The Laird

by Grace Burrowes

She was so brisk, so fragile, and so wise. They had needed to talk, they had needed to make love, and they had needed—desperately—to laugh so hard their bellies ached. Now, they apparently needed to face the coming day.

  And to find some proper clothing. The thought made Michael smile as he pulled his shirt over his head and got it right way around, for life did go on, and that was good.

  “St. Clair, good morning. My lady.” Michael stayed sitting on the blankets while Brenna passed him his shoes.

  “Strath—Michael. Baroness. I trust we’re not intruding.”

  “Another five minutes, and you would have been,” Michael said, lacing up his shoes. “Pardon my blunt speech, Baroness.”

  “I like your blunt speech,” Brenna said. “St. Clair, I know you’re a guest, and English, and allowances must be made, but why are you hauling her ladyship about in the morning dew, when the woman needs her rest?”

  “I slept,” Milly St. Clair said. “We camped, more or less, by the loch. The entire village was there too. Seems it was a night for admiring the stars. Also drinking whisky and telling stories. Neil MacLogan can make even bagpipes sound sweet.”

  What were they trying to say? Brenna had her shoes on, a shirt and skirt, also a few underthings. Her hair was in complete disarray, and the whole of her smelled of lavender and clover.

  “I will fall in love with you every day for the next hundred years,” Michael muttered to his wife. Such extravagant sentiments were their due, after the night they’d put in. Also the God’s honest truth.

  She winked at him. “I’ll fall in love with you every night, then. We’ll share the work. Yonder baron has something on his mind.”

  St. Clair usually did, but for the first time in Michael’s memory, his former commanding officer looked worried. Michael rose, his shirt half-buttoned, his kilt hanging low on his hips, and helped Brenna to her feet.

  “Spit it out, St. Clair. Is the clan emigrating en masse? Are we being sued for restitution of the funds that were stolen?” He would not say his uncle’s name, might never say it again.

  “It isn’t like that,” St. Clair said. “Your people undertook to do a bit of housecleaning, and they hoped you and your lady would come admire their efforts.”

  Whatever this housecleaning was, St. Clair was nervous about it—though his baroness was not.

  “The sun will soon be up,” Brenna said, taking Michael by the hand and leading him toward the path along the base of the hill. “I, for one, need a decent breakfast and some strong, hot tea. I want to explain to Maeve that there’s been an accident involving…there’s been a sad accident, but we’re inviting her sister for a visit at the earliest opportunity.”

  Of course they were.

  Michael let Brenna chatter as they made their way to the shore of the loch, while ahead of them, St. Clair held hands with his wife. As they emerged from the trees, the sun crested the horizon, turning the surface of the loch into a bright blue mirror of the morning sky.

  “This looks like the aftermath of a battle,” St. Clair observed, for everywhere, bodies sprawled, some on blankets, some around the remains of campfires. The MacLogans were heaped together near a wagon, no horses or bullocks in evidence.

  “I’d say the whisky won,” Michael observed. “What’s piled in the wagon?”

  “Have a look,” St. Clair suggested, turning a half barrel bottom up so his lady might take a seat.

  The first impression to hit Michael was a whiff of pipe smoke. Then the sunlight landed on the gilt edge of a framed painting that stuck out from a pile of clothing—kilts and cloaks in the Brodie plaid, boots and shoes, a great lot of maroon velvet.

  “It’s all from the dower house,” Brenna said. “Everything he owned.” Around them, people stirred, stretched, and yawned. “I can smell that god-awful tobacco. What is it all doing here?”

  “MacLogan called it cleaning house,” St. Clair said. “Your people thought the time to remove the last tenant’s effects was now, not when some future Lady Strathdee might have need of the place.”

  For even St. Clair apparently understood the present Lady Strathdee would never dwell in that house.

  “Thoughtful of them,” Brenna said. “I suppose we’re to burn it?”

  “I like the idea of burning it,” Michael said before Brenna’s thrifty nature could ruin a wonderful gesture from their people. “I like it a lot.”

  Brenna drew closer to the wagon, though she touched nothing. “I don’t want to see even the ashes on the shores of our loch. I don’t want any reminders at all.”

  Footsteps crunched on the stones behind them.

  “You’ll want this, if you’re going to light a bonfire.” Hugh MacLogan had a box in his hands, and a crease across his cheek from having slept on something. Neil and Dantry stood a few paces back, looking every bit as disheveled, and slightly worse for drink.

  “Tap another keg,” Michael said, “and send word to the castle we need some food down here. Bread, cheese, ham, simple fare, for we’ve a bit more work to do.”

  “What’s in the box?” Brenna asked, regarding Hugh as if his offering smelled much worse than pipe smoke.

  Michael spared MacLogan the admission. “Journals are in there, Brenna, along with sketchbooks and other garbage that should never again see the light of day.”

  MacLogan set the box down. “We opened none of it, and we made sure nobody else did either. We packed up the bedroom and allowed no one through its door while we did.”

  Brenna pulled her shawl tighter in a gesture that had nothing to do with the breeze coming off the loch.

  “Our thanks,” Michael said, hoping he still had a handkerchief in his sporran. “If you could spare us a bit more effort, that wagon needs to be emptied.”

  “Emptied?” Hugh asked. “It took half the night to fill it.”

  They’d be a lifetime emptying that bloody wagon, nonetheless. “What I have in mind won’t take long at all.”

  ***

  The flames were beautiful.

  As the sun spilled down the hillsides and the scent of heather blended with a whiff of lamp oil, the rowboat bobbed gently a few feet from the loch’s stony shore. Books caught first—art books, mostly, but not all. The velvet bed swagging caught, and the scent of the smoke became more acrid.

  The little vessel rode low in the water, its makeshift sail luffing gently in the breeze. When Michael set the last box aboard at the stern, Neil cast the rope securing the boat to shore into the fire.

  The silence on shore was broken by the sound of Michael splashing up onto the beach in his bare feet. He put his arm around Brenna’s shoulders, and that was…that was wonderful.

  As wonderful as wrestling the truth with him through the night, as wonderful as making love with him, as wonderful as waking up to teasing and more honesty.

  And to friends and family, and this.

  “How deep is that water?” Brenna asked, letting her head rest on Michael’s shoulder.

  He was quiet for a moment, while the flames rose higher and the boat made a stately progress toward the middle of the loch.

  “My father told me it was at least two hundred feet deep at the center. Deep enough.” The boat slowed as the flames enveloped the cargo from bow to stern. “I love you, Brenna Maureen Brodie.”

  Their marriage had acquired the loveliest punctuation. Any sentence, any sentiment, might be anchored with those three words, and they’d always be appropriate.

  “I love you too, Michael Brodie.”

  The crowd on shore watched in silence as flames consumed the sail. The boat floundered and then slipped into the depths of the loch—stern, amidships, then bow.

  Until all that was left were placid, concentric surface ripples that faded before they reached the shore.

  “Well done,” Neil MacLogan said softly. “Well damned done.” He swung his niece up onto his back and headed off toward the trees, his brothers and his nephew following. The rest of the crowd dissipated with no more ceremony
than that, until Brenna was alone with her husband on the quiet beach.

  “I favor the names of the angels,” Brenna said, turning to tuck her arms around Michael’s waist. He was lean and strong, full of courage and the occasional flaw, and he was hers. He’d been hers even when he’d been off soldiering too.

  “I’m named for—” Brenna felt the understanding blossom in Michael as he went silent. “What if we have a girl, Brenna? Or all girls? You’d name a girl Gabriel or Raphael?”

  “Michaela,” Brenna said. “Let’s go home, Husband. I’m in need of a bath, and our bed.”

  “I’m in need of my wife.”

  Whatever that had to do with anything.

  Arm in arm, they wandered up the path, past the clearing, through the postern gate, and into the gardens. All the while, they argued over what to name their firstborn, until Brenna diplomatically changed the subject to how they should go about tearing down the enclosure of the walled garden.

  Their first of seven daughters arrived a mere eight and a half months later, and they named her Gabriella Michelle Maureen Brodie. She was red-haired, freckled, full of energy, and the terror of all save the St. Clair’s oldest boy, who alone among all the children, could safely refer to the young lady as Gabby.

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  Acknowledgments

  Have you ever been working on a jigsaw puzzle, and had the sense that the pieces you needed most must be the ones the cat has batted under the rug? Then somebody who has more worthy things to do than work on a jigsaw puzzle comes strolling by and randomly plucks five pieces from the pile and puts them exactly, precisely where you just spent half an hour square-pegging the wrong pieces.

  And then the nice person wanders off, and you finally, finally have all four corners and most of the border.

  Joanna Bourne (The Rogue Spy) did that for me with this book. I was utterly bumfuzzled with regard to some plot points—all right, the plot in general—and she asked me a few surgically precise brainstorming questions, and lo, my book came together in my mind.

  Thank you, Jo, for all the wonderful books you write, and for the wonderful questions you ask at the most wonderful time.

  In case you missed the rest of the Captive Hearts series, read on for excerpts from

  The Captive

  and

  The Traitor

  Now available from

  Sourcebooks Casablanca!

  From

  The Captive

  In his personal hell, Christian Donatus Severn, eighth Duke of Mercia, considered the pedagogic days the worst of a horrific lot—also the most precious. The days when his captors used his suffering to teach the arcane art of interrogation might cost him his sanity, even his honor, but they also ensured he would some day, some night, some eternity if necessary, have that sweetest of satisfactions—revenge.

  “You see before you the mortal form of a once great and powerful man, Corporal,” Girard said, pacing slowly between the table his prisoner had been lashed to and the damp stone wall where the corporal stood at attention.

  Girard was a stranger to hurry, a necessary trait in a torturer. A big, dark, lean acolyte of the Corsican, Girard lived in Christian’s awareness the way consumption dwelled in the minds of those it afflicted.

  “Our duke is still great, to my mind,” Girard went on, “because His Grace has not, as the English say, broken.”

  Girard blathered on in his subtly accented French, and Christian translated easily. As Girard’s ironic praise and patriotic devotion blended in a curiously mesmerizing patter, Girard’s superior, Henri Anduvoir, lurked in the shadows.

  Girard made a science of extracting truth from those reluctant to part with it, and pain was only one tool at his disposal.

  Anduvoir, on the other hand, was a simpler and in some ways more-evil soul, plainly addicted to hurting others for his own entertainment.

  Christian filled his mind with the lovely truth that someday Anduvoir, too, would be made to suffer.

  “Yet. Our duke has not broken yet,” Girard went on. “I challenge you, Corporal, to devise the torment that will break him, but be mindful that our challenge grows the longer His Grace is silent. When God put Mercia into our hands months ago, we sought to know through which pass Wellington would move his troops. We know now, so what is the point of the exercise? Why not simply toss this living carcass to the wolves?”

  Yes, please God, why not?

  And then another thought intruded on Christian’s efforts to distance himself from the goings-on in that cell: Was Girard letting slip that Wellington had, in fact, moved troops into France itself? Girard played a diabolical game of cat and mouse, hope and despair, in a role that blended tormenter and protector.

  “We yet enjoy His Grace’s charming company because the duke serves another purpose,” Girard prosed on. “He did not break, so we must conclude he is sent here to teach us the breaking of a strong man. One might say, an inhumanly strong man. Now…”

  A boot scraped, and Christian divined that Anduvoir had come out of his shadows, a reptile in search of his favorite variety of heat.

  “Enough lecturing, Colonel Girard. Your pet has not told us of troop movements. In fact, the man no longer talks at all, do you, mon duc?” Anduvoir sucked a slow drag of his cigar, then gently placed the moist end against Christian’s lips. “I long for the sound of a hearty English scream. Long for it desperately.”

  Christian turned his head away in response.

  “A quiet man, our duke.” Anduvoir expelled smoke through his nose. “Or perhaps, not so quiet.”

  He laid the burning tip of the cigar against the soft skin inside Christian’s elbow with the same care he’d put it to his prisoner’s mouth, letting a small silence mark the moment when the scent of scorched flesh rose.

  The blinding, searing pain howled from Christian’s arm to his mind, where it joined the memory of a thousand similar pains and coalesced into one roaring chant:

  Revenge!

  ***

  “Lord Greendale was a man of great influence,” Dr. Martin said, clearing his throat in a manner Gilly was coming to loathe.

  “His lordship enjoyed very great influence,” Gilly concurred, eyes down, as befit a widow.

  The bad news came exactly as expected: “You should prepare for an inquest, my lady.”

  “An inquest?” Gilly gestured for her guest to take a seat, eight years of marriage to Greendale having taught her to produce an appearance of calm at will. “Theophilus, the man of great influence was universally disliked, approaching his threescore and ten, and the victim of an apoplexy in the midst of a formal dinner for twenty-eight of his most trusted toadies. What will an inquest serve?”

  “Countess, you must not speak so freely, even to me. I will certainly be put under oath and questioned at length. I cannot imagine what the wrong words in the hands of the lawyers will do to your reputation.”

  His wrong words, over which he’d have no control, of course. A just God would afflict such a physician with a slow, painful death.

  “Reputation matters little if one is to swing for murder.”

  “It won’t come to that,” Martin said, but he remained poised by the door, bag in hand, as if lingering in Gilly’s presence might taint him not with her guil
t—for she was innocent of wrongdoing toward her late spouse—but with her vulnerability to accusations.

  “What am I to be charged with?” Stupidity, certainly, for having married Greendale, but Gilly’s family had been adamant—“You’ll be a countess!”—and she’d been so young…

  Dr. Martin smoothed a soft hand over snow-white hair. “You are not accused of anything.”

  His lengthy, silent examination of the framed verses of Psalm 23 hanging over the sideboard confirmed that Gilly would, indeed, face suspicion. Her life had become a series of accusations grounded in nothing more than an old man’s febrile imagination.

  Because the physician was eyeing the door, Gilly fired off the most important question, and to Hades with dignity.

  “Who’s behind this, Theophilus? My husband is not yet put in the ground, and already you’re telling me of an inquest.”

  “Lord Greendale himself apparently told his heir to see to the formalities.”

  And to think Gilly had prayed for her husband’s recovery. “Easterbrook ordered this? He’s still in France or Spain or somewhere serving the Crown.”

  “Easterbrook would have left instructions with his solicitors, and they would in turn have been in communication with King’s Counsel and the local magistrate.”

  Men. Always so organized when bent on aggravation and aspersion.

  “Shall you have some tea, Theophilus? It’s good and hot.”

  “Thank you, my lady, but no.” Martin turned toward the door, then hesitated, hand on the latch.

  “You needn’t tarry, Theophilus. You’ve served the family loyally, and that has been far from easy.” He’d served the family discreetly, too. Very discreetly. “I suppose I’ll see you at the inquest.”

  He nodded once and slipped away.

  As Gilly’s tea grew tepid in the pot, she sat down with pen and ink, and begged an interview with Gervaise Stoneleigh, the coldest, most astute, most expensive barrister ever to turn down Greendale’s coin.

  And that decision very likely saved her life.