The Laird

by Grace Burrowes

  “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.”

  An ugly murmur went through the crowd, silenced by Neil MacLogan’s voice.

  “Not an expensive whore,” Neil said. “An expensive brothel, catering to men who prey on the very young. The only problem with that brothel is that the woman who owns it then preys on her own clients, charging them exorbitantly for her silence.”

  The ugly murmur swelled and blended with a sense of past and present crashing together over Brenna’s head and drowning her in memories and emotions held in check for years.

  “Michael.” The roaring in her ears and dimming of her vision said she’d soon lose consciousness. St. Clair’s grip on her arm became necessary if she was to stay upright. “Michael, please.”

  He could not hear her over the jeering and accusations of the crowd, and yet, Brenna needed desperately to reach him. “Michael, you must not—”

  Words were useless against the rising tide of outrage coming from the clansmen and women in the bailey. As both nausea and darkness tried to obliterate her will, Brenna used the last of her determination to reach for the one source of strength remaining to her.

  She grabbed Michael’s hand and held on tight.

  ***

  Violence rose up in Michael’s mind and body, a gleeful, primitive impulse that would glory in ending Angus Brodie’s life. He knew bloodlust—any soldier who’d breached the walls of a besieged city knew bloodlust—but this was a far richer inspiration, its current higher, faster, and deeper for being driven by outrage and vengeance.

  “Michael.”

  Somebody tried to get his attention, a pesky little midge of a distraction as the crowd seized on the horrified, delighted sense of having found an outlet for years of misery and victimization. Their hatred of Angus Brodie was converted in a few moments from a shortcoming any Christian would wrestle into ashamed submission, to a source of righteous pride.

  “I’m sorry, laddie,” Angus muttered. “I am so verra sorry. If you must kill me—”

  Laddie.

  “Michael, please.”

  Laddie.

  “This is getting ugly,” St. Clair said. “I’m taking the women—”

  Fingernails bit into Michael’s hand as a whiff of lavender assailed him.

  “Michael, stop them. You must stop them.” Brenna slammed into his side, the very person to whom Angus had done the greatest injury.

  “St. Clair, take my wife—”

  “No! I will not be sent away while you do murder because an old man turned thief! Not murder, Michael, never that. This is our home.”

  Somebody yelled for a rope; somebody answered that a knife would do, and many knives would do even better.

  “Michael, there are children here. You cannot do this.” Brenna’s hold on him became desperate. “You shall not allow this to happen.”

  She was asking—begging—that he shut the beast back in its cave, that he find self-restraint when every instinct screamed at him to do murder, and on her behalf.

  “Michael, please don’t. I could not live with myself if I condoned such rapacious behavior.”

  She’d chosen a word even Michael could not ignore: rapacious, from old Latin roots, meaning to seize and carry off. In his years of soldiering, Michael had seen a bloody lot of seizing and carrying off, but rapacious behavior required first that a man’s honor be carried off. His reason, his pretensions to civility.

  His ability to govern his own evil impulses.

  Neil MacLogan took Angus by the shoulder in a punishing grip, but when he would have shoved Angus down the steps, Michael found his voice.

  “Hold!” Michael used the bellow that could be heard over battle, over riot, looting, and the screams of women subjected to the aftermath of battle. “I am your laird, and I said hold!”

  The crowd settled into an uneasy, seething quiet.

  “He deserves to die,” a woman shouted. “My boys are gone, and I’ll die alone because Angus Brodie had to have his rents.”

  “So he could go d
own to Aberdeen and be wicked!” another called out.

  On Michael’s left, Angus’s expression was a mask of regret that would make not a one of his many victims whole, and yet, he said nothing in his own defense.

  On Michael’s right, Brenna was tucked against him, her cheeks wet with tears.

  He wanted to avenge the wrong done her in the most immediate, violent manner possible, but as Brenna wrapped her arms around him, Michael recognized that impulse as self-serving. If he’d stayed home to be a proper husband to her, Angus’s thievery, at least, could have been averted.

  “Brenna has been wronged not only by Angus,” Michael said, loudly enough that his words could reach every corner of the bailey, “but also by each of us. When Angus stole that money, he took coin from you. He took bread from the mouths of your children and elderly, he took your rents, but from Brenna, he took all of that, and he took her good name.”

  Michael waited for the crowd to again quiet, while Brenna sagged against him, perhaps in relief rather than devastation.

  “Brenna was the victim of a crime, a young woman alone, who’d bargained well for her people, who’d never given any of you cause to doubt her. When you might have taken up for her, you instead listened to Angus—a man you didn’t even like—and you blamed her, cast aspersion on her, and turned your backs on her, though you knew she was without a husband or father’s protection.”

  The ugly mood turned quieter, shame diluting righteous bloodlust.

  “Brenna says that Angus should be brought up before the justice of the peace.” The relief Michael felt in Brenna was unmistakable now. “She says we are not to do murder while our children stand watch. If we bring harm to Angus Brodie tonight, without giving him a chance to present evidence or speak in his own behalf, then we place ourselves beyond the realm of decency, as he has.”

  Milly St. Clair had taken up a position on Brenna’s other side; Sebastian crowded close to his wife. Hugh had his arm around Elspeth, while Neil and Dantry MacLogan flanked Angus.

  “Go home,” Michael said, fatigue pitching his voice lower. “There will be no gathering in the great hall. As your laird, as the man who for years did not protect Brenna Brodie or safeguard her happiness, I am telling you all to go home. Unless she wills it otherwise, you will have to go through me if you seek to take justice into your own hands with respect to Angus.”

  The quiet from the crowd shifted, perhaps in relief that murder was to be denied a village entitled to it, perhaps in shame.

  Vera MacDonald stumped across the cobbles toward the gate. “I have letters to write.”

  Mairead Dolan was next, dragging a random child with her. “As do I.”

  The menfolk were apparently not as willing to heed Michael’s guidance, except for Davey MacCray. “I’ve drinking to do, particularly if you’ll send some of that food down to the village.”

  Martin Dingle fell in step beside Davey as they trailed after Vera and Mairead. “Then I’ve an inn to open and a barrel to tap.”

  The moment eased enough that Michael could wrap his arms around his wife and wonder how in the hell matters between them could ever come right, when Lachlan’s voice pierced the shuffle of feet and the mutters of the dissipating crowd.

  “Laird, you mun come now! Maeve’s on the parapets, and she canna get doon!”

  ***

  Brenna’s head lifted from Michael’s chest. “Michael, we have to help her. The dew falls on those stones, and they’re slick, and she’s—”

  When Brenna might have pelted back into the castle, Michael stayed her by virtue of their joined hands. “Wait, Wife. A crowd up there will only complicate things. I need one man, the same as if we’re changing the flag. You fetch a blanket, for the child will be chilled.”

  “I’ll come,” Neil said. “I climbed to the flagpole as a boy many times.” A look passed between Neil and, of all people, Angus.

  Angus, who was uncomfortable with heights.

  “Don’t stand here arguing,” Brenna pleaded, wrenching free of Michael’s grasp. “I’ll scramble to the roof myself, but we can’t leave her there, frightened, chilled, unable to come down—”

  “I’ll go.” At those words, the remaining crowd, as one body, paused to regard Angus. “I’ll get her down. Neil is a stranger to the child, she’s out of charity with her brother, and I am…I am on good terms with the girl.”

  “Let him come,” Brenna said, and for Michael, that decided the matter. “And on Monday, he goes before the justice of the peace.”

  “Aye,” Angus said, as if Brenna’s pronouncement determined not only their present course of action, but every outstanding issue on all sides.

  They traveled up the shadowed steps in a quiet, tense parade. Michael, Brenna, and Angus, the crowd having again formed below.

  “Wait here,” Michael said to his wife as they reached the top of the steps. “We’ll get her down to you safely, I promise you.” Though slick old stones, an unpredictable wind, and the encroaching night made his promise more of a prayer.

  Brenna wanted to argue, wanted to charge onto the parapets and snatch the child from the roof herself. Michael saw that in her eyes, and saw as well that she trusted him to keep his word.

  “Be damned careful, Michael Brodie. I love you far too much and have waited far too long for you to come home. Step carefully along the side of this mountain.”

  He well could take a bad step and fall to his death, and yet, her words were worth risking his life for.

  “I love you too, Brenna Brodie.”

  They kissed each other on the mouth, a spontaneous mutual impulse that further fortified Michael as he faced the gusting wind coming off the parapets. He took down the rope looped on a hook at the top of the staircase, intent on securing it around his waist, when movement caught his eye.

  Angus had already climbed onto the crenellations.

  Without a rope, while Maeve huddled above them at the base of the flagpole, a silent heap of shivering terror.

  “Angus, for God’s sake get the rope around you.”

  The older man paused, standing on the very parapet, as if he’d soar out over the bailey and take an aerial tour of the loch.

  “I’ll be safe enough, and I’ll make sure wee Maeve is safe too. What could you be thinking, child, to climb up to that flagpole with nobody to mind you?”

  His voice was conversational as he began the ascent that required use of strategically placed rocks up the vertical wall that joined the parapet and the roof over the stairway.

  “I w-wanted to see Ireland.”

  “You might have asked Brenna to show you some picture books and guide books,” Angus said, gaining the lip of the roof. “Or I might have sketched you some landscapes. The wind’s a bit brisk up here, isn’t it?”

  His tone was so matter-of-fact, at complete variance with the terror roiling in Michael’s guts, the wind slapping the pennant and its rope against the pole, and Maeve’s shivering.

  “I wanted to see h-home,” Maeve said, “over the water. Far, far away. I want to go home.”

  With a grunt and a heave, Angus made the perilous transition around the gutters circling the roof, only to slip and scramble for purchase on the climbing stones.

  “Be careful!” Maeve cried.

  “You needn’t worry about me, child,” Angus said, his tone gently chiding. “The matter wants another try is all. Lachlan is fretting about you. He’s a good lad, is Lachlan MacLogan. You should not have given him cause for anxiety.”

  “Lachlan said Ireland isn’t home for me anymore.”

  Angus had again shifted his weight up around the gutters, though the effort had cost him. He remained on the edge of the roof, breathing heavily.

  “You knew the lad was right,” Angus said. “You belong to us now, and you knew you might visit in Ireland, but your family is here now. You must be chilled to the bone, wee Maeve.”

  The last part was the most difficult, because the roof over the steps was of standing seam tin cons
truction and conical. A steep slope, dewfall, age, and in places, moss, made the going treacherous. Had Angus been wearing a rope…

  “Maeve Brodie, you will turn loose of that flagpole,” Angus said, as if teasing her. “This is no place to spend the night when there are entire tables of desserts awaiting below.” He teetered, slipped, and ultimately fell up the roof incline to land beside Maeve at the pinnacle. “It’s a grand view, child. I’ll give you that.”

  “Is that Ireland?” Maeve asked, pointing out over the loch. “That high, high peak behind the hills. Is that Ireland?”

  Brenna came out onto the parapets far enough to pass Michael a soft Brodie tartan, then retreated to the top of the steps, out of the wind.

  “I cannot say if that’s Ireland or Scotland,” Angus replied. “It might well be a bit of Ireland, and there’s none up here to say otherwise, is there? Now give me your hand, child, or Lachlan will get first pick of those desserts. I think you might fancy the lemon tarts.”

  “I don’t like lemons,” Maeve said, unwrapping one hand from the flagpole and putting her palm in Angus’s grasp. “Lemons are sour. I’m scared.”

  “No need to be frightened. Your brother and Brenna are waiting just below, and they won’t scold you, wee Maeve. They’ll scold themselves for not keeping better watch over you.”

  This was the Uncle Angus whom Michael had grown up with, the nice fellow who could put a small boy’s fears and puzzlements into perspective. This Uncle Angus was a source of sense and safety when a lad thought he had few allies and many challenges.

  A man of sense and safety should have worn a rope.

  “Uncle Angus is right,” Michael said. “I’ve owed you an apology since yesterday, Maeve, over that business with the carrots. I was wrong not to say I was sorry sooner. Do you forgive me?”

  He raised the question because he needed the child’s forgiveness, and because he needed to distract her from the peril she faced on her descent.

  “I was mad at you,” Maeve said, the wind snatching at her words. “You didn’t even listen. You never take me up on your horse.”