“Oh. Well. I didn’t understand you. There was too much going on. But,” she added scrupulously, “it wasn’t your fault, laird.”
“Ah.”
“It was good of you to wait for your men,” she also added.
“They had a hard slog of it.”
“Was everyone all right?”
“Aye.”
“And the cattle?”
“Unhappy. But all right.”
“Oh, that’s good.” Suddenly Fiona realized that she was feeling like a balloon that was filling with air. She was, in fact, a light and happy balloon, floating up into skies of blue. So she said, “I’m sorry for the misunderstanding.”
“Is that why you’ve been so—”
“Murderous? Yes. I’m sorry, laird.”
“It’s fine. But yesterday you called me by my first name.”
“That is so . . . Alasdair.”
He smiled at her, and tentatively, she smiled back. Really, his face was quite pleasing when he smiled. It emphasized the strong line of his jaw, the firm beveled shape of his chin. She didn’t like it when men had weak chins.
Logan Munro has a weak chin, whispered a sly little voice in her head.
He did? Fiona tried to summon an image of Logan, but it seemed impossible here in an illuminated room, with her eyes open.
Wide open and looking at her husband Alasdair.
You look but you do not see.
“What are you working on?”
Fiona blinked, flustered, as if she had been caught out, caught between two worlds, one of which she had no business to be in. “I beg your pardon?”
“Your sewing. What is it?”
“An altar cloth.” She told herself to be here, now, and put her focus analytically onto Alasdair’s face. But a cool cataloging of his features—two eyes, two ears, one nose—fell away in a giddy rush of impressions, almost as if she was encountering him for the very first time. His broad shoulders, the sturdy column of his neck; the strong planes of his face, those remarkable amber eyes. The dark red of his hair, contrasting vividly with the black fabric of his jacket. Actually, now that she gave it her consideration, it wasn’t a dreadful color at all, that hair of his. It was thick, alive with color, with a charming tendency to spike upwards a little above his forehead. How unusual it was for someone with red hair to have dark eyebrows and eyelashes—how striking. He still smiled at her, highlighting those intriguing lines on either side of his mouth. They were sensual, inviting—
“What is the embroidery upon it?”
“What? Oh. A Nativity scene,” she answered, almost at random.
“Very nice.” That subject seeming to be fairly well exhausted, he fell silent, and shifted a little in his seat. She couldn’t help but notice as he did so the hem of his kilt moved up a little higher, revealing a more expansive length of muscled thigh.
Don’t stare, don’t stare, she told herself, and hastily picked up her needle again. She had once more splintered into a Fiona abrim with intense and contrary emotions, and it made her both excited and afraid. And awkward, gawky, jittery; her heart was beating a little more quickly than usual, she could almost feel her blood rushing faster through her veins. She remembered again how yesterday, in that horrible confrontation with Faing Sutherlainn, Alasdair had seemed to dominate, not with a weapon or through any kind of violence, but by his very presence, the sheer strength of his will. She had felt it in her bones, with an almost physical reaction juddering through her.
Now, with Alasdair sitting opposite her, she again responded to the pull of his being, as if his body called out to her body, and her mind—her busy, sensible, clever mind—had nothing to do with it. She was sharply aware of the smooth, silken fabric against her breasts, encasing her arms, surrounding her legs as if confining her, overheating her; very much did she all at once want to pull off her shoes, her stockings . . . her gown, her chemise. Everything.
Her hands, Fiona saw suddenly, were shaking, and so she put aside her sewing, reached blindly for the book that lay on the little table at her elbow.
“What are you reading?” asked Alasdair.
Fiona seized upon the title as a way of cleaving through the wild confusion that had taken hold of her. “Modern Methods of Crop Rotation. I found it in the library.”
He looked at her. Curiously. Smilingly. Then, as if willing to follow her lead: “I got that a few months ago, and liked it. Have you gotten to the section about alternating oats with turnips or potatoes, then planting barley, hay, and pasture?”
She was on solid ground again. Thank goodness. “Yes, it was very interesting. I found the diagrams very helpful. Did you see the one about planting at a diagonal, allowing for better distribution of the manure?”