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.
Imagination, Fiona realized, wasn’t always better than seeing the real thing. Especially when the real thing—the real person —was magnificent.
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?”
“Hardly.”
“A shame.”
She only sniffed. And recoiled when he asked, casually:
“Do you always wear nightgowns with necks up to your chin?”
Involuntarily she drew the covers higher. “Yes.”
“It’s not surprising, really. You’ve no fat on you, so I expect you get cold easily.”
“I can’t help being thin. It’s how God made me.”
“There’s no need to sound so wrathy.”
“I detest personal remarks,” Fiona said, feeling that she had gained the safety of the high road, then promptly lost her footing when she added, “I would never criticize you, laird, for—as an example—that red hair of yours.”