“On two conditions.”
Brand blew out a vexed breath.“What?”
“You tellmewhere you’re going.And you won’t breathe a word about…this.”
He hoped to spare Eve the embarrassment of an awkward wedding night.Bedding his new wife in the stables was not something he wanted bandied about the castle.
“Why would I agree to that?”Brand smirked.“What’s in it forme?”
“I won’t run to your mother and tell her you’ve gone.”
Brand took a moment to think it over.“Maybeyouwon’t.What abouther?”
Eve replied.“I won’t breathe a word either.”
“Why should I believe you?”Brand asked.
Adam’s blood boiled at the insult to his bride.But then he recalled it wasn’t long ago that Brand had deemed lasses utterly useless and undeserving of his notice.
Before Adam could reply, Eve answered.“I was a nun.Nuns don’t lie.”
Adam knew that wasn’t true.Not at all.Eve had told dozens of lies.Including this one.
But it was more useful to back her up.“Bloody hell, Brand.You’d question the word of a woman of God?”
Brand let out a long-suffering sigh.“Fine,” he conceded.“I’m going to Berwick.”
“Berwick?”Berwick was a town on the border between England and Scotland.A war-torn place that was always changing loyalties.With a castle currently used to imprison the king’s enemies.“Why?”
“The king has awarded me my first command as a knight,” he said proudly.
Adam raised his brows, impressed.“And you didn’t want the laird to know?”
“She knows.She commanded me not to go,” he grumbled.“She said she’d work out a replacement.”
“Why would she do that?”
Eve guessed, “Is it too dangerous?”
“Dangerous,” Brand scoffed, taking offense at her words.“Danger is my battle cry.”
Adam suspected Eve was rolling her eyes at that.
He told Brand, “There’s usually a good reason behind the laird’s commands.”
“Good reason.Pah!”
“Did she say why?”
“Because I’m second in line, Adam,” he bit out.“I’m meant to be laird if anything happens to Gellir.She expects me to stay safe and warm and coddled at Rivenloch while Gellir goes on adventure everywhere.”
Adam understood.Brand was bitter.Rightly so.
“Faith!”Eve exclaimed.“That’s not fair.”
“Right?”Brand said.“Why did I bother becoming a great warrior if my talents are going to be wasted, rotting away in a moldering keep?”
Rivenloch could hardly be called a moldering keep.But Adam got his point.
