happens to me or my spirit?”
“You remind me of my mother. She—” Brodie frowned as Laurel pushed him away.
“What woman wants to marry the mon who claims she reminds him of his mother?” Laurel curled her nose and lip in disgust.
“I didn’t say everything aboot you reminds me of her. I can say plenty of things I’d like to do with and to you that have never crossed my mind aboot her,” Brodie finished with a grin. His hands came to rest on her waist again. “What I was going to say was, she had a tenacity and willfulness that made her a force to be reckoned with when I was a child. But year by year, my father chipped away at it. He forced her to become someone she wasn’t. By the time my father died, she was nearly a shell of herself. She kept to herself when she could, and she rarely spoke to my father for fear of angering him. When he passed, she came back to us. She found her freedom. She passed a few years ago from the ague. But until she fell ill, she rode across hill and dale every day. She challenged me to become a better laird. She returned to the woman I remembered. But for more years than not, my ambitious and unrelenting father browbeat her.”
“And you think the same would happen to me if I lived on my own?” Laurel’s tone held an edge, but she kept her voice low. As much as she disliked the comparison to a man’s mother, she had to admit that the woman sounded like her. It surprised her that Brodie would share something so intimate with her. She found it warmed her heart that he trusted her and understood her.
“You know, despite how you argue against it, that you won’t have that life. What you are likely to have is a marriage to a mon like my father. Laurie, don’t you see?”
Laurel shook her head, tears filling her eyes. She didn’t understand, but she knew there was something she should grasp before the opportunity was gone.
“I want to give you the very freedom you crave.”
“But I would be your wife. You would control me.”
Brodie dropped his hands and turned away, his patience fraying. He turned back around. “No. I have no interest in controlling you. I believe you are precisely the woman my clan needs. We are large and influential throughout Scotland. It means that many people envy us and wish to see us fall. There is a never-ending array of plots against us by those who wish to have our land and our standing. I need—want—a wife who will stand beside me. Whose council I can trust. One who will fight to keep our home and our clan safe. A woman who few would think to cross, and fewer who would survive if they did. Eliza never would have done that.”
“Eliza?” Laurel’s heart pounded in her chest at the mention of a faceless woman, a woman that perhaps Brodie loved.
“Aye. The woman I married,” Brodie replied with a frown. At Laurel’s astonished expression, Brodie realized how his words sounded. He ran a hand over his face before he took the seat she’d originally offered on the window embrasure. He held out his hand to her and prayed Laurel would take it. She hesitated, then slid her hand into his. He drew her to sit next to him. The tight fit meant Brodie’s shoulder rested against the back of hers when he twisted to make room.
“How can you marry me if you’re already married? Or rather, are you widowed?” Laurel whispered.
“Of a sort.” Brodie’s smile was regretful as he gazed into hazel eyes that held nothing but doubt and questions. “I wedded Eliza MacMillan a fortnight or so ago. It was purely for the alliance it would bring my clan. She was barely four-and-ten. I loathe saying that since I could be the lass’s father.”
“How auld are you?” Laurel interrupted.
“Eight-and-thirty.”
Laurel mulled over Brodie’s response. She supposed his age brought maturity and perhaps an understanding of human nature that a younger man might not possess. She wondered if it was also why he had such patience with her. But then an idea that made her queasy flashed through her mind.
“Are you so patient with me because you see me as a wayward wean who needs minding?” Laurel blurted.
Brodie chuckled. “Lass, there is naught aboot you—your sharp tongue or the delicious mouth in which it lies—that