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Book: The Laird
Author: Grace Burrowes
Release Date: September 2, 2014
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Summary:
He left his bride to go to war...
After years of soldiering, Michael Brodie returns to his Highland estate to find that the bride he left behind has become a stranger. Brenna is self-sufficient, competent, confident-and furious. Despite her anger at Michael's prolonged absence, Brenna has remained loyal to her husband, though Michael's people, and most especially the uncle who held the estate together for him, make it clear they expect Michael to set Brenna aside.
Though his most important battle will be for her heart.
Michael left Brenna when she needed him most, and then stayed away even after the war ended. Nonetheless, the young man who abandoned her has come home a wiser, more patient and honorable husband. Brenna is hurt, bewildered, and tired of fighting for the respect of those around her, but if she trusts Michael with the truths she'd been guarding, he'll have to choose between his wife and everything he holds dear.
Author Biography
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Grace Burrowes' bestsellers include The Heir, The Soldier, Lady Maggie's Secret Scandal, Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish and Lady Eve's Indiscretion. Her Regency romances have received extensive praise, including starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Grace is branching out into short stories and Scotland-set Victorian romance with Sourcebooks. She is a practicing family law attorney and lives in rural Maryland.
Social Media Links
Website: http://graceburrowes.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/
***
Guest Post – The
Difference a Decade Makes by Grace Burrowes
I set myself a challenge when writing The Laird, in that my hero and heroine had married nearly ten years
earlier—when she was sixteen (the age of consent for Scottish women in the
early 1800s) and he was twenty-one. They then immediately separated when he
went off to war.
When I think of myself at sixteen, and then compare that to
me at twenty-six…yikes! As a sixteen year old, I hadn’t finished high school
and much preferred horses to boys. By twenty-six year I had two college
degrees, was self-supporting, enrolled in law school, and, um, dating.
Michael and Brenna each have to adjust to a spouse who has
changed that much, and in Michael’s
case, the years were spent at war in enemy territory. They’ve endured trauma,
marital frustration, years of missing each other despite a difficult parting,
and now they’re facing the even greater challenge of falling back in love.
They’re at the same disadvantage we all face when we go home
to visit mom and dad. In Brenna’s mind, Michael remains the very young man upon
whom she had an adolescent crush, not a battle-hardened soldier bristling with
muscle. Michael comes home, expecting the shy, plump sixteen-year-old Brenna to
greet him, and his reception is very different indeed.
Worse yet, as a spouse, each protagonist harbors a self
image that’s ten years out of date. Brenna still feels very much like that
awkward teenager, unsure of her fellow, overwhelmed with the role of wife, and
insecure about her attractiveness. In his own eyes, Michael is not a well
traveled, experienced man of the world, he’s a new husband who has bungled
badly by running off to war, and doesn’t quite know where to start with the
resourceful, self-reliant woman his wife has become.
If only they could talk!
What saves the marriage is Michael and Brenna’s ability to
take the courage and patience they learned standing alone, and turn it toward
rebuilding their relationship. In small gestures, each courts the other’s trust
and eases away from the wounds caused by the separation. They do talk, they
touch, they spend time together, they listen
to each other, and when an enemy tries to drive them apart, they instead stand
together.
The fascinating aspect of this progression to me was that as
Michael and Brenna’s trust grew, so too did the accuracy of their self images
improve. Brenna eventually saw herself as Michael saw her—competent, precious,
honorable—and Michael came to regard himself as Brenna saw him: dear, worthy
waiting for, and trustworthy.
When has somebody else’s view of you helped you see yourself
more clearly? Is it your faults or your strengths you tend not to notice?
Excerpt
Brenna
wound down through the castle and took herself out into the courtyard, equal
parts rage and gratitude speeding her along.
She’d
had endless Highland winters to rehearse the speech Michael deserved, years to
practice the dignified reserve she’d exhibit before him should he ever recall
he had a home. Alas for her, the cobbles were wet from a recent scrubbing, so
her dignified reserve more or less skidded to a halt before her husband.
Strong
hands steadied her as she gazed up, and up some more, into green eyes both
familiar and unknown.
“You’ve
come home.” Not at all what she’d meant to say.
“That
I have. If you would be so good, madam, as to allow the lady of the—Brenna?”
His
hands fell away and Brenna stepped back, wrapping her tartan shawl around her
more closely. “Welcome to Brodie Castle, Michael.” And because somebody ought
to say the words, she added, “Welcome home.”
“You
used to be chubby.” He leveled this accusation as if he were put out that
somebody had made off with that chubby girl.
“You
used to be skinny.” And now he was all over muscle. He gone away, a tall,
gangly fellow, and come back not simply a man, but a warrior. “Perhaps you’re
hungry?”
She
did not know what to do with a husband, much less this husband who bore so little resemblance to the young man she’d
married, but Brenna knew well what to do with a hungry man.
“I
am…” His gaze traveled the courtyard the way a skilled gunner might swivel his
sights on a moving target, making a circuit of the granite walls rising some
thirty feet on three sides of the bailey. His expression suggested he was
making sure the castle at least, had remained where he’d left it. “I am
famished.”
“Come
along then.” Brenna turned and started for the entrance to the main hall but
Michael remained in the middle of the courtyard, still peering about. Potted
geraniums were in riot, pink roses climbed trellises under the first floor
windows, and window boxes held all manner of blooms.
“You’ve
planted flowers.”
Another
near accusation, for nine years ago, the only flowers in the keep were the
stray shrubs of heather springing up in sheltered corners.
Brenna
returned to her husband’s side, trying to see the courtyard from his
perspective. “One must occupy oneself somehow while waiting for a spouse to
come home—or be killed.”
***
He
could bed his wife. The relief Michael Brodie felt at that sentiment eclipsed
the relief of hearing again the languages of his childhood, Gaelic and Scots,
both increasingly common as he’d traveled farther north.
To
know he could feel desire for his wedded wife surpassed his relief at seeing
the castle in such good repair, and even eclipsed the relief he’d felt that
Brenna didn’t indulge in strong
hysterics at the sight of him.
For
the girl he’d left behind had been more child than woman, the antithesis of
this red-haired Celtic goddess wrapped in the clan’s hunting tartan and so much
wounded dignity.
They
reached the steps leading up to the great wooden doors at the castle entrance.
“I wrote to you, Brenna.”
She
did not turn her head. “Perhaps your letters went astray.”
Such
gracious indifference. Michael was capable of bedding his wife—any man with
blood in his veins would feel desire for the woman at his side—but clearly,
ability did not guarantee he’d have the opportunity.
“I
meant, I wrote from Edinburgh to let you know I was coming home.”
“Edinburgh
is lovely in summer.”
All
of Scotland was lovely in summer, and to a man who’d scorched his back raw
under the Andalusian sun, lovely in deepest winter too. “I was in France,
Brenna. The king’s post did not frequent Toulouse.”
Outside
the door she paused and studied the scrolled iron plate around the ancient
lock.
“We
heard you’d deserted, then we heard you’d died. A few of the fellows from your
regiment paid calls here, and intimated army gossip is not to be trusted. Then
some officer came trotting up the lane a month after the victory, expecting to
pay a call on you.”
Standing
outside that impenetrable, ancient door, Michael accepted that his decision to
serve king and country had left wounded behind at home as well as on the
Continent.
And yet,
apologizing now would only make things worse.
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