superior’s satisfaction.”
Bother his superior.
“Every soldier gets leave, Michael Brodie, and yet, I had no leave from being your wife. I thought about haring off to London, you know. Presenting myself on your doorstep to see if you recognized me.”
He remained silent, did not even try to apologize or explain.
“Your parents separated for all practical purposes,” she said, because any reaction from him was better than his continued silence. “Many couples do.”
“We’ll not separate.” He sounded exactly like his father, and exactly like his uncle, too.
“You failed to consummate our union when you had the chance, went marching off to war for longer than was necessary, could not be bothered to write to your own wife twice a year, and now you come wandering home in expectation of…what? An heir on the way by Christmas? Are you daft? ”
“We’ll not separate, Brenna Brodie. Angus tells me our finances are precarious, many of the tenants have left for the New World, the English pass one tax after another, and the people remaining need their laird and lady. Mother should never have gone back to Ireland.”
“You are so certain of that,” Brenna said, “and you know nothing of it, because you were not here, were you?” The bitterness in her tone must have registered, because Michael’s expression was shocked.
“Michael,” she said gently, “we have been separated for nearly a decade. I no more want to be your cast-off wife than you want to follow in your parents’ footsteps, but creating a family is not another order from headquarters to be dispatched with all haste.”
“I fail to comprehend—” He went silent, and in that silence, Brenna could see him building up a wall of masculine pride and Scottish male stubbornness. If he had his way, he’d bed her by morning, preferably more than once, and mark it off his list of obligations to be seen to.
Her soul—and her dinner—rebelled at the very thought.
“I don’t know your favorite dessert,” she said. “I don’t know which of the dances you prefer, or if you still know them. Do you fancy heather ale, or does your taste run to English drink? Will you spend days out on the moors, shooting as your father did, or have your mother’s head for figures?”
“What has that to do with begetting an heir?” he shot back, moving closer. “A soldier becomes accustomed to both the hardships and the limited comforts available in times of war. I can well assure you, madam, a man and woman need not know each other’s particulars to enjoy—”
Brenna put her hand over his mouth. “If you’re about to compare your wife to a camp follower, Michael Brodie, I suggest you rethink your words.”
He spoke around her fingers. “You find this amusing?”
She dropped her hand. The first time she’d touched him voluntarily, it had been to shut him up, and yes, she found humor in that—also hope.
“I think it’s sad that your only comfort has been whores. I, however, am not one of them.”
Brenna was damned sure of that.
“I never meant to imply you were, but Scottish baronies are not awarded every day.”
“Spare me,” she said, heading back up the path toward the castle. “You care naught for titles and pomp, particularly not the kind handed out by an English sovereign. I have been loyal to you and faithful to you for the duration of this farce of a marriage, Michael Brodie, and if you’re honest, you will admit many other women would not have honored their vows to the extent that I have.”
She left him in the deepening shadows, having resolved nothing, except her own position on the matter of his almighty heirs .
And that Michael did not agree with it.
***
“I’ve bungled things already.”
The sound of Devil’s steady chewing said the master’s clumsy handling of his wife was of no moment to the horse, but then, Devil was a gelding, and the summer grass was lush.
“She’s not the Brenna I left behind,” Michael
Kevin J. Anderson, Rebecca Moesta, June Scobee Rodgers