At the mention of Clara, Brendan's face contorted as though he'd taken a bite of a sour apple. He walked along in silence for a minute. "Well...y'know, part of me wants to go anyway just to get her dander up. But she always gets the last word somehow and I don't feel like losin' to someone else today. Let's go back to the saloon." 

He turned to grin at Caroline. "Besides, we can't get drinks at the cafe. That alone oughtta make up my mind, and yours too." 

He knew Caroline didn't drink much on the job, but when she wasn't working, that was a different story. 

Part of the reason Brendan liked Caroline was because of her teasing. She loved to tease him, and most of the time he didn't mind it. Like now, when she was making digs at him about thinking he was the boss or about his luck with women. Brendan just smirked. "Sometimes you gotta let women get the best of you to get the best of them." It was a clever bit of double entendre, in his opinion. 

They headed back to the saloon and wheedled some food from Messalina, then pilfered some drinks from behind the bar - not really pilfering since they did it with Ralph's knowledge and would pay if he asked them to - before heading upstairs with their dinner. After they were finished eating, Brendan lifted his cup in a toast to Caroline. 

"To Miss Mundee, the most deadliest singer in Montana. And the most beautiful, too."

Was that a little sappy? Well, if it was, Caroline wouldn't hesitate to tell him. They both liked the way things were in their relationship, but sometimes Brendan started to get too clingy.

"My childhood, huh? Gimme a minute." Brendan sat back, pursing his lips and staring at the ceiling as he let his childhood memories wash over him. A smile spread across his face. "Yeah, I guess I was a happy child," he said musingly. 

He sat up and clasped his hands around his cup. "My ma and da both are good people. They love each other. At least I guess they must or Ma wouldn't have let Da near her enough to have five kids in six years." Here he smirked. "Ma's a little like you. Don't take any guff from anyone, but always teasing. Da wasn't afraid to take a switch to me, but I don't think any of the lessons he tried to teach me that way stuck. But I learned everything I could about animals from him. Think that's where I got my magic touch with 'em."

Brendan took a drink and continued. "I mean, it wasn't all sunshine. I don't guess the war came close to you in Chicago, but in Mississippi some battles came pretty close to us. Da fought for the South, so he was away for a good while and I had to be the man of the house. Y'know, if you can call eleven years old a man." He chuckled and shook his head, sobering a little. "We only got raided by the Yankees once, but we went hungry for a while after that 'cause they took all but one of the cows and most of the chickens. Ain't nothin' much a boy can do against a band of grown men, but I felt horrible for not stopping 'em. Ma made light of it the way she did everything, and we made a game out of seeing who could go the longest without complaining. I lost," he said, throwing his arms wide with a grin.

"You think I'd learn at some point to stop running my mouth, but I ain't learned that yet and I don't think I ever will." 

@ [Wayfarer

Brendan paused the tale of his childhood for an aside about switches with Caroline. He grinned at her and shrugged. "Hey, you got me all night tonight. You wanna pull out some switches, you're the boss." He'd gotten wind from Arabella of some mighty odd things some folks liked to do in the bedroom. How she knew about that kind of stuff, he hadn't asked. There were lots of things about Arabella you just had to take in stride. 

He went on to tell Caroline about the war and his personal experience during it. She didn't try to belittle his troubles, which was nice of her. If you thought about it, she'd had it worse in life. Both Caroline's rape and her witnessing the murder of her father were far worse than having to ration food for a few months. 

But even with everything Caroline had been through, she'd kept her sense of humor, sarcastic as it might be sometimes. Brendan let out a laugh and leaned closer to her. "You'll take me as I am, huh? Well, that's good 'cause I did a lot of changin' last year and I don't intend to change any more." 

It was all change for the better, but that didn't mean he'd liked it. 

Caroline seemed a little surprised by his suggestion - or joke, because that's mostly what it had been...mostly - and Brendan chuckled but tried to clarify. "Hey, just because I know about 'em don't mean I know about 'em, you know?"

But it turned out Caroline knew a little about it, too, and Brendan winced a little bit as she talked about the tales she'd heard. "I think leavin' welts is goin' too far, if you ask me," he said frankly. He wasn't above a little bit of passionate lovemaking or some rough-and-tumble business in the sheets and was curious enough that he would have been willing to experiment with switches, but what Caroline was talking about didn't sound pleasant at all. 

Nor did her run-in with a man at the young age of twelve. He scowled as he listened. Even though this particular story from her childhood ended all right, that man had been way out of line. "If I'd been there, I would'a knocked the living daylights outta him. Or tried, anyway."

The conversation moved on and Caroline joked about him changing his clothes. Brendan pretended to be offended, drawing back in mock indignation, but with a gleam of mischief in his eye. "I change my clothes plenty, thanks a lot. Mrs. Wigfall's real good about gettin' my laundry. Guess she knows that's the only way she can get my clothes off me." He smirked a little and motioned to himself. "But you can take my clothes off whenever you want, Miss Mundee."