Chapter Eighteen
Brandt stretched his legs under the heavy sheets and blankets and turned his face away from the bright morning sunlight slanting through the mullioned window. He didn’t want to wake up, even though the temptress he’d slept beside all night had been sliding her bare legs along his for the last quarter hour as she slowly rose out of her own dreams.
Despite most of the Montgomery keep’s occupants being less than friendly, the bed that Sorcha had finally persuaded him to sleep in last evening had cradled his travel-weary back and limbs with all the tenderness of a pair of angel’s wings. Having Sorcha tucked beside him, her rhythmic breath gusting against the hollow of his neck, had only added to the sensation of being transported to heaven.
Then again, the hard, pulsing tightness of his erection this morning had a distinct quality of hell.
Brandt was trapped between two desires as he lay there in bed, listening to the sounds of a castle rising for the day—chickens clucking, voices out in the courtyard, footsteps passing by their bedroom door. He wanted Sorcha on top of him, rubbing out his need with frantic thrusts of her hips, and he also wanted her away—so that he could stop wanting her so damn much.
She was passion incarnate, and she made him yearn with the same ravenous need. All he had to do was think about her, kneeling between his legs, her sweet velvet lips wrapped around his length, her tongue running in slick, endless strokes from root to tip, and another jolt of pressure filled his already straining erection. Damnation, if he didn’t get up right now he’d lose whatever sanity had kept him from spreading her legs and doing the unthinkable.
In the light of morning, he wasn’t quite sure how he’d kept his trousers on all night, the fall buttoned up. But when Sorcha had asked him to hold her as she slept, he hadn’t been able to deny her. Not after the pure, raw pleasure she’d given him. And herself, he knew. She’d come apart in his lap, her center warm and wet through her drawers as she’d rocked against his thigh. It wouldn’t have taken much to shift her to the side, drive himself into her, and find pleasure together, as one.
But then what? Brandt squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to force away the dull ache of his groin. Hell, they were less than a week away from Brodie lands. After one more day of rest for Ares, they could be on their way again. With the Brodie and her sister, Sorcha would be safe from Malvern, and his promise to Ronan would be met. Brandt would not leave her until he was confident in her brother-in-law’s ability and promise to protect her. Only then would he be on his way back to Essex. Back to the life he’d led before he’d ever visited that damned fated common lands festival.
He tried to picture it in his mind. Worthington Abbey and the stables. Pierce Cottage, where he lived, quiet and content. And alone. Bits and pieces came to him, but they seemed to float through his mind, refusing to settle into place. Instead, Sorcha’s light lavender scent wafted into his senses, and the bright, clear picture of her riding Lockie, galloping in front of him, her long raven hair loose behind her, struck him. He heard her chiming laughter in his memory. Saw the bridge of her nose crinkling whenever she smiled.
A knock on their bedroom door brought him back to his senses. Brandt shifted himself up against the pillows as a maid swept into the room. It wasn’t Morag, but another older woman, and she paid the two of them no mind at all as she went to the windows and pushed the drapes aside, letting in more light. Sorcha rolled over and stretched, her feet tickling Brandt’s shins.
“The duchess is waiting for ye both in the great hall to break yer fast,” the maid announced as she placed a fresh ewer of water and a new length of toweling near the washbasin.
“Thank you,” Sorcha said, her eyes tracking the maid as the woman laid out Sorcha’s own dresses, now laundered and mended, upon a bench at the base of the bed.
Brandt shifted himself away from Sorcha but didn’t get up. It was bad enough his own wife was going to get an eyeful of his uncomfortable state. He didn’t need this maid blushing as well.
As soon as the maid had closed the door behind her, Sorcha sat up, clutching the blankets to her breasts. She wasn’t unclothed, but the shift she wore was of a fine cambric. When she’d climbed into bed, the torchlight doused and the fire in the hearth crackling low, he’d still been able to see the dusky points of her nipples.
His lips twitched in a half grin. “Need I remind you about the river?”
Her chin hitched as a playful scowl pinched her features. Sorcha dropped the blankets and swung her legs over the side of the massive bed. She strode to the bench, collected one of her dresses, and then, with a sly glance over one shoulder, replied, “I don’t think we would arrive in time for breakfast if I reminded you of the river.”
Brandt held his breath as she disappeared behind the privacy screen to dress. Sweet hell, she was going to drive him to madness. He needed no reminder to envision her, emerging drenched from the chilled water, her nipples taut, her hips swaying freely, every stunning inch of her figure outlined. While the sight of her in wet linen had been downright erotic, he’d still had no idea what she looked like fully naked. Brandt frowned, remembering her plea not to remove her shift. He’d forgotten, too caught up in the feel and taste of her to put much thought to it. Now, he wondered.
He got up, his erection barely constrained by the cut of his trousers, and quickly washed at the basin before throwing on his shirt and boots. By the time Sorcha emerged, dressed, his erection had ebbed, if only because of the frigid water in the ewer. He did not know if he could withstand another chaste night in that bed with her.
Hell, he’d never imagined avoiding his husbandly duties would be so excruciating.
The annulment was nonnegotiable. He needed to give his word, for her sake, to the Brodie laird, that she remained a virgin for her next husband.
His stomach clenched with a rush of something unpleasant. Next husband. It wasn’t the first time he’d considered the true reason for leaving her a virgin, but it was the first time he felt like punching something hard because of it.
“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.