His heart seemed to sink a little when she replied, courteously but without warmth, “Good morning.”
A servant pulled out her chair and she sat; in answer to his query she said, “Chocolate today, please.” He poured it out for her and she thanked him, then curled her fingers around her cup as if to warm cold hands.
Having sat again, Alasdair gazed down the length of the table at her. It was not a particularly long table, perhaps some fifteen feet of gleaming oak and meant for cozy en famille gatherings, but there did seem to be quite an immense distance looming between them. He felt oddly tongue-tied. And it did not feel right, somehow, to begin their conversation on the subject of organizing household goods.
So, instead: “How are you?”
She took a sip of her chocolate, then met his gaze with her own. “I’m fine, thank you. And you?”
His heart sank a bit lower. “I’m fine.”
“Good.” She asked the servant for oatmeal, cream, currants, sugar, then, dauntingly aloof and self-possessed, she applied herself to eating, without hurry, and Alasdair couldn’t come up with anything else to say. He would, he thought darkly, stop his mouth with his own napkin if he started to make a lame and platitudinous remark about the weather. Morosely he accepted another cup of coffee. Fiona was halfway through her bowl when suddenly Duff chuckled.
“There’s your wife right there, lad.”
“Yes,” answered Alasdair coldly. “I can see that for myself, Uncle.”
“Well then! All’s well that ends well. I don’t hold with lasses running off into the woods, and most especially at night. Disruptive, and not the thing,” he said, addressing this last sentence to Fiona with an air of avuncular sternness.
She gave him a look over her spoon that might otherwise have smote a more sensitive individual. “I’ll remember that the next time I’m carried off by bandits.”
It was possible that Duff would have said more on the topic of proper behavior, but just then Isobel hurried into the breakfast-room and he jumped to his feet, nipping in ahead of the servant to draw out her chair with a grandiloquent gesture. “Do be seated, Miss Isobel,” he said, then leaned down to pick up the reticule she had dropped in her evident astonishment. Even from where Alasdair sat he could hear the bones in Duff’s back creaking at his unusual speed of movement and sure enough, when Duff straightened, he winced, then groaned under his breath as stiffly he resumed his seat. Still, he managed to smile at Isobel, then said, with ponderous gallantry:
“Where were you, madam? We’ve missed you.”
“Oh! Am I late? How dreadful of me!” Isobel exclaimed, and although ordinarily Alasdair found little about his wife’s cousin of interest, he was mildly surprised to now see her face turn an exceedingly bright red.
“I was—I was reading, you see,” she explained to Duff, rather breathlessly, “and I’m afraid I lost track of time. Oh! Black pudding! One of my favorites! Yes, please, I’d love some—thank you!” Busily she unfolded her napkin, rearranged her silverware, added sugar to her tea, filled her plate.
If he didn’t know better, Alasdair might even have said that Dame Isobel was looking rather guilty. What on earth for, he wondered, still with only faint interest. As far as he knew they had no salacious books lying around the place. And even if they did, it was difficult to imagine short, plump, fussy, chattery Dame Isobel poring over them.
Still, one never knew about people.
It occurred to Alasdair that he hadn’t seen her among the crowd welcoming them home, either. Not that he cared one way or the other for himself, but he’d have thought she’d be concerned as to the welfare of her cousin.
So he said to her, “I trust you passed a pleasant night, madam?”
She turned round, anxious eyes to him. “I wish I could say yes, laird, but what with my terrible worry for Fiona, and my fear that the castle would be under attack at any moment, I’m sorry to confess to you I did not! I locked my door, and even took the precaution of wedging a chair underneath the doorknob.”
He frowned a little. “Someone told you the castle might be attacked?”
“Oh, no, laird, it was my own assumption. It’s such a different life here from the one I’m used to in Edinburgh, you see. Why, I hardly dare to venture out of doors these days! One might be murdered by blue-faced men, or abducted without warning, to suffer a fate worse than death! One never really feels safe!”
“Nonsense!” heartily interposed Duff. “You’re safer here than on the muck-filled streets of Edinburgh, where ruthless cutpurses roam about and ruffians break into people’s houses at all hours of the day and night!”