The Laird Takes a Bride
Page 10
Had he behaved badly, ordering her around in bed like that?
Of course, she hadn’t exactly been friendly herself, but still …
Perhaps he could have shown a little more finesse.
The truth was, he did have a lot to drink with Duff and some of the others who’d wandered into the billiards room, and so by the time he’d arrived at his bedchamber, he’d not been at his best.
And really, she ought to have been softer, more welcoming, more obedient.
Hadn’t she?
Or had he been at fault?
Damn it all to hell, he thought grumpily, his brain was a mad jumble today, looping round and round in this unproductive way. He was glad when, arriving far into the woods, he could stop, could use a stout stick to dig a deep hole. In it he buried the sporran. Most earnestly did he hope that symbolically he was also burying useless thoughts and questions.
He required sons. He had a wife now. They needed to create offspring. Things didn’t need to be any more complicated than that.
Alasdair tamped the dirt firmly beneath his boot.
Threw the stick aside.
Watched Cuilean dash after it.
Contemplated the day’s agenda.
Back to the castle. Breakfast. A long ride. See some of his tenant farmers, visit some pastures, inspect some crops. Meet with his steward Lister. Perhaps a hearty nuncheon in the village—he’d take Duff along. Also, a new crate of books had recently arrived and been placed in the library at home; he could look through them, choose one to read right away (probably that one about sheep breeding he’d been waiting for). And so the day would nicely pass. Filled with a comfortable sense of routine, Alasdair began walking briskly back.
Chapter 6
There was a tentative knock on the door, and Cousin Isobel sidled into the morning-room which Fiona had appropriated for her own use. Repressing an impatient sigh, she glanced up from the sheaves of papers she’d been poring over.
“Yes, Cousin?”
“Good morning! How are you, Fiona dear?” Isobel came up to the desk at which Fiona sat, on her plump face an expression of concerned anxiety which Fiona found almost unbearably irritating. “I mean—that is—how are you really? You do look troubled! Are you—oh dear, are you in pain? That is—”
“I’m fine! I look troubled because I’ve been studying these household receipts. Someone has apparently been spending a shocking amount of money on French champagne.”
Cousin Isobel bridled. “I’m sure we can guess who that is! I don’t even need to say the name—just the initials! D.M.! Do you know what he had the temerity to say to me yesterday? Why, he—mercy me, look at all those china figurines! Why are they all pushed to one side? And who has pulled all the curtains down?”
“I have. They’re too heavy for this room. Besides, I like the view, and sunlight.”
“Oh! And the figurines? How delightful they are! I’m very fond of those pastoral scenes. So picturesque.”
Fiona shrugged. “If I want to be surrounded by shepherdesses and goose girls, I’ll go outside and find some to talk to. Besides, I can’t stand their vacant painted-on eyes—they look so stupid I want to break them in two. Ugh. After I’m done here, servants will take them away, to a different saloon, and move my desk closer to the window.”
“How busy you are, and so terribly brave,” said Isobel, with a sympathetic titter that had Fiona clenching her teeth, “and despite the dreadful circumstances! How I wish we could leave! Of course, we’d have to somehow go back in time, before your marriage! How complicated life is! What was I saying before? Oh! The figurines! If I may be so bold, Fiona dear—since you don’t want them here— they do remind me of—perhaps I might be permitted to dust them, when they’ve found their new home? They are so very, very delicate! I wouldn’t trust even the best housemaid to be careful with them!”
“There’s no need for that, Cousin. Now that the wedding is over, I no longer require a chaperone. It’s time for you to go home.”
Although Fiona had, for many days, been looking forward to Isobel’s departure with enormous pleasure, she took care just now to keep her tone mild. Yet she was unprepared for the way her cousin’s soft round visage seemed to crumple like that of a child who’d just been harshly scolded.
“Home? Oh, Fiona dear! I—I haven’t any home! I had to sell my house in Edinburgh, you know, for though that delightful Mr. Watson —so handsome, so charming!—assured me his investments would yield an enormous return, he took my cheque and I never saw him again. I was never so deceived in all my life! I—I am afraid I am quite penniless now.” Isobel sat abruptly, and wept into the lacy scrap of handkerchief she tugged from her little reticule.
“Yes, Mother had mentioned something about your house.” Fiona fiddled with a dry quill, running her fingers along the feathers. “I meant you would go home to Wick Bay, and bear Mother company. I know she’d be glad to have you.”
Isobel lifted a red, wet face. “Oh! Your mother is the dearest, kindest person in the world, and I love her most sincerely, but—oh, my dear Fiona, I am—well, I’m ashamed to confess that I’m rather afraid of your father! I—I do try my best to conceal it, but when he is in a bad mood, which he so often is, my very bones seem to melt with terror. Not that he would hurt me—at least I do not think so—but he is so tall! And so fierce! The knife he always carries at his belt, positively murderous! And the way he frowns at one! Please allow me to stay here with you! I’ll do anything you like, and endeavor diligently to not be an added expense! In fact, you may move me to a smaller room at once. Anything will do! I’m sure I don’t need a fireplace, or a window!”
Now here, Fiona realized, was a difficulty. If she did what she wanted, and sent Isobel back to Wick Bay, she would feel like a monster. Her heart already felt like a lifeless stone within her. She didn’t need more weight hanging upon it. Oh well, she told herself, the castle was enormous. Isobel could potter around from dawn till dusk, dusting figurines, and (with luck) keeping out of Fiona’s way.
“Very well,” she said, trying to keep the grudging reluctance out of her voice, and hoping she wouldn’t regret her change of mind. “You may stay, Cousin.” The sudden radiance on Isobel’s face brought no answering smile from her; she added, as pleasantly as she could, “If you’ll excuse me? I have so much to do this morning.”
Isobel jumped to her feet, cramming her sopping little handkerchief back into her reticule. “Of course! Oh, thank you, Fiona dear! I will make myself very useful to you—I promise!”
As Fiona once again turned her attention to the household accounts, she had no idea, no prescient little prickle, that one day, Cousin Isobel’s words would come back to haunt her.
It was late in the afternoon when Alasdair and Duff returned from the village, where they had enjoyed a hearty repast at the Gilded Osprey. They strolled into the Great Hall, and came upon a veritable army of servants busily rearranging the long tables within it. His steward Lister, whom he had left not three hours ago happily totting up columns of numbers in his small office off the Hall, now stood supervising.
“What’s going on here?” he asked.
Lister turned to him at once. “Mistress’s orders, laird,” he explained in his quiet, calm way.
“Orders for what? To throw my household into chaos?”
“The mistress felt the tables had been poorly placed, laird, causing great inconvenience to the serving folk as well as slowing the delivery of hot dishes to the high table.”
Alasdair scanned the Hall. It was immediately apparent that the tables had not, in fact, previously been arranged in the best configuration, but even as he tried to stop himself the fatal words came out:
“This is how it’s always been done.”
“Women!” commented Uncle Duff, and that single word was like spark to tinder. Alasdair felt his temper rising sharply and he demanded of Lister:
“Where is the mistress?”
“In her morning-room, laird. The room that was—” Lister he
sitated, as if wondering if there were a better way to say it. But, of course, there wasn’t. “It was your mother’s, laird. The Green Saloon.”
“I see.” Scowling, Alasdair at once proceeded there, walking with long strides along the spacious corridor that led toward the back of the castle. It was exactly as he’d feared. His officious new wife was already changing things, and without so much as a by-your-leave. He stalked into the Green Saloon, and stopped abruptly three or four paces past the threshold.
His mother’s precious figurines—gone. The heavy damask drapes—gone. Half the furniture—gone. The desk moved from its usual spot and now set perpendicular to the tall windows overlooking the gardens. And sitting at the desk, several neat stacks of papers arrayed upon it as well as a large vase filled with pink and white dahlias, was his wife, herself neat as wax in a simple day-dress of palest blue and a delicate cashmere shawl draped over her shoulders.
He said:
“Just what do you think you’re doing, madam?”
Her eyes were also blue today, blue and pensive as she looked up at him.
“Your head gardener—Monty—says the beehives aren’t doing well. He showed me a loose brood pattern, which is a problem, and also some sunken cappings. I was wondering what could be done about that.”
Caught off-guard, Alasdair replied without thinking, “He never said a word to me.”
“Well, I had to winkle it out of him. He’s not very talkative, is he? But I’ve never seen someone with such a way with flowers.”
“That’s for certain. Did you have to fight him for those dahlias? He’s notorious for that—as if the flowers belong only to him.”
“Oh no,” Fiona answered. “He just gave them to me. Perhaps because it was a relief to talk about the bees. But I’m not sure he’ll ever let me have some roses.”
Alasdair laughed, but then he remembered why he’d come in here. She was a presumptuous, high-handed, managing female who—to very appropriately employ a botanical analogy—needed to be nipped in the bud. He scowled again. “You’ve completely altered this room.” Warming to his task, he added (completely forgetting that he had always despised those prissy china figures), “And had items removed.”
“Yes, there was too much furniture in here,” she replied, with what struck him as unseemly breeziness. “And I had the figurines placed in that chamber upstairs—what is it called? All pink and frills? The Little Drawing-room? There’s the perfect cabinet to display them to best advantage. In fact, my cousin Isobel is probably there right now, fussing over them—if you’d care to see their disposition?”
“No,” he said, scowling even more fiercely. And before he was in danger of admitting that he could easily go the rest of his life without setting eyes on the damned things, he said, unpleasantly, “What gives you the right to come in this room and muck it up?”
Those cool blue eyes were flashing now. “As you have endowed me with all your worldly goods, the domestic matters are mine to manage as I see fit. It is my right as your wife.”
“When you behave in the night as my wife, madam, then during the day you can move every cursed piece of furniture in the entire castle if it pleases you!” Even as he spoke these acrid words, some part of him wondered if she would cry, or perhaps angrily fling the vase of flowers at him. Wouldn’t it be nice if she would simply yield, like a proper woman would?
Instead, to his fury, she settled her shawl so that it draped more evenly about her shoulders, doing it with a deliberateness that seemed almost to insult him.
“Feel free to inform me, laird, as to when you decide to behave in the night as a husband should.”
He stared at her, tempted, very tempted, to smash the vase himself, and while he was at it, rip all her tidy stacks of paper in two. If he were to be dragged to the rack and stretched out twice his natural length he would not have told her that he’d today been to see Dr. Colquhoun to discreetly find out just when he might discard the sling. It was for her sake he had endured Colquhoun’s raised eyebrow and instantly repressed half-smile. And now she had the brazen gall to instruct him as to his own business?
“I am master here!” he roared, and, turning on his boot-heel, left her morning-room—no, damn it to hell, the Green Saloon! —without another word. He gathered up Uncle Duff, whom he found in the library, glancing through a racing journal and placidly puffing on his pipe, and practically dragged him to the stables. It wasn’t until they were on their horses, and riding away, that Alasdair realized he hadn’t even mentioned to Fiona the aggravating rearrangement of the tables in the Great Hall.
Not only did he blame her for that, he blamed her for his own forgetting.
Damn it, damn it all. He realized he was grinding his teeth, and consciously relaxed his jaw.
He couldn’t wait to get to his cousin Hewie’s house, off past the heather meadow, where he could eat and drink and make merry and, for a little while, forget that he’d been forced into marriage with the most exasperating woman in Scotland.
Alasdair did not return for the evening meal, nor was his uncle Duff anywhere to be found, so it was only Fiona and Cousin Isobel at the high table. Fiona ate with her usual robust appetite, listening with only half an ear as Isobel rattled on.
“Oh my dear, I feel so conspicuous! The day after your wedding, and here we are, all alone! I’m sure that everyone is staring at us! That is, I mean, at you! I heard that the laird positively thundered at you this afternoon! How terrible it must have been! Why, oh why, did we ever come to this dreadful place? Oh yes, thank you,” she said to the servant proffering an aromatic dish of juicy roasted beef, “just a very small serving. No, no sauce —I couldn’t possibly—oh, wait! On second thought, just a dab. Thank you. Might you bring me another roll? Upon my word, how different the Hall looks, my dear Fiona! Better, in fact, although I had not thought any improvements were needed. Did you have fresh tablecloths put down?”
Fiona, accepting some of the beef, contemplated telling the truth, but didn’t think she could stand any further conversation about the rearranging of furniture. She merely nodded, and continued to eat her excellent dinner. She knew that she was, in fact, being speculatively eyed by everyone in the Hall—and honestly, who could fault them?—but without disrespect, so there wasn’t anything to be done about it. On the one hand, she could go on, pleasantly and indefinitely, without having to be in the same room with Alasdair; on the other hand, however, there was no question that his absence was rude. Insulting. What happened to all those good manners he’d previously been displaying during the delightful Let’s Get Married Or Die competition? Wasn’t she good enough to warrant a modicum of civility, now that she was—more or less—his wife?
Wasn’t she good enough …
Yes, it was a question that had been haunting her for some years now.
Fiona kept herself busy for the rest of the evening by sewing, reading, and taking a long hot bath, but by the time she had made herself ready for bed, and was under the covers once more, his defection rankled to the point that she felt like a plucked harp spring, vibrating angrily.
Naturally sleep did not come, and the hour was well advanced by the time Alasdair finally came into the room. He stopped, as he had the night before, at the foot of the bed.
“Are you awake?”
“Yes,” she replied coldly.
“Now there’s wifely devotion for you! Did you miss me, madam?”
Coldly, coldly, she said: “Oh, yes, laird, I missed you greatly, especially at dinner, and most especially your scintillating conversation.”
He only laughed, and went away for a while. When he returned, Fiona had forgotten to close her eyes this time, and was taken aback to see that he was completely naked. Goodness, but he had a lot of muscles, and quite a bit of hair on his chest, and also lower down—
And on his long legs—
Which were also very muscular, and—
This is what he would have looked like riding that horse around the castle.
Oh, by the hammer of mighty Camulos, she was staring.
Quickly, then, she looked up at the canopy over her head, knowing that she was blushing a fiery crimson and deeply grateful that the room was dim. But, of course, he said as he climbed into bed:
“Had your fill? Or I could pull down the covers if you like.”
Fiona wanted to do different things.
Part of her wanted to explode with anger, like fireworks in a dark sky, and fizzle away into humiliated nothingness.
Another part of her wanted to hurl herself across the space between them so that she could clap a hand across his lips and make him stop talking.
Yet another part of her wanted something else …
It was all very confusing. As if suddenly she had splintered into different Fionas. One was the Fiona who was cool and imperturbable, steady and reliable. One was a furious Fiona, roiling, boiling, with hostility. And another was a Fiona who—oh my, oh my —wanted to be soft and yielding and vulnerable, whose body suddenly seemed to have a mind of its own here in this large sumptuous bed where more could happen than sleeping.
It was this third Fiona which made her very, very nervous.
So she said to him, bitingly, “You smell of alcohol.”
“Yes, I’m probably a little drunk.”
“Why? Did you need to be drunk in order to bring yourself to do the deed with me?”
Oh, her unguarded tongue! Another painfully revelatory remark she wished she could take back. She hadn’t thought herself a particularly prideful person before becoming ensnared by the great Penhallow, but she was fast coming to learn that, apparently, she was.
How lowering.
Nor did it help when he laughed again.
“You’re safe, madam, as I’ve been forbidden from, uh, using my arm for another week. Unless you’ve changed your opinion as to positions? Has the sight of my unclothed self incited in you a new resolve?”