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

up his folding mirror. “Angus has some of the same ability, particularly when the whisky’s on hand.”
    Yes, he did. The same rumbling burr that drew the listener in, despite all sense to the contrary.
    Brenna poured warmed water into a green porcelain basin and set it on the windowsill. “Do you shave every morning?”
    “Mostly. Beards itch.” And yet, he’d threatened to grow one—for her?
    “I thought they were warm.”
    “A decent wool scarf is warmer. Will you weave one for me, Brenna, my love?”
    He was flirting. She would get used to it, though flirting back was probably a hopeless cause. “Mind you don’t cut yourself.”
    Now what was she to do? Get dressed with her husband in the same room? He had no difficulty strutting around in nothing but his cotton underlinen.
    “Will you wear the Brodie plaid today?” he asked as he dabbed lather onto his throat and cheeks. “I’ll kit myself out in the laird’s regalia, unless you think that’s overdoing the clan pride.”
    “It is not possible for a mortal Scotsman to overdo clan pride,” Brenna said as he drew the razor along his jaw in a movement that ought not to have fascinated her. “I’ll wear the plaid, and so will everybody else who owns a scrap of the tartan. At least it isn’t raining.”
    “Or sleeting.”
    To see a man shave was intimate. To see him moving around in only one old, worn, comfortable item of apparel, and to start the day with him held the same odd closeness.
    “You don’t snore either, Husband.”
    He smiled at her in the little mirror and went on scraping lather and whiskers off his face.
    While Brenna blethered on. “You don’t kick, you don’t move about much, you don’t talk in your sleep. You do, however, give off a lot of heat.”
    “Which ought to recommend me to your continued keeping September through June. Should you be getting dressed, my lady?”
    She was a baroness. Did other baronesses watch their husbands make odd faces at a shaving mirror each morning?
    “Soon. I dress quickly.”
    But she ought to be doing something, so Brenna sat on the foot of the bed, pulled the ribbon off the end of her braid, and unraveled the single plait she usually slept in. She didn’t bother retrieving the brush from the vanity, because the vanity sat near the window.
    Michael set the razor aside, wiped off his face, and began reassembling his kit. “You’ve pretty hair, Brenna Brodie. You always did.”
    She had red hair, and lots of it. “You missed a spot.”
    He looked disgruntled, as if she’d said the wrong thing, but he’d look mighty silly Trooping the Colour with that bit of lather on his chin. Brenna rose from the bed, took the towel off her husband’s shoulder, and dabbed at the spot near where the dimple in his chin appeared when he smiled.
    “There. Your fizzog at least is presentable.”
    Michael Brodie was what the old women would call a braw fellow, tall and muscular, but lithe. Dancing in his kilt over crossed swords, he’d be—
    “I’m tempted to kiss my wife.” His voice had gone thoughtful, and Brenna couldn’t mistake the heat in his eyes. Nor could she quite understand it.
    “Because I’ve wiped soap off your chin?”
    His smile was unnerving, all male, all happy to be male.
    “Because you bear the scent of flowers, because your unbound hair makes my hands itch, and because it’s early morning on a beautiful day. I don’t have to kill anybody today, and I don’t have to prevent anybody from being killed.”
    Such was a soldier’s definition of a beautiful day.
    Brenna closed her eyes rather than look upon his smile. “Kiss me then.”
    A wife expected to endure her husband’s kisses—at least—and he couldn’t tarry at it too long, because he was soon to be out in the bailey, greeting his staff.
    “Such bravery,” Michael said, and Brenna heard a smile in his voice. His arms came around her, slowly, not a pillaging embrace but more of a stealthy reconnaissance. She did