Highland Heather - Highland Heather Part 42
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Highland Heather Part 42

He gave an exasperated sigh.

"As you wish, Majesty. I will' make the necessary arrangements."

"I was just heading for the garden, my lady." Richard took pity on the young woman who spent most of her time locked away in her chambers while his brother rode each day to Richmond Palace. He had been quick to note the tension between these two. There was something between Brenna and Morgan. Something more than captor and captive.

"Would you care to accompany me?"

"Aye." She moved along by his side while a servant pushed his chair.

The garden consisted of rows of hedges interspersed with formal plantings of roses. Stones had been set in the ground to form a walkway. Here and there in the garden were benches set beneath gnarled old trees. Like the house, the garden had a look of loving neglect, still clinging to a faded beauty of another time.

"Would you prefer the sun or the shade?" Brenna asked.

"The sun. It shines all too seldom to suit me."

"Aye." Brenna paused to inhale the fragrance of a drooping pink blossom.

"Your roses need tending, my lord."

"Aye. As does everything at Greystone Abbey." Richard signaled for the servant to leave them. He idly plucked a rose and lifted it to his face.

"How I used to love tending the roses. This garden was our mother's favorite. When she was alive, it rivaled even the queen's own. But since her death, there is no one to love it and care for it."

"A pity.

"Tis such a lovely, peaceful place."

"Aye. I suppose I could resume tending the flowers." He lifted his head to study the flight of a songbird.

"If I but had wings."

Brenna studied him while he spoke. For a moment she saw in his eyes a fire. Then he blinked and it was gone.

He turned to look back at the house.

"Greystone Abbey, too, has grown shabby from neglect. It lacks a woman's touch." He grew pensive for a moment.

"Perhaps we all do."

"Tell me about your mother."

"She was the daughter of a Scottish nobleman."

"A Scot? Your mother was not English?"

"Nay." He chuckled at the look in her eyes.

"Are you scandalized, lass?"

"Aye." She leaned forward, her eyes aglow, her features suddenly animated.

"How was it that your father did not marry one of his own?"

"The Greys have ne'er held with tradition. While on a mission to Scotland for King Henry, my father beheld a lass who took his breath away. He inquired about her, and asked the king to arrange a meeting with her family. When they refused permission for my father to marry their daughter, he vowed he'd win her anyway. In the dark of the night he climbed to her balcony and spent the night persuading her to love him. By morning they had lain together. And her father, knowing that his daughter had been sullied by the English savage and was thus no longer desirable to the Scottish lairds, reluctantly permitted their marriage."

Brenna's eyes were wide.

"Did your mother live to regret her hasty decision?"

"Regret? Nay, lass. I have never known two happier people than my father and mother. Until the day death separated them, they were deeply in love."

"How did your father's English family accept his bride?"

"As I told you, the Greys do not follow tradition. My father's mother was from Wales. And my father's brother married an Irishwoman."

Richard saw the look on Brenna's face and said softly, "As my grandfather used to say with a twinkle in his eye, " The Grey family speaks in many dialects, but the heart understands them all. "" Brenna bowed her head and studied her clasped hands,

digesting all that he had told her. Was it not true of her own family as well? She had been horrified to learn that her beloved sister, Meredith, had given her heart to a Highland barbarian. But there was no denying the love between them.

"Come, lass. Let me show you the rest of the garden."

With Brenna pushing his chair, Richard pointed out the trees he and Morgan had planted as lads, and the fountain, now broken, where they had splashed away many a summer's day.

"Morgan was always like a young bull, storming into every fray with his fists raised, his blood hot for battle. And as often as not he'd end up with his nose bloodied and his eyes blackened. But he never learned. The next day he'd be back, ready to do battle again."

She couldn't help but laugh at Richard's amusing stories, and found it oddly appealing to think of Morgan Grey as a young boy. Appealing and quite touching.

"Grey stone Abbey must hold many happy memories for you," she said as they moved toward the courtyard.

"Aye. It was here that I came after my" -he studied the robe that covered his legs "--accident. London was too busy. I felt lost there.

There was no place for a cripple who could no longer fight in battle.

Brenna saw the pain in his eyes and without thinking dropped to her knees and clasped his hand in hers.

"Please my lord--Richard--do not speak so cruelly of your affliction."

"Cripple? Does the word offend you?" He touched a hand to her hair and with a gentle smile lifted her palm to his lips.

"It no longer matters, lass. I know what I am. I accept the fact that I cannot do the things I once did. Here I have found peace. Greystone Abbey has always been a soothing balm for my family."

For some of his family, perhaps. As Brenna smoothed down her skirts and directed Richard's chair through the entrance, she thought of the other Lord Grey, tense, angry, concerned for the queen's safety. He had spent the past week traveling constantly between his home and the queen's palace at Richmond.

Though she told herself that she dreaded their next confrontation, she found herself listening for the sound of his horse's hooves. When at last he returned, she felt her heart begin to race.

Could it be that she was actually beginning to enjoy her verbal duels with this Englishman? There could be no other logical reason she would look forward to the return each day of Morgan Grey.