“Lachlan, the ceilingis leaking again!” Sputtering like a wet cat caught in a rainstorm, Brynne staggered out of bed, dragging the coverlet with her. The fire in the hearth had turned to ash overnight, the temperamental Highland winds were howling, and water was lashing at the windows–and pouring out of the ceiling–in a freezing spray of wet.
Shivering from head to toe, she cast her peacefully slumbering husband (who, she’d discovered during five months of marriage, would sleep through an earthquake if there were such things this far north), and went to retrieve a bucket from the closet down the hall.
Were she at Hawkridge Manor, she could have sent a servant for such a task. Of course, were she at Hawkridge, there wouldn’t have been water waking her up in the middle of the night when any sensible person was tucked cozily in their beds, dreaming of warmer days soon to come.
But oh no.
Not her.
Shewas stumbling blindly through the dark, her teeth chattering with such force that she feared they were going to rattle right out of her skull. Managing to find the closet, she opened the door…and released a hiss of frustration when she discovered that she wasn’t the first to go looking for a bucket to stem the flow of rain on this stormy eve.
Not surprising, given that nearly every room in the castle had some sort of hole in it. Holes made from mice (and other creatures she dared not think about), holes from rot, holes from the menagerie of feral siblings that had somehow slipped Lachlan’s mind whenever he’d spoken about his family.
Four.
Fourchildren under the age of fifteen trapped together beneath one (very leaky) roof.
Even now, she could hear Eara and Tavish, the twins, calling out, their thin, squalling wails louder than the booms of thunder that threatened to raze the already crumbling stone walls to the ground.
When it became apparent by the increasing fervor of their cries that the nursemaid was not going to attend them, Brynne gave a resigned sigh and took on the duty herself as she’d done nearly every night, in some capacity, ever since Lachlan’s one-year-old brother and sister were unceremoniously dumped on their doorstep by his stepmother, Lady Heather, with a vague promise to “return quite soon”. To Brynne’s consternation, there’d been no sign of Heather for the past seven weeks. To the best of her knowledge, Lachlan’s stepmother was “recovering” from the labors of childbirth at the steam pools in Bath with no sign of returning anytime soon.
“There, there,” she said soothingly as she entered the nursery and lifted first Eara and then Tavish out of their cribs. The nursemaid was a useless lump of covers in the corner; her loud snores indicating that she was even more of a sound sleeper than Lachlan. “Let’s make you some milk, shall we?”
She carried the twins down the winding stairs to the kitchen where she placed them into a round basket by the fire–which, thankfully, was still smoldering–and warmed cow’s milk over the glowing embers before transferring it into two porcelain bubby pots.
Shaped like a traditional teapot with a slightly longer spout, the pots had a top that fastened securely in place and a spout that was sealed closed with the exception of three holes just large enough for liquid to dribble through. Ideally, the twins would be nursing at their mother’s breast, but short of that–and with no wet nurse to be found–these were the next best thing.
Latching on to the spouts with all the ferocity of two starving hyena cubs, Eara and Tavish immediately ceased their cries, and Brynne sighed with relief as she sat down beside them in a pool of dimly flickering light and hugged her knees to her chest.
She’d wanted to be a bride, she reminded herself as a not-unfamiliar longing for the life she’d left behind began to creep up the back of her throat. A bride and a wife to the man she was in love with. The man she loved still, even though he was upstairs peacefully slumbering away while she was sitting on a cold, damp floor feeding his siblings. Siblings he’d neglected to tell her about untilafterthey were married.
Ironically, despite their attachment to the witching hour, Eara and Tavish were the best behaved of the bunch. At least they didn’t release snakes to slither in the hall, like Callum. Or sneak frogs into her pockets, like Blaine.Thosetwo–thirteen and eleven years of age, respectively–were in a perpetual state of mischievousness. And Brynne found herself the target of their playful antics more often than not.
Yesterday, while playing swords at the table, they’d accidentally cut down the chandelier. Thechandelier. It was a small miracle the room hadn’t gone up in flames. Which, considering the state of the castle, might have been an improvement.
Through it all, Lachlan just chuckled and dismissed the behavior of his brothers as “lads being lads” while Brynne did her best to create some semblance of order and docility from the chaos. It was, to put it mildly, an uphill battle.
She’d wanted to be a bride.
Instead, she was a bride,anda mother,anda lady’s maid,anda scullery maid,anda cook,anda wet nurse,andan amphibian keeper. All the while, her paints, which she’d had delivered from Hawkridge Manor in secret courtesy of a trusted maid, remained in a trunk, with her dreams of travel packed away right beside them.
There could be no seeing the world when she was quite literally responsible for the lives of four children whose mothers were either deceased or divorced or soaking in pools in Bath and whose father was too busy chasing skirts in London to be bothered.
But the worst part–even worse than being awoken by a deluge of icy water or changing foul-smelling nappies or finding slimy worms in her shoes–was the loneliness.
In a rambling castle filled with the bellowing war cries of infants and adolescent boys alike, more snakes than she cared to count, a skeleton staff of servants, and a husband, Brynne waslonely. The type of wrenching isolation she hadn’t felt since she watched Weston’s carriage leave for Eton.
At least then she’d had Lachlan. Only for two weeks, it was true. A blink of an eye for some, but what felt like an entire lifetime to a lost, lonely girl yearning for love and attention. And now she was married to him. Now they reallydidhave an entire lifetime to spend together. But then why did she feel more alone than she ever had before?
Oh, the first month had been wonderful! A hazy blur of lovemaking and laughter and nearly ten years of longing to fulfill. Then somewhere along the way, the honeymoon–such as it was–had ended, and her new husband had taken to spending sunrise to sunset at the sight of his great-great-grandfather’s distillery and its surrounding fields as he struggled to coax seedlings from fallow soil. Which left Brynne at the castle, tending to any manner of things, none of which her army of tutors and governesses had ever prepared her for.
She did not begrudge Lachlan chasing after his dream. She simply did not want it to come at the expense of her own. And as she returned Eara and Tavish safely to their cribs, she was unable to completely silence the little voice that reminded her if she wasn’t here, she might be in Paris, sitting shoulder to shoulder with some of the greatest artists to ever yield a brush.
Instead, she was stuck in a wet castle yielding bubby pots.
“There ye are,” Lachlan mumbled, rolling across the mattress to wrap his arms around her as she climbed back into their bed, careful to avoid the large puddle forming at the foot of it.
“The storm woke the twins.” Evading his grabbing hands even as her blood began to heat, she sat up on her elbow and frowned at him in the darkness. “I really think we ought to see about hiring a new nursemaid. This one cannot do her job properly if she’s asleep all the time.”
