“Are you ready?” Sorcha said from behind him.
Brandt nodded and palmed the ring he’d given her on their wedding day, feeling oddly tight in the chest as he slipped it onto her third finger. “You should wear this. It’s yours.”
They both stared at their joined hands, though her expression was unreadable. The ring meant little…a hollow symbol of their agreement, but Brandt couldn’t help the jolt he felt at seeing it there once more. Releasing her, they left their room, moving toward the great hall.
“You’ve gone quiet again,” she whispered as they walked. “Are you reluctant to see Lady Glenross?”
Brandt shook his head, but again, couldn’t speak. It wasn’t reluctance to see Rodric’s wife consuming him right then, but a different reluctance, one that shot spirals of unreasonable discontent through him.
You will leave her with the Brodie, he told himself.
He felt Sorcha’s eyes on him as they entered the great hall but didn’t acknowledge her glances. What had gotten into him? One night in a real bed with the woman he’d taken to wife only to see her to safety, and here he was second-guessing their plan. Though in truth, he knew it was more than just that. It was something that went deeper than even their attraction to each other. Though he couldn’t articulate the words to describe it, he felt it clear to his marrow. She was in his blood and in his bones.
He was almost relieved to see Lady Glenross seated at the laird’s table, her too-familiar eyes rising to meet his as he approached. She was perched in the same chair as the night before. Aisla was beside her, but the rest of the benches and tables in the hall were unoccupied.
“Please forgive the laird’s absence,” Lady Glenross rasped, as if her throat ached. Brandt noticed her red-rimmed eyes and determined the duchess had been weeping.
Sorcha stopped at the chair where Callan had been seated last night and gripped the back of it. Lady Glenross hitched her eyes on Sorcha’s hands as she pulled out the chair, her pale brows narrowing into a frown. Aisla only smiled at Sorcha’s defiance of Rodric’s rule, and the duchess, though still frowning, did not comment. Brandt took the seat beside his wife.
“There is nothing to forgive,” he replied, his tone clear. Rodric’s absence, though rude, was not unwelcome. Besides that, he’d spent the night in a fitful state, distracting himself from his wife’s glorious body curled up against his, by thinking of Lady Glenross and all she’d said during last evening’s sup. Unless the duchess ran off in tears yet again, Brandt was determined to wring out some definitive answers from her today.
“His behavior last night,” Lady Glenross began, “was unpardonable. He’s a blunt man and doesnae take well to—”
“Forgive my interruption, Your Grace, but you needn’t apologize for him. There is no one here who will judge you for his actions.”
A new sheen of tears lit Lady Glenross’s eyes as she nodded and attempted a smile. They broke their fast in peace, all the while Brandt noticing his wife’s returned appetite. It gave him unexpected relief to see her eating. The last several days had been hard, their meals sparse, and last night she’d barely touched a morsel with Rodric breathing down her neck. When Sorcha sat back in her chair, the mountain of eggs, haggis, and oatmeal gone, Aisla laughed.
“Mrs. Hildreth will be happy to ken ye liked her cooking, Lady Pierce.”
“Please, call me Sorcha. If she set another plate before me now, I’d kiss her on the cheek,” Sorcha replied, also laughing. “And will likely need to be rolled from the hall.”
Aisla pushed back her chair and stood. “Come. I’ll take ye to the kitchens for a few oatcakes and then out for a walk.”
Sorcha got to her feet. “I’d like to check in at the stables to see how Lockie and Ares are, if you don’t mind.”
She glanced down at Brandt, who nodded, appreciative that she’d thought of his mount. She cared for Ares, and that meant something to him.
After she and Aisla left the great hall, their arms linked, Brandt turned back to the duchess. “We need to speak.”
“The ring on Lady Pierce’s finger,” she said. “Where did ye get it?”
Her words surprised him with their force.
“It was my mother’s,” he answered.
Lady Glenross dragged in a shaky breath, the lines fanning out from her eyes glistening with tears. “Ye’ve kept it all this time?”
“It was all I had of her.”
This answer seemed only to wring a suppressed sob from her, and she covered her mouth with her hand.
“You know who I am,” Brandt hedged. “I’m related to the late duke. Aren’t I?”
She nodded, the motion made choppy by emotion. “He was yer father.”
A burning pain radiated out from his heart, through his chest, all the way into his soul. Monty was not his father. That was what he’d been confessing on his deathbed after all. Brandt’s father was the dead Duke of Glenross. He lifted his eyes, which had fallen to his empty plate before him, back to Lady Glenross.
“And my mother?” he pressed.
But he knew. The way she gazed at him—those changeling fey eyes that were twin mirrors of his—with so much agony and guilt, gave away her answer before she’d even parted her lips. “I never dared hope I would see ye again,” she whispered. “’Twas too painful. Too difficult to bear.”
It was her.
Brandt stared into her eyes—his mother’s eyes—and nearly drowned under the rush of the thousand questions he’d struggled with all his life. He drew a shattered breath to quiet the ragtag emotions clamoring for space in his head.
“You sent me away,” he said, the most basic, most obvious statement tumbling out of his mouth first.
“Aye,” she replied, her hand coming down flat upon the table, as if reaching for him. There were two chairs between them, though, and Brandt had the urge to stand up and fling them through the air.
“I thought he would kill ye,” she said, blinking back tears. They continued to fall, streaking down her cheeks.
“My father?”
She shook her head sharply. “Nae. Robert adored ye. We both loved ye, Brandall, more than anything in this world, and ye hadn’t even yet been born.”
Brandall. What had she just called him? The answer to that could wait.
“Then why send me away?” he demanded, his jaw so tight it ached. “Who wanted to kill me?”
Again, Lady Glenross shook her head, shutting her eyes as if against a terrible memory. Her voice lowered to a whisper, though the great hall was empty, and on the dais they would have had a clear view of anyone approaching. “I was entering my confinement when Robert fell in the quarry. He had no business being there that day; he’d told me he and Rodric were riding out on a hunt. But Rodric said it wasnae so. He had men claim he’d been with them, but there were whispers, ye ken. And there had never been any love lost between Robert and his brother.”
As she spoke, Brandt began to cobble answers together.
“He wanted to be laird, Rodric did, and Robert had often told me to be wary of his brother. To keep a keen eye on him.”
“Sorcha told me about the rumors,” he admitted.
Lady Glenross looked at him, her eyes tortured with the secrets she’d kept and the sorrow she’d borne all these years. “I thought he’d take another bride. A younger lass, perhaps. But Robert wasnae sooner in the ground than Rodric was telling me that we were to be wed. That he’d take on my bairn as his own.” She paled, her chin quivering as she looked around the great hall, as if checking to be sure they were still alone. “But I dinnae trust him. Lad or lass, my bairn would be the true Montgomery heir, and Rodric would no’ hesitate to cut down anyone who stood in his way. But it was that or leave Montgomery forever.”
Brandt felt restless, his muscles kinking and begging for action. What he wouldn’t give right then for Rodric to come walking into the room. To confront the man who had ruthlessly stolen a father, a future, and a family from him. He was not a violent man by
nature, but he yearned for justice with a desire that frightened him with its intensity.
“So you sent me away with Monty,” he said. Then corrected himself. “Pherson Montgomery.”
“Pherson was my cousin, and there was no one else I trusted more. Rodric had everyone terrified; he made every clansman, down to the last child who could speak, all pledge our oaths of allegiance to him, and when one man—one who had been openly suspicious of Robert’s death—refused, Rodric ran him through with his sword.”
The vicious act reminded Brandt of Malvern. His mind leaped to Sorcha, and he fought the desire to stand up and go after her, to see her safe at his side. She was with Aisla and, though the young girl wouldn’t be much when it came to protection, he knew his wife could protect herself. He also hoped that Rodric wouldn’t be fool enough to lay one finger upon a Maclaren.
“You didn’t have to stay,” he told her. “You could have left.”
“And go where? A pregnant woman on her own traveling through the Highlands? I wanted ye alive and healthy, and Montgomery was the only home I had with midwives I trusted.” She smiled at him, a sad, pitiful grin misted by more tears. “And ye don’t ken Rodric. Even if I had run, he would have hunted me down and killed us both. Nae. I could no’ put ye in danger, my sweet boy. The moment ye were born, I had to say good-bye. For yer sake.”
He looked away from her, unable to see her tears and not feel the answering tug at the base of his throat. He didn’t want to feel sorry for her. He’d spent so many years hating her. Despising her for what she’d done. And yet within the space of a few minutes, everything he’d thought he’d known about his birth mother had started to crumble around him.
“The midwife and the lasses attending the birth vowed to protect ye. They spread word ye were weak and struggling to breathe. That ye had a strange rash and fever. They would no’ let anyone into the birthing room, and no’ a soul wished to enter, either.” She bit her lower lip and looked to her lap, where her hands were twisting a cloth napkin. “A day after ye were born, the midwife announced ye had passed. They took a bundle from my room, wrapped in layers of muslin, and buried it. They said the laird didnae even bother to look upon the wrapped bundle.”
Brandt frowned, his chest feeling as though a boulder had been dropped upon it. “What did they bury?”
Lady Glenross exhaled sadly. “Pherson had come to my room to fetch ye in the night. He brought with him a dead piglet. ’Twas similar in size.” She lifted her shoulder in a helpless shrug and let it drop heavily.
He startled both her and himself with a harsh bark of laughter. “A piglet? You traded me for a piglet?”
Wounded eyes snapped to his. “I traded my heart. I would have done anything to protect ye, even if it meant losing ye.”
His mouth flattened out again, the humor gone. In its place settled the weight of empathy. Damn it all, he’d never imagined he’d feel a shred of compassion for the woman who had given birth to him and sent him away. Why hadn’t Monty told him? But as soon as the question formed, the answer did as well. Nothing would have stopped Brandt from riding, hell-bent on revenge, into the Highlands, straight to Montgomery lands. Monty had been protecting him.
He’d been doing exactly what Catriona, the Duchess of Glenross and his heartbroken mother, had trusted him to do.
Brandt tapped his fingers against the wooden grain of the table, uncertain what to say. He’d always had so many questions, but now they were all changing. He leaned back in his chair, numb fingers drumming the table, and perused the hall…the aged stones surrounding him that made up his home. A burst of anger shot through him at the childhood he’d lost. He would have grown up running barefoot in this hall, being read to by the hearth, eating at this very table with people who loved him.
Monty had loved him; he had no fault with that.
But he’d been cheated of the life that had been owed to him…that he had been born for. All those fears of not knowing who he was and where he belonged came back to haunt him. He was a Montgomery, which meant he belonged here. Or did he?
“You called me Brandall,” he murmured.
She sniffled, and after a moment, cleared her throat. “’Tis yer name. Robert said ye would be christened Brandall if ye were a lad, and so I asked Pherson to change it slightly…just in case Rodric ever discovered my deceit and tried to hunt ye both down.”
It was why, then, Monty had changed his own name as well. And fled to Essex. The new Duke of Glenross would have had a difficult time finding him there.
“Rodric never discovered it, though?” he asked. “Your ploy?”
Catriona—his mother—sighed. “Nae.”
“And you married him.”
“’Twas no’ a choice,” she whispered. “He didnae give me one. I would have met the same fate as Robert, and ye would have nae father or mother. I wanted to survive for ye, if one day ye came back. Pherson was supposed to tell ye all when the time was right.”
“He tried,” Brandt said. “He died before he could.”
The great hall was silent, the echo of their hushed voices growing fainter by the moment. They were alone, but it wouldn’t matter if everyone was still present and listening. Brandt wagered from Rodric’s behavior that the duke already suspected who he was. And if he didn’t, it would be only a matter of time. Which meant he and Sorcha would both be in danger. At the thought of Sorcha, Brandt’s legs itched to stand.
“It has no’ all been a nightmare,” the duchess said, watching him with her heart in her haunted eyes. “I have Patrick, and Callan, and Aisla. They’re naught like him.”
Brandt held his tongue. Callan and Aisla, perhaps. But Patrick, though he’d appeared to soften for his mother, seemed the very image of his overbearing father. His murderous father, Brandt thought.
“But ye, my son,” she said, even quieter now. “Ye are the true heir. Ye have every right to challenge the laird now. And look at ye.” Her eyes shone with something unfamiliar to Brandt. An emotion he’d seen in the Duchess of Bradburne’s eyes whenever she’d gazed upon Archer. He thought it might have been pride. “Ye’re a grown man. Ye’re strong and proud, and so verra much like yer father, mo gràidh. My beloved.”
Brandt’s mind automatically shot to Monty, the man he’d called father for twenty-five years. But it was not Monty she spoke of, it was Robert.
Robert Montgomery, the murdered Duke of Glenross.
His first thought should have been to avenge his father’s name and his own stolen birthright, but instead Brandt’s first thought went to his wife. She was not Lady Pierce…she would be Lady Glenross, a duchess and wife to a laird of a powerful clan. Though Brandt had given her a false name, he had sworn an oath to protect her, and that much was still true. But to do that, he would have to take back what was rightfully his.
He would have to take back Montgomery.
Chapter Nineteen
Tucked away in a cleft in the hulking cliffside, the sprawling Montgomery keep was situated on a ruggedly beautiful piece of the Highlands. The bright morning sun shone down upon the grass in the valley, gilding the coarse grasses with golden light and touching upon the fir trees that grew in thick groves on the hillside. Patches of purple heather popped up here and there, and brightly colored spring wildflowers flourished in the rich, arable soil. Though Sorcha was a Highlander through and through, and Maclaren was beautiful in its own way, there was something wild and untouched about these jutting crags and lush glens that seemed to be just beyond the reaches of human civilization. Its ungovernable nature reminded Sorcha of Brandt.
As she walked along with Aisla after checking on the horses—Ares was almost fully recovered and would be ready to travel with another day or so of rest—Sorcha couldn’t help wonder what her husband was doing. She hoped that in speaking with the duchess, he would find the answers he’d been searching for. Now that he had mentioned it, that morning at breakfast Sorcha had been hard-pressed not to notice how similar their eyes were. Lady Glenross’s were
the same shimmering brownish-green hue, flecked with hints of gold.
In truth, they’d been identical to Brandt’s.
And Sorcha would know. Those eyes of his had pierced her to her very soul the night before, when she’d sunk to her knees and done indecent things that would make a courtesan blush. But she had pleased him, that she knew. Brandt’s eyes had been clouded with desire and passion, and he had splintered apart in her arms as she had in his. He had trusted her enough to let go, and that had been more satisfying than the release itself. Sorcha wrapped her arms around her middle with a sigh.
“Thinking about yer husband?” Aisla asked with a sly look as they ambled down a narrow path from the rear of the keep toward the loch that glittered in the distance.
Sorcha blinked. “No.”
“Aye, I reckon ye were,” the girl said with a wicked grin. “Ye get that faraway look in yer eye, and ye bite yer lip as if ye were thinking about him kissing ye.”
Sorcha felt her face redden but kept her mouth shut. She couldn’t very well insist she hadn’t been thinking about kissing him when she had been…though not exactly in the place Aisla had been thinking. Her flush ignited.
“I kenned it,” Aisla crowed. “Although, I would be doing the same thing if I were married to a tall, handsome fellow, too. Yer man is easy on the eyes. I’ve seen the way all the kitchen lasses look at him and twitter.” She giggled and rolled her eyes. “’Tis the same way they carry on for Patrick and Callan. Though I prefer dark-haired men, myself.”
The candid admission made Sorcha arch an eyebrow. At fifteen, Aisla could be considered as being of marriageable age. Not many men were of the same mind as her own father that fifteen was far too young. It was why he’d insisted the betrothal contract with Malvern state she had to be nineteen before any marriage banns could be posted.
Sorcha grinned at Aisla. “Have you a sweetheart, then?”
Now it was the lass’s turn to blush, but she skirted the issue by segueing into a monologue about being trapped at Montgomery and not having any chance to meet other suitors. “We never have any visitors, ye ken,” she chattered to Sorcha. “Ye’ve been the first in months. And Papa will no’ let me go with him to Inverness.” She sighed morosely. “I ken I’ll have to marry Dougal Buchanan, the smelly, pock-faced lummox.”
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