Free The Laird (Captive Hearts) by Grace Burrowes Page B

openly. In preparation for Michael’s wedding to Brenna, all had been good cheer and bright—false—smiles.
    He dozed off then, which was a mercy, because he’d failed utterly to interrogate his wife regarding the early years of their marriage. She hadn’t been lying when she’d said his absence was a relief, but Michael had the sense she was presenting the only facet of the truth she could bear to look on herself.
    When he opened his eyes again, it was to see that Lady I-Want-to-Take-Your-Measurements Strathdee had also surrendered to the arms of Morpheus. She was curled on her side, her tartan shawl wrapped around her, a four-leaf clover in her fingers.
    They had passed a night in slumber, but that had been in pitch darkness. In the bright sunshine of a pretty summer day, Brenna asleep was an intriguing picture. She looked less severe, less busy, and less formidable—also tired.
    What had sent her looking for lucky clovers?
    Michael extricated her little treasure from her fingers and folded it in his handkerchief, then considered what a man was supposed to do, when he’d endured as much talking as he could possibly stomach in the course of one picnic and he found himself on a blanket with his pretty, sleepy wife.
    ***
     
    Brenna had been dreading the business of measuring her husband for his new kilts, and so, of course, she dreamed of his knees, which somehow managed to be handsome, for all they were knees . She dreamed of the way sunlight caught the red in the hair on his arms, and of the way his back curved down from broad, muscular shoulders.
    And between one thought and the next, her awareness became filled not with adult masculine muscle and contours, but with a particular combination of panic and nausea familiar to her from long acquaintance.
    She tried to sit up and strike out in one motion, though something prevented her from rising. “Get off me! Get off me now !”
    She flailed about wildly, and had just recalled that a stout kick in a certain location would win her free, when reason intruded.
    “Brenna Maureen, cease!”
    Michael had flattened her to the blanket with the simple expedients of his weight applied to her person and his hands manacled around her wrists. “You’ll unman me, you daft woman.”
    “Get off me.” She’d meant to crack the words over his idiot head, but they’d come out as a whisper.
    “Nothing I’d like better.” He rose up, first on his hands and knees, then to kneeling, his expression suggesting he feared for her sanity.
    Brenna scrambled away to sit up and wipe the back of her wrist over her mouth. “What were you about? Did you try to kiss me?”
    “Yes. Yes, I did try. On the cheek. You looked so pretty, and there’s nobody about, and a man should kiss his wife every now and again, because she sure as hell isn’t showing any signs of kissing him.”
    For all his faults, and for all the errors and omissions he had committed, Michael wasn’t wrong about this. He was also sporting a red patch along one side of his jaw.
    “I’m sorry if I struck you. I don’t like kissing.” While she positively loathed the seething dread suffusing her every limb and organ.
    And yet, if she’d asked her husband to rejoin his regiment, he could not have looked more confused. “I kissed you last night.”
    “On the—” Brenna touched her finger between her brows. “Here, and I was awake.”
    Michael settled beside her on the blanket, sitting tailor fashion, his bare knees much in evidence. “You don’t like kissing, or you don’t like my kisses?”
    “Kissing isn’t sanitary.”
    “For God’s—” He peered over at her, likely to see if she’d spoken in jest. “You’re serious.” Another look, full of consternation. “Kissing is just kissing , Brenna. It’s harmless. It’s sweet and tender and arousing and—”
    If he kept up with that litany, Brenna would soon cry, but he fell mercifully silent.
    The river babbled by, and a breeze riffled the grass. The