Page 43 of My Scot, My Surrender
The knowledge had ruined him.
After that day, Brandt had stopped asking. He’d finally accepted that Monty would never part with the whole truth, and that perhaps, it was for the best. But Anne, even with all the things his stepmother had done to care for him and Monty until she’d died, had still not been Brandt’smother. He hadn’t seen the same love and adoration in her eyes the way he would when the Duchess of Bradburne would look upon Archer. She hadn’t hugged Brandt, or kissed him good night. She had provided. She had made Monty smile from time to time. And she had never raised her voice, or her hand, to Brandt, but there had always been something missing.
It had settled inside of him, that vacancy. He knew meeting his birth mother would not fill it, but the need to lay eyes upon her was undeniable. Especially now that he knew she was so close. Or at least, her clan.Hisclan, if the vicar was right. The yearning he’d experienced as a child seemed to return in full force. It boiled down to one thing after all these years; he wanted to knowwhy. He wanted answers. How could any mother abandon her own child?
On his own deathbed, Monty had confessed again. His body had been frail with fever, his eyes rheumy, but he’d beckoned Brandt close. “Sorry, lad,” he’d wheezed. “I never…got chance…tell…truth.” A violent spasm of coughing had rocked through him. “Ye’re…cough, cough…ye must ken…cough, cough…yer mother…”
“All is well, Father,” he’d said, tears falling down his cheeks. “I know what she did. I won’t go looking, I promise.”
“Nae…forgive…I’m no’, no’…”
But words had failed Monty then. Words and then breath. And as the light left his eyes, Brandt didn’t care about what he’d been trying to say. Consumed with sadness, he’d simply wept at the loss of the only family he’d ever known.
Brandt felt a dull stinging in his eyes as streaks of lightning brightened the sky over some distant hills. He blinked, and they were gone. He hadn’t thought of the night he’d lost his father for a long time. Until now. A few moments later, a rumble of thunder made Lockie whinny and rear wildly. Sorcha reached forward to stroke his mane and neck, trying to calm him with some whispered words, but the gray kept tossing his head.
Still without a word, Brandt rode to her side. Having Ares canter beside Lockie seemed to calm the gray, and the two mounts rode in time, ignoring another flicker of lightning and the answering toll of the heavens.
“We should find shelter,” Sorcha said when another jagged fork cleaved the sky in two, the white light tearing long fingers into the rapidly condensing fog. Ares reared up onto his hind legs, which was uncharacteristic for him. Brandt frowned, calming the animal with a soothing click of his tongue, but ignored what should have been a clear warning and urged Ares forward. He scanned his surroundings.
They seemed to have ridden into a rocky valley, with two mountainous hills rising on either side. The misty clouds had dropped to obscure the tops of the hills, as well as smoke trailing up from any nearby homesteads, and the Highland fog was already starting to thicken. Monty used to tell him stories of men who had gotten lost in the mists over the moors with only a few misplaced steps. Soon, they would not be able to see two lengths in front of them. Brandt did not want to put Sorcha in danger, but a different furor kept driving him forward.
“A bit farther,” he managed to say, kicking up his speed. Ares shot forward, with Lockie staying close on his heels.
“We aren’t going to get there tonight!” she shouted.
She meant Montgomery lands. Of course she would know what was consuming his thoughts.
Brandt kept riding, determined to reach the end of this narrow crevasse between the two sharply angled slopes. There had to be something ahead, some barn or ruin, a place for them to spend the night. And by the look of the sky and the thunder and lightning crawling ever closer, it would likely be a long, wet, and dangerous night.
Spitting rain flecked Brandt’s cheeks and forehead, and then within seconds, it seemed, the drops fattened, striking his eyes as he rode straight into a wall of rain. It soaked them almost immediately, their mounts galloping at full speed through the quickly muddying ground as more thunder shook the earth. The sound of it echoed off the hills surrounding them, reverberating in Brandt’s ears, and was made even more ominous by the suffocating mist that wrapped them in thick, heavy bands. The wind had picked up, too, howling a mournful sound like an animal lost in the wilderness. It made the hackles on the back of his neck rise and Ares toss unsteadily beneath his seat.
They needed shelter.Now.Finally, a curve in the terrain opened up to show a stretch of valley, the mists moving low over the grassland.
“There!” Sorcha shouted, and when Brandt followed the direction of her pointed finger, he saw what looked to be a small hut ahead. It was a squat stone lean-to, likely built for sheep or goats wanting shelter from either sun or wind or rain. It would have to do, at least until the worst had passed and the fog had cleared.
He and Sorcha rode pell-mell for the shack. He could barely see three feet in front of him by the time they dismounted. The shed was not empty. Two drenched and forlorn-looking sheep stood huddled in one corner, bleating their terror at each cracking peal of thunder. Brandt led Ares and Lockie next to them, and he and Sorcha took up refuge in the opposite corner. The hut provided more protection from the rain and wind than he’d expected. The fourth side was not fully open, and though it let in some wind, for the most part, it kept the rain out.
Brandt stood, his head nearly touching the stone slab of the roof, and inhaled his relief. He nearly gagged. The stench was unbearable, and not just because of the wet sheep. It stank to high heaven of fermented animal excrement. His eyes met Sorcha’s and she wrinkled her nose with a light shrug.
“It’s not that bad,” she said. “You get used to it.”
“You are the strangest female I’ve ever known.” He arched an eyebrow, surprised at her nonchalant response, though he did not know why. He had known that Sorcha was unlike any other woman of his acquaintance. Any other lady would have shrieked or swooned, but not his fierce Highland bride.
A plucky grin rose to her lips, her face illuminated by a bright slash of lightning. Her face was ghostly in the strange gloom left behind from the flash and the undulating mists. Brandt couldn’t help thinking that she looked like a woodland fairy with her wild hair and shimmering eyes.
“When we were children, my mama always used to say no weeping for shed milk.” She shrugged. “We’re here and we have to make the best of it. It could be worse. We could be out there in that, unable to see our heads from our arses.”
Brandt laughed. Somehow, he could not imagine ever losing sight of that particular asset belonging to her. He’d practically memorized it on the way to the monastery. “Speak for yourself, lassie. I have eyes in the back of my head.”
“Bold words for an Englishman.”
His humor faded. Not English. Scottish.MontgomeryScottish.
Sorcha must have seen the expression falter on his face in the eerie pale gloom, because she busied herself with feeding the horses some mash from the abbey. Once they were settled, she moved back to the corner with two extra plaids from her saddlebags wrapped over one arm and a bundle of sticks in the other.
“Where did you get those?” Brandt asked, eyeing the sticks.
“I learned the hard way when I was hunting with my brothers to always keep a stack of firewood wrapped in oilskin with my tack. The rain and the mists can roll in quicker than you can blink, and without heat, the Highlands are a frigid mistress. We can probably start a small fire in that corner,” she said pointing to the unoccupied space. “It’s out of the rain and cold. But we’re both going to have to get out of our wet clothes or risk the chill setting in.”
