Brenna’s husband was worried too, and that she could not abide.
“This boot is worn at the heel, Brenna Maureen. Why can’t you allow yourself a decent pair of heels?”
Michael’s patience was worn at the heels too, and yet, Brenna had not yet decided how to answer the questions he was about to ask.
“I would have sent them to the cobbler before winter.” Where they would have sat, unless Brenna had Elspeth take them, and claim them as her boots.
Or perhaps not—not all the villagers swilled Angus’s poison.
Michael’s arm came around Brenna’s shoulders, as heavy and well fitted as an ox’s yoke.
“What happened in the village, Brenna? I had all I could do not to dump my ale over the heads of those vicious old biddies.”
Wouldn’t Brenna have enjoyed that sight—for about half a minute.
“I’m glad you did not. They’re idle gossips and hold me accountable for you being gone so long.” And for their cousins emigrating, and for the wool harvest being thin some years, and the winter early. Angus was nothing if not tireless.
Michael kissed her temple and brought a hand up to massage Brenna’s nape. “You’ve put up with such gossip for years now, and it’s my fault.”
Though afternoon sun poured through the window, fatigue hit Brenna like a wet plaid. Fatigue of the body and of the spirit.
“That feels lovely.” She kissed his cheek for good measure.
“I will get to the bottom of this, Brenna.”
He probably would, and then this happy little mutual wooing of a marriage would be reduced to ashes. “Must you get to the bottom of it this minute? It’s idle gossip, nothing more.”
Idle gossip, veiled looks, subtle delays in service, and so much more that Michael, with his soldier’s instincts, would not miss. Desperation seeped through Brenna’s fatigue, and she cuddled closer to her husband.
“Why did the baker give you the smallest twelve muffins he could find?” Michael asked.
And no extra muffin or biscuit to curry goodwill—Michael would have noticed that too.
“Because the castle is well provisioned,” Brenna said. “Other households need the biggest muffins far more than we do. Are you inclined to nap with me, Husband, or will you natter on about a bunch of pinch-penny Highlanders?”
He wouldn’t natter on, he’d interrogate his wife until years of unfortunate history came tumbling out and Brenna was forced to defend herself and make explanations that could lead nowhere—or worse than nowhere. Angus would see to that.
Michael’s nose pressed gently against Brenna’s ear, and his vetiver scent wafted into her awareness. “Do you want to nap with me, Brenna? In the broad light of day?”
The sunshine was soft, the bed beneath them was soft, and Michael’s tone was softer still. His questions now were not bent on uncovering old miserable truths, but rather, on inviting Brenna to share a future with him, to trust him as a wife trusts her husband on their wedding night.
Sorrow and love tangled up inside her. Love for the soldier who’d come home to her when he might have wandered endlessly, love for the man who’d announced his regard for her without any promise of reciprocity, love for the husband who’d ruin everything with his protectiveness and tenacity.
“I want to love you,” Brenna said, skirting an outright declaration like the coward she was. “It’s a beautiful afternoon, and I want to make love with my husband.”
Even as a slow wicked smile lit Michael’s features, Brenna knew she was borrowing joy against the day when truth intruded like a blight on a marriage that should have taken root years ago, and blossomed by now with many children and many shared memories.
“I want that too, Brenna Maureen,” Michael said, tugging at the laces of his boots. “I’ve wanted that forever.”
Based on Michael’s expression, the trouble in the village, the guests down the hall, the entire universe had left his awareness, save for his focus on Brenna and what would happen in their bed in the next hour.
Someday, he might look back on this hour and conclude Brenna had consummated their vows to distract him from the answers he wanted, and that was a pity, for it wasn’t the entire truth—but it wasn’t untrue, either.
***
Brenna would look back on this day and conclude her husband had manipulated her, but Michael could not bring himself to change course. She hated confrontations, suffered her way through each one, and Michael could gain permission to make love with his wife on this difficult afternoon because she dreaded explaining the situation in the village more than she dreaded his attentions.
Hang the bloody villagers, hang the nip-farthing crofters, hang everything—Michael would make such glorious, tender, ravenous love to his wife that she’d have no choice but to trust him with her secrets.
St. Clair, a former professional interrogator, might scoff at Michael’s tactics. The Baroness St. Clair would likely applaud, though.
Desiring Brenna was simply a gift; wooing her a delectable challenge. Getting the woman out of her clothes might be impossible.
When Michael was free of boots and stockings, he rose, which put the front of his kilt at about Brenna’s eye—and mouth—level.
“Shall you undress me, Wife?”
She set her footwear tidily beside the bed and scooted back against the pillows.
“I think not. A grown man can undress himself if he’s properly motivated.”
Michael considered her suggestion as he arranged his boots beside hers. Brenna wasn’t being entirely shy, though she was being entirely Brenna.
Making him work for his pleasures, which he was more than happy to do.
“Watch, then, and plan our afternoon while you do,” he said, unbuttoning his waistcoat. The better to entertain his wife—and the better to stop himself from falling upon her like a beast—he moved away from the bed, making a proscenium of the hearth rug.
The waistcoat he tossed in the direction of the privacy screen.
“Michael Brodie, for shame.”
Brenna wasn’t teasing, though she was watching, so Michael hung the blasted waistcoat on the back of the rocker and got busy with his neckcloth. The knot had become Gordian at some point in the day’s rambles, but he managed to wrench it open without strangling himself.
When he would have whipped the damned thing out the window, Brenna arched one fine, eloquent eyebrow.
That eyebrow promised that husbands who were cavalier with their clothing would suffer retribution at the hands of their wives. Michael folded his neckcloth and laid it tidily over the back of the rocker as well.
“Am I to be the only one sporting about unclad?” Michael asked as he took a seat on the hearth and started on his cuffs.
“The breeze is fresh. When you’re done dawdling, I’ll consider your question. One doesn’t want to suffer an avoidable chill.”
Because his head was bent toward his wrist, Michael permitted himself a smile.
“I am available to assist my wife,” he said, which was, at last, the blessed, damned truth. He pulled his shirt over his head, draped it neatly over the waistcoat, then rose, clad only in his kilt.
Brenna remained on the bed, crossed-legged and barefoot, but otherwise fully clothed. She gave nothing of her mood away, not in her expression, not in her posture, not in her silence.
“Brenna, have you changed your mind?” Asking the question nigh killed Michael, but never, never, even by persuasion or innuendo would he prevail on his wife for favors she was reluctant to grant.
She regarded his chest, her brows knitting at a particularly bewildered angle, and that’s when insight struck: Brenna wanted to be in charge of this situation, but had no idea how to go on. She needed to be in charge, in fact, but had never traveled the path they would follow.
Whoever had betrayed her youthful trust, whoever had trespassed against her person, had left scars where a woman’s natural sense of her own urges and pleasures should lie.
Michael wo
uld deal with the rage such a conclusion provoked—later. For now, he had a wife to bed. Wearing his kilt and what he hoped was a reassuring smile, he climbed onto the bed and took her hand.
“Brenna, I love you. I want very much to please you, and right now, I’m a bit nervous of my prospects.” More than a bit, though determined, nonetheless. “Can you meet me halfway?”
Even his cock was rethinking those prospects, which was probably divine providence, because Brenna’s hand suffered a minute tremor.
“Meet you halfway?”
“I am your willing slave in all that might transpire in this bed, but a slave needs instructions, hints, the occasional command. A husband needs them even more.” A husband needed them desperately, because so much that was wondrous, sweet, and nourishing to the soul might be lost if Michael misread his wife in the moments that followed.
Those delicate, lovely brows rose on the word husband.
“You are not my slave, Michael Brodie, and I will never be yours. Not your slave, your plaything, your wee pleasure, your little secret—”
She closed her eyes, as if willing herself to put aside the ire gathering in her words.
“I am your husband,” Michael said, kissing her knuckles. “I would like to become your lover, and I would adore having you for mine.” He would like to be so much more to her too—her friend, champion, partner, confidant, most loyal opposition, lady’s maid, companion, and favorite pest, for starters.
Brenna took the hem of his kilt between her fingers and thumb and rubbed the wool slowly back and forth. “I know nothing of being a lover. I know something of the swiving part.”
She spoke with regret and rubbed the wool the way a child grasps a favorite blanket for reassurance.
Perhaps Michael should have waited for the dark of night, not to spare Brenna’s sensibilities, but to spare himself the sight of her bewilderment. He spun a half-truth as delicate as the dust motes wafting about on the afternoon sunbeams.
“This part of being married is not complicated, Brenna Maureen. We touch, we kiss, we pleasure each other, we join our bodies and pleasure each other yet more. If God is generous, we conceive a child, the first of many, and then we sigh and hold each other and wonder at all the loveliness we’ve shared.”
And Michael would wonder, too, at all the years they’d missed. For as surely as desire hummed softly through his veins, so too did regret. He’d made decisions any soldier would be proud of, and served in a difficult position loyally and well.
Those same decisions were something any husband—any lover—would regret for all his days and nights.
“So kiss me,” Brenna said. “We’ve kissed before, and I think I have the knack of that much.”
Her posture was wary, her eyes downcast, and yet she still stroked her fingers over the hem of Michael’s kilt. Michael kissed her palm, and without giving up her hand, stretched out on his back.
“Let the kissing begin,” he said. Let the loving begin, for Brenna did love him. She had to have some form of tender regard for him, or she would not take these steps with him.
He’d amused her, though, and that was good. “I’m to do the work?”
“A little guidance to your husband shouldn’t be too much to ask.” Brenna had been guiding the entire castle for years, navigating past financial difficulties, clan jealousies, Angus’s backward notions, and Highland winters. Appealing to her sense of responsibility earned Michael a considering look that turned into a shy grin.
Brenna swung a leg over his thighs and straddled him. “Fine, then. Here’s a place to start.”
The place she chose to start was a soft, sweet kiss to Michael’s forehead, a benediction, followed by a teasing brush of Brenna’s lips across his—a warning shot.
Michael tucked his hands under his own backside to stop himself from plunging his fingers into Brenna’s hair, freeing her braid, and using it to tug her down to his chest. Instead, he leaned up to keep his mouth on hers when she would have pulled away.
“More kisses, Husband?” she asked, her mouth so close to his, Michael could feel her words brush over his lips.
“All of your kisses. Everywhere. Kiss me with your mouth, Brenna. With your hands, with your hair.”
He wanted her breasts kissing his bare chest too, but the blasted woman was still in possession of every stitch of her clothing. She wrapped a hand around the back of his head and proceeded to divest him of every stitch of coherent thought, until Michael’s chest heaved and he had to sit hard on his hands.
“We can do this without removing your clothes,” he whispered to the lavender-scented warmth of his wife’s throat.
“Without—”
Befuddled. A quick peek told him that’s what that particular angle of her eyebrows meant. He’d befuddled her with this kissing.
“Your clothes.” Michael allowed himself one hand to stroke over her midline. “Your blasted clothes, love. I want my hands on you, but if you’re too shy—”
“I’m not shy,” Brenna said, sitting back and getting to work on her bodice buttons. “I’m modest—there’s a difference when a woman has a husband.”
The difference was too subtle for Michael to fathom as one button, then two, then twelve slid through their buttonholes, revealing a corset cover embroidered with vining pink roses.
“You dressed to go into the village with me,” he said, tracing a rose. “May I?”
“You may.”
He allowed himself the use of two hands for the purpose of unlacing her stays, a tedious, seductive process that did not require them to leave the bed, because his Brenna had worn front-lacing undergarments today, as if she’d anticipated the direction their afternoon might take.
Anticipated—or hoped.
“You do beautiful needlework, Brenna Maureen.” He offered the compliment to distract Brenna from his hands, gradually loosening her bindings. “Perhaps you might embroider one of my dress shirts next winter.”
Brenna covered his hands with her own. “That’s loose enough.”
She rose from the bed, wrestling skirts, bedclothes, stays, and probably a load of modesty as well. Standing beside the bed, she let it all go—every stitch, so the sunbeams from the window illuminated her bare skin, turned her hair to gold and fire, and caught the beautiful turn of her back, waist, and hips.
“I’ve dreamed of you like this,” Michael said, holding up a hand to her. “Longed to see you thus. You gift me, Brenna Maureen, with more than I deserve.”
She put one knee on the bed and leaned over him. “Such blather. Pure husband-talk.” Her hand twitched his kilt aside. “Married-man nattering.” She kissed his chest. “I like it, but mind you limit such nonsense to the bedroom.”
“Brenna, my kilt.”
She was naked, they were to make love, and she was scolding him. If only she’d take off Michael’s damned kilt, his happiness would be complete.
“Aye, it’s a lovely kilt. I’ll make you one out of the hunting plaid, though. It’s a prettier pattern.”
“You’re planning a sewing project, when I want to ravish you.”
Needed to ravish her, and yet, his hands were tucked back under his arse, lest he affix those hands to her breasts, her derriere, and all points in between.
She straddled him, naked as God made her and twice as luscious. “Not ravish, Michael. Love. You want to love me, and I want to love you.”
Likely to silence his assurances that he did love her, Brenna kissed him again, so Michael told her with his mouth, his gusty sighs, and his nose tracing her jaw and ears and collarbones, that he loved her dearly.
“May I use my hands, Brenna?”
“I’ve certainly been using mine,” she said, sitting back. She cupped his jaw with both of those hands and ran her thumbs over his cheeks, where a midday beard made his skin rough. “Men have such different textures.” Her palms flowed down, over Michael’s chest, her nails scraping his nipples lightly.
“I feel that,” he rasped. “I feel i
t right down to my—soul.”
Her smile became that of the enchantress, the siren, the woman in league with passion and wisdom as she did it again, and again.
And again. “Brenna—”
“I said you might use your hands, Michael. On me. If you were of a mind to.”
He had no mind. He had only a throbbing cock and a bone-deep conviction that he’d expire of wanting in the next minute—and be glad of such an end.
“I’ll get even, Brenna Maureen. I’ll get so even—”
He left off trying to form words and instead palmed both of her breasts gently, learning the shape and weight and warmth of them. Brenna watched him, and her breathing changed, became deeper.
“You’re beautiful,” Michael said. “Your breasts are so… I must—” He touched his tongue to her nipple, the way he might have lapped dew from ripe, low-hanging fruit on a bright fall morning. “I love—”
Brenna cradled the back of his head against her palm and offered herself to his mouth. He obliged; he obliged willingly and joyously. Kissing, nuzzling, lapping, and when Brenna’s damp sex brushed over his hard cock, suckling.
“We’ve kissed,” Brenna said. “We’ve touched. We’ve pleasured each other.”
Michael nuzzled the underside of her breast, where the scent of lavender blended with desire. “And?”
“And please join your body to mine.”
Her coronet had come loose, her thick red braid teasing at Michael’s belly. He took up the end and brushed it over her nipples.
“You do it. I’m otherwise occupied.”
For this was important, that Brenna put her hands on her husband and take him into her body of her own volition.
“You like my breasts.”
Michael left off toying with those treasures to study his wife’s face.
“I adore them, but more, I adore that you’ll share them with me. To touch you thus is a precious privilege.” He kissed each breast, hoping Brenna would exercise a few privileges of her own.
She remained still, poised above him, naked and rosy, her hair tousled and the afternoon light slanting across her face. Some sentiment quivered through her, some difficult, passionate declaration.
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