Page 94 of My Scot, My Surrender
“Honestly, Brandt,” the Duchess of Bradburne, Lady Briannon Croft, admonished with a smile as he kissed her knuckles. “Are you evernotinjured?”
“I like to keep things exciting.”
Briannon smirked as her eyes jumped to Sorcha, still wildly mud-splattered from her fight in the tunnels. “I see that.”
Brandt tightened his fingers on his wife’s, drawing her forward. “Allow me to present my wife, Lady Sorcha Montgomery, the Duchess of Glenross.” He turned to her, allowing the depth of his esteem for his unequaled, battle-weary wife to ooze out of every pore. Brandt didn’t care if he looked infatuated. He wanted the whole world to know she was his. “This is His Grace, the Duke of Bradburne, and Her Grace, the Duchess of Bradburne, my dearest friends.”
Sorcha curtsied to the duke and duchess, looking every inch the warrior goddess she was, her face held high. “It’s an honor, Your Graces.”
“A pleasure,” the duchess said, her smile growing warm. If she’d taken notice of Sorcha’s scars, she gave no indication of it. “Please call me Briannon.”
“And you must call me Sorcha.”
The duchess linked arms with his wife, uncaring of the mud caking her clothing, and they walked back into the keep together. Sorcha shot him a perplexed look as they went, but Brandt could only smile. Archer shrugged, seeing the exchange. “You know Brynn,” he said with a resigned shake of his head.
Brandt did. The duchess was stronghearted and stubborn. She and Sorcha would get along well…or pummel each other to pieces. He had a feeling that it was going to be the former. He hoped.
“So did I hear you say your wife is Lady Glenross?” Archer asked, the question of the last name clear as they turned to follow their wives. “And a duchess? What have you gotten yourself mixed up in this time?”
“Alas, no diverting fake identities, I’m afraid,” Brandt said after a moment. “Apparently, I’m laird here and rightful heir to a dukedom. As it so happens, Monty wasn’t my father, after all. It’s a long story. I’ll tell it to you over a pint, shall I?”
Archer had never looked so utterly confounded. “Are you telling me you’re a bloodyduke?”
“Ah-ah, don’t forget ‘Your Grace,’” Brandt said, wagging a finger. “It’s only proper.”
Archer vaulted an amused brow. “Don’t get cocky.”
“I learned from the best.” He grinned at the man who’d been like a brother to him his entire life. “Not bad for a stableboy from Essex, eh?”
“You were never just a stableboy, Brandt,” Archer said quietly, his teasing turning serious. “You were always a Croft to me, a true brother. When your messenger reached me in London telling of your troubles with Malvern, I dropped everything and mounted a company immediately. Brynn insisted on coming to your aid as well, despite her recent confinement and my foot being well and truly down.”
Brandt’s voice was choked with emotion. “Thank you.”
“You would have done the same for me. Youhavedone the same for me. You saved my neck too many times to count, Brandt.” They both knew he was speaking of his risky exploits as the Masked Marauder before he married Briannon. Archer shrugged. “You led us a merry chase, but we managed to track you all over Scotland. Though as it turns out, you had everything well in hand.” His eyes flicked to Malvern, who was being led away in irons toward the dungeons. “The marquess is wanted for extorting hundreds of thousands of pounds from the Crown in false land and tenant fees. I’ve been tasked with seeing him back to London to be tried for his crimes, if that’s well and good by you. He’ll likely be hanged.”
“I’ll be happy to see the last of him.” Brandt suspected Sorcha and her family would as well. He would do everything in his power to make sure that Tarben Castle and its holdings would be returned to the Maclaren.
Archer paused at the top of the stairs, his gray eyes twinkling. “Despite your wounds, it pleases me to see you well and content.” The duke’s tone grew grave. “When I learned who you’d taken to wife, I’ll admit I had my doubts. She has somewhat of a…reputation across Scotland. It has a lot to do with how we tracked you so easily, in fact. The Beast of Maclaren is quite a moniker. But you are, aren’t you? Happy?”
There was no malice in his friend’s tone, and the truth was, Sorcha wore the nickname proudly. Beast or not, he wouldn’t change one hair on her head, or even a single scar. Brandt heard his wife’s low laughter echo through the open doors of the keep, and he smiled. Happy seemed too mediocre a word to describe what he felt, but even he couldn’t find another that could do his feelings justice. There was no simple word to describe Sorcha and their relationship, or to encompass the enormity of what he felt for her.
With a nod, he looked his best friend in the eye. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Montgomerys had been starved of boisterous celebration for so long that when they began to rejoice a few days after their victory, no one seemed able to stop. Even the death of the previous laird did not curtail the festivities; a murderer would not be mourned.
One feast led into another, one song to dozens more; the great hall was overrun with dancing and singing and booming orations by men who, by the end of each spirited account, had been the very warrior to chase off the enemy and single-handedly save Montgomery keep, along with the women and bairns and all the unborn babies that would no doubt make their debut in nine months’ time.
Sorcha had never smiled or laughed so much in all her life. The clanspeople here had been starved of merriment, just as she had been, and like her new family, she could not seem to satiate herself. She and Brandt had welcomed the Duke and Duchess of Bradburne, as well as their caravans of servants and soldiers, along with her own father and brothers, and every last Maclaren who had trekked to Montgomery lands. Ronan, she discovered, had won his fight with Coxley that day in the field, slicing the English brute across the back. Coxley had gone down, and Ronan, presuming the man dead, rejoined his men who were still fending off the attack. After Malvern’s men had withdrawn, he’d returned for the body, but he’d found naught but a patch of grass, spattered with blood.
Ronan and what remained of his men had turned back toward Maclaren to seek reinforcements. And, though Sorcha had told him she and Brandt were heading north toward the Brodie, the fortified Maclaren army had the luck of passing by the monastery, where Abbot Lewis informed them of Sorcha and Brandt’s change in destination.
Sorcha’s heart filled at the memory of her brother’s words in the hall after the battle…that every last Maclaren warrior has always been, and would always be, willing to die to defend and protect their own. The Maclaren soldiers who had given their lives hadn’t just been defendingher—they’d been defending other Maclarens who would suffer the brutality of Malvern.
“Youwere the one to set our freedom into motion,” Ronan had told her. “Because of you, sister, Maclaren is free, and none of the men who stood up died in vain.”
The release from the guilt that had plagued her had been almost immediate.
