, and a number of guttering wall torches, the room was still cloaked in shadows.
Eyes turned toward them as they approached the laird. Stares were nothing new to Sorcha, but what Brandt had whispered earlier was unmistakably true: these stares were not solely aimed at her and her scars. These were fastened on Brandt.
There were five open seats at the laird’s table—the one to Rodric’s right, and four more placed farther down the table, two on the side closest to them and two next to two younger men. Each man stood, their resemblance to the duke clear, though one was fairer than the other. The dark-haired one, to the right of the duke, speared Brandt with a narrow-browed stare and an unmasked grimace.
“Welcome, my honored guests,” Rodric boomed, banging his tankard down on the table so that the entire hall went silent. Sorcha was certain she didn’t miss the sarcastic emphasis on honored, as if it was some kind of well-intentioned slight. Or maybe it was the way the laird enunciated each syllable with such cold, courteous precision. It felt like she was caught in a Shakespearean production she’d seen once in London with her mother.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” she heard Brandt say.
“These are my sons,” Rodric said, a loose hand gesturing toward the two men. “Patrick,” he said, and the dark-haired man nodded once, “and Callan.”
Patrick looked to be Brandt’s age, perhaps a few years younger, and Callan, the lighter-haired one, closer to Sorcha’s own age. He pulled out the chair beside him, and Brandt took it. Sorcha started to sit beside Brandt, but the duke cleared his throat. “Ye are to sit over there, Lady Pierce,” he said, indicating an empty seat on the other side of the table.
Surprised, Sorcha paused, but she kept her back straight and her shoulders pressed down, and moved toward the three open seats on the other side. She had always been welcome to sit wherever she liked at her father’s own table, and when visiting other keeps, she would sit beside one of her brothers. It was also customary at Maclaren, and with most other clans, for wives and husbands of the laird’s family to sit beside each other. She would have liked to have been able to sit beside Brandt as his wife, if only for the familiar comfort of the only face she knew within the room. But as she took the seat farthest to the left, directly opposite from Brandt, she refused to show her unease.
Tankards were filled with ale and goblets with wine, but the food had yet to be served. Sorcha was starving, and yet she knew she wouldn’t feel like eating a bite of anything the maids would be whisking in on large platters soon. Across the table, she met Brandt’s eyes. They were hard and watchful. He didn’t like this place any more than she did, and she had no doubt the endless looks being thrown his way every few moments were frustrating him. She understood how wearying it could be.
Patrick and Callan got to their feet as a young woman entered the great hall, her strides swift and sure as she approached the tables. She appeared to be no more than sixteen, with sparkling brown eyes set in a heart-shaped face. Her long, fair hair matched that of Callan’s and had been woven into one thick plait down the center of her back. Brandt stood as well, though Sorcha noted Rodric did not.
“Father,” the young woman said, stopping at the head of the table to bob a curtsy to Rodric.
“Mr. Pierce, Lady Pierce, this is my daughter, Aisla,” Rodric announced, and when Aisla turned to bob a curtsy to Brandt, she did not falter or stare as the others had. Perhaps she had already heard about his resemblance, and she was too well-bred to make any open notice of it. Aisla then turned to take her seat on the left-hand side, and Sorcha prepared herself. It was instinct, really, the steeling of her spine before meeting a person for the first time. But again, the girl only smiled and murmured a soft, pleasant greeting. Her eyes stayed firmly hitched to Sorcha’s own, without roving over her scars.
“Welcome to Montgomery,” she said, leaving the chair directly next to Rodric open.
“Thank you,” Sorcha replied. Just then, a few words rose above the subdued conversation in the room. “Face” and “worse than I heard” reached her ears before Aisla picked up her goblet of wine and asked her a question, loudly, as if trying to distract her.
“Where do ye and yer husband travel to, Lady Pierce?”
She took a sip of her wine and, looking into Sorcha’s eyes, smiled. She was a pretty young woman, a few years younger than Sorcha. She had sharp, memorable features, with a wide mouth, pale hair, a sprinkling of freckles over the bridge of her nose, and a pair of eyes—not brown as Sorcha had first thought—almost the color of copper.
“West,” she answered, thankful for Aisla’s attempt to spare her from the gossiping tongues of the Montgomery men. It hadn’t been necessary, and it made her feel only guiltier for lying about their destination. But she didn’t like the bleak, tense air of this keep, or the pointed, appraising way Rodric looked at her and Brandt. If Malvern’s men tracked them here, she didn’t trust him or his people to guard the truth of their true destination.
Aisla, perhaps sensing her reticence, did not ask for anything more specific. Another kindness.
“Yer husband,” Aisla said next, her attention flicking down the length of the laird’s table. “He’s Sassenach?”
Her eyes lingered on Brandt for a few moments.
“No,” Sorcha answered. “Scottish born, with Montgomery kin.”
Aisla turned back to her, her coppery eyes wide. “Montgomery?”
Sorcha didn’t know if it was her place to give away her husband’s father’s name or not, but she sensed something within Aisla that she had in Morag—a willingness to help. Perhaps, also, the possession of answers. But Sorcha wasn’t able to speak before the men in the hall rose, yet again. Looking toward the entrance to the hall, she saw another woman threading between the row of tables. Lady Glenross, she determined.
Though older, with fine lines near her temples and around her mouth, she was beautiful, like Aisla. Lady Glenross had given both Callan and Aisla their fair coloring, and as she approached the table, Sorcha noted the regal poise of her back and chin. She’d nearly reached the laird’s table before her steps slowed, then stopped completely. Her attention seemed to be hinged on Brandt, who’d also stood in greeting. But the moment he lifted his gaze, hers floundered and fell away.
With every passing second, Lady Glenross’s pale complexion grew more pallid. Her initial expression had been shocked, as if she had no
t been forewarned in advance of their visitor…or his uncanny resemblance to her dead husband.
Recalling Morag’s words, Sorcha’s gaze swung to the duke, who was watching his wife with narrowed, calculating eyes. Of course—he’d planned it this way. Rodric was relishing every moment of what had to be an awful shock for her. It was clear the lady still grieved the loss, and it was also abundantly clear that the current duke resented it. Something was at play here, something sinister. Sorcha didn’t like it.
Aisla stood. “Mother?”
The woman faltered on her next step, and Callan’s chair scraped against the stone floor as he pushed it aside. He reached Lady Glenross within seconds, but by then she was already shaking her head and apologizing.
“I am fine, perfectly fine. I was a little dizzy for only a moment,” she said, Callan leading her to her chair anyway. Two bright spots of color had suffused her cheeks by the time she sat beside Rodric, and as she reached for her goblet of wine, Sorcha noticed her hand was trembling violently.
Rodric, who had also remained seated for his wife’s entrance, let an uncomfortable—somewhat punishing—minute pass by before finally opening his mouth and introducing her. “Mr. Pierce and Lady Pierce, this is my wife, Catriona, the Duchess of Glenross.”
“’Tis my pleasure.”
Lady Glenross kept her eyes on the table, though no food had yet been delivered. She had not greeted Sorcha as warmly as Aisla had, but it wasn’t due to blatant rudeness. No. Sorcha knew from the woman’s dazed and distant expression that she was a thousand miles away in her own mind. The goblet rose to pale lips in an unsteady hand until the entire glass of wine was drained. It was just as quickly refilled by a waiting servant.
Sorcha glanced toward Brandt and found him sitting rigidly in his chair. His jaw was tight, his nostrils flaring. She cursed Rodric and his stringent rules separating the men and women at the laird’s table. It wasn’t normal asking an honored guest to sit apart from her husband, but nothing about this wretched hall was normal. Though the men conversed, it was in low, controlled tones, not the boisterous noise she was used to in her own keep, interspersed with the animated sounds of laughter and praise.
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