The Laird Takes a Bride(83)

Fiona couldn’t stop herself. Pointedly she looked over at the green velvet window-hangings. “Three hundred and eighty pounds for the fabric alone,” she said with a sniff. “And nineteen pounds for the tassels. Dear me.”

At that, Duff turned around. “Are you talking about those green curtains? God in heaven, the way my brother-in-law Stuart’s eyes bugged out when he heard how much they cost! I laughed so hard I nearly gave myself an apoplexy! He looked exactly like a toad! Your mother’s renovations, lad, began in this room, but you wouldn’t remember that, of course—you were only a wee bairn, but I’ll never forget it, for Stuart came to stay with me for nearly a year. Maybe more. The noise, the dust, all those extra people in the castle were unbearable, he said.” Duff shook his head, but nostalgically now. “It was like old bachelor times for Stuart and me both. The fun we had! And Gormelia could rip up the castle to her heart’s content.”

Alasdair said nothing, and Isobel put in, diffidently, “She certainly had good taste.”

“So everybody said,” Duff agreed. “Gormelia was famous among the Eight Clans for her deft ways with furniture and paintings and carpet! Buying, and buying again! Stuart used to say that the only reason she married him was for the opportunity to redo the castle.” He chuckled. “Well, she certainly took on a job for herself. Fifty bedchambers at least, and I don’t know how many drawing-rooms there are. But Gormelia did, you can be sure. Never knew anyone so obsessed with furnishings! Heaven help you if you moved a cushion to a different spot on a sofa.” Thoughtfully he added, “Not exactly the warmest person in the world, I must say. I always thought she liked things better than people. One day I said it to her face, and she booted me out on the spot and told me to stay away. Bit of an overreaction, I thought, but in any event I never came back until the funerals.”

Fiona looked at Alasdair. On his face was a wooden expression, which as she watched shifted into a pleasant one as he returned her gaze and said lightly, “Are we having macaroons this evening with the tea-tray, my dear? I hope so.”

Her impulse was to reply in kind, politely, but instead she said, taking an instant dislike to being addressed as my dear in that somehow impersonal tone, and still not sure why she felt so stubborn about the whole business: “Gracious, to think of spending almost four hundred pounds on window-hangings! I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

He only shrugged, and Fiona went on, doggedly, “Maybe this is why I’ve never really liked this room.”

Still he was silent.

Fiona felt her back stiffening.

And before she could prevent it, she found herself paraphrasing Sheila—little Sheila!—and saying snippily, “I suppose your mother was too busy stuffing the attics with perfectly good furniture to do anything for the children of Tadgh. Including you and your brother, I daresay,” she added fiercely.

Alasdair did not reply, and Duff said, “Alasdair and Gavin did all right, lass. They had each other, you know.”

“That may be so, Uncle, but I still feel like ripping down those curtains. I can tell they’re going to bother me more every day. Alasdair, can I put them somewhere else? In the attics? Assuming, of course, I can find any space in there.”

His eyes had the cool brilliant gleam of citrine. “I appreciate your soliciting my opinion,” he said lightly, “but I couldn’t care less what you do with them.”

The words were pleasant, yet Fiona felt as if she’d been shoved into the icy waters of Wick Bay. She stared at him. What on earth was going on here? She wasn’t insulting him, wasn’t harming him! Was it because she had been criticizing a long-dead mother-in-law whom she had never met? Not, perhaps, very high-minded of her, but what sort of person cared more for furniture than for her children?

“Fine!” she snapped. “I’ll have them taken away first thing in the morning.”

Alasdair shrugged, and opened up his book.

“You really don’t care where they go?” She could hear the shrillness in her voice and hated it, but didn’t seem able to subdue it.

“I really don’t.”

“Fine! I’ll have them dumped in the loch then.” No sooner had the hasty words come out of her mouth than she wished them unsaid. God, the loch! Why had she said that? The place where his family had perished! A scarlet flush of shame blazed on her face, her neck, her chest, and for a moment Fiona longed to be a victim of spontaneous combustion and disappear into a little, smoldering pile of ashes—especially when she saw how Alasdair’s expression was now one of remote, polite, utter blankness. He gazed back at her as he might look at an odd sort of bug that had landed on his shoe.