Page 65 of My Scot, My Surrender
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.
Youwillleave 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.”
Itwasher.
Brandt stared into her eyes—hismother’seyes—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.
