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?”