The Laird Takes a Bride(39)

To her chagrin he only said, pensively, “Some people seem to find it attractive.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

“What color hair do you prefer?”

This was dangerous, dangerous. She couldn’t help but think of someone else, another man, another time, a caressing voice and enveloping arms; and fire, sweet fire overtaking her. With a kind of desperation she blurted out, “Where did you go tonight?”

“Why, madam, you did miss me. I’m touched.”

“Never mind! It’s of no interest to me, I’m sure.”

Alasdair turned onto his side (his good side) and looked over at her. He could see the ruffles of her absurd nightgown framing her chin like the white petals of a flower. A Fiona flower, he thought suddenly, ridiculously enjoying the consonance of the two Fs. A frilly Fiona flower. A frilly fine fearless Fiona flower. A frilly fine fearless familiar fetching forthright formidable fragrant Fiona flower . . .

But then there came to him—penetrating the cheerful fog produced by the aged whisky Hewie had poured with such liberality —that earlier, that uneasy sense of his own behavior.

He had, in fact, left his bride of less than forty-eight hours to preside over the Great Hall, alone. He’d spent several delightful hours with Hewie and his company, which included Hewie’s recently widowed sister-in-law, Nora, who seemed to rise above her affliction with remarkable resilience, giggling, flirting, pulling him to his feet to dance Strip the Willow when someone began sawing on a fiddle, even, at one point, plumping herself square onto his lap. How sorry she was, she’d confided with lips pressed close to his ear, that she had been ineligible to compete for the privilege of winning his hand in matrimony, for she would have tried so hard—and here her hand had boldly groped down past his waist—so very hard, but then again, people lost their spouses every day, didn’t they, and who knew what the future might hold?

At the time, he’d been too distracted by the whisky, by that sweetly pandering hand, to take in the full meaning of Nora’s words. But now they returned, almost like a blow to his brain, and mild uneasiness jolted toward something else. No matter what he felt about his recalcitrant wife, such things ought not to be said, ought not to be listened to, and he should have dumped bonny, winsome Nora off his lap onto the cold stone floor.

But he hadn’t.

He had sat there, awash in the golden paralytic haze of whisky and mindless lust, held fast by a wet little tongue that had toyed with the rim of his ear and a sweet little voice saying evil words.

But now shame—like a bucket of icy water dumped upon him—had broken the spell, and he lay in his own bed, warm and snug, and abruptly, utterly sober.

He tried to tell himself that he could have wed little Mairi MacIntyre, she of the golden hair, the tiny waist, the tinkling laugh, the delicate fairy maiden who seemed to float rather than walk and who looked up worshipfully into one’s eyes as though one deserved it.

He tried to tell himself that Fiona had brashly put herself forward. Had practically made him marry her.

But he was having a difficult time convincing himself of that.

Shame, and uneasiness, and a new feeling of uncertainty all got in the way.

Yet—

He summoned the memory of Uncle Duff saying blithely, What is a wife but a brood mare? You’ll pick one of the lasses, get her with child as many times as it takes to produce a son or two, and that’s the sum of it.

Now that was the smartest tack to take.

And luckily, tomorrow was another day.

And he had somewhere to go.

And if his wife had to eat alone for a while, no one would think twice of it again.

“Well,” he now said out loud, as pleasantly as humanly possible, “good night, madam,” he said to her, and firmly shut his eyes.

“Good night, laird,” answered Fiona, with heavy irony in her tone, and turned away from him. Memories, she thought to herself, were dangerously alluring, not unlike the apple in the old German fairy tale—that poisoned apple offered by the evil queen to her credulous stepdaughter: red, delicious-looking, tempting, and fatal.



It was still dark when Alasdair shook his uncle out of a sound sleep.

“What?” gasped Duff. “God’s toenails, what’s happening? Who died?”

“Nobody,” Alasdair said. “Come on. We’re going to Crieff.”

“What? Now? Bloody hell, lad, do you know what I was dreaming about when you rudely rousted me? I was rescuing an endangered maiden from a dragon—”

“Wonderful.” Rapidly Alasdair picked up Duff’s clothes, which still lay in an untidy heap on the floor, and flung them onto his bed. “Let’s go.”