The Laird Takes a Bride(34)

“Oh, and you’re confident he filled a pouch with pig’s blood in perfect secrecy?”

Alasdair was silent.

Fiona gave a mocking laugh. “Go ahead, laird, spill the blood anywhere you like. Ruin some perfectly good bed linens. And what will happen when finally we do consummate our union  ?”

She could almost feel, from the five or six feet that separated them, his own surging anger. “May God in His heaven intervene, madam,” he growled, very slow, very deep, “and preserve me from your damned infernal logic!” With his uninjured arm he grabbed one of the pillows and flung it across the room, where it landed with a soft plop on the floor.

Fiona pondered his invocation of both heavenly and demoniac forces, considering whether it was worth another mocking jab at his inconsistency, and in the end decided it wasn’t. She also thought about getting out of bed to retrieve the pillow, as she longed to do, but didn’t care to expose her person (even in her demure high-necked nightgown) to his scrutiny. At least not at this exact moment. What, she wondered, was he wearing? A frisson of shivery alarm overtook her, and sternly she repressed it. Things—it—the act, whatever one wished to euphemistically call the conjugal duty—was (were) going to happen. Maybe Alasdair would tonight, in his wrath, find a way to overcome the limitations of his still-healing arm, and summon her over. She’d just have to grit her teeth and lie there like a wax dummy. It couldn’t last for more than a few minutes, anyway, could it? And what about that loathsome pouch of blood? He’d better dispose of it, or else she’d take it and dump it down the back of Duff MacDermott’s shirt.

At dinner.

In front of everyone.

And laugh, laugh, laugh.

While she was thinking about all this, Fiona gradually, very gradually, became aware that beside her, Alasdair’s breathing had gentled into a soft, steady cadence.

His chest rose and fell, rose and fell.

His eyes were closed.

He was, in fact, asleep.

No doubt he was exhausted from the many hours of roistering with his boon companion Duff.

Fiona looked balefully at his peaceful face in the dim flickering illumination of the fire. His nose, she suddenly noticed, although a well-formed organ, had a slight bump on the bridge, as if, at one time, he had broken it.

It was strange, she now thought, abruptly distracted from her thoughts of vengeance, how sometimes a small imperfection could render an object more pleasing.

Not, she reminded herself, that she cared two hoots for his profile, attractive or otherwise.

She rolled onto her side, her back to him. She didn’t expect sleep to come, but over the years she had become quite expert at waiting, patiently, submissively, for the night to crawl along. If she was fortunate, she might drift into a doze toward dawn.

The luck is with me then, she had said earlier. Oh, for a few hours’ blessed slumber, and she would count herself, despite everything, lucky indeed.



Alasdair woke to the muddled consciousness that although he was in his own big, comfortable bed, something was different.

Oh yes, that.

Yesterday he’d gotten married.

Cautiously he opened his eyes, saw that it would soon be morning, saw that somehow, during the night, he had gotten himself closer to Fiona. Not close enough so that he could reach out and touch any part of her. But closer.

She lay facing him on her side, resting her cheek on the palm of one hand, her thick silvery braid draped across her shoulder. Her lips were slightly parted as she slept, and it struck him that they were—

That they weren’t unattractive.

Really, they were almost kissable.

He hadn’t noticed that before.

How surprising.

And in the wake of this realization, he felt an odd sort of guilt, as if by studying her face while she slept he was doing something wrong. Illicit.

It was time, then, to go.

With nearly superhuman quietness, Alasdair got out of bed, dressed (putting his arm back in the damned sling), picked up the sporran Uncle Duff had given him, and stepped outside into the hallway, softly closing the door behind him.

Curled up there was Cuilean, who immediately leaped up, stretched, dipped an elegant play-bow; and, tail wagging, he sniffed curiously at the sporran in his master’s hand. Alasdair slid it into the pocket of his buckskins, rested his hand for a moment on that shaggy head, and by means of an obscure passageway he made his way outside into the bracing chill of early morning. Unobserved, Cuilean frisking at his side, Alasdair strode into the woods that lay far beyond the beautifully maintained gardens, his boots alternately sinking into damp earth and crunching on twigs and crisp fallen leaves. Here in the light of day, he didn’t know whether to feel he’d had a fortunate reprieve on his wedding night, or whether he had made a complete and utter mull of it.