The Laird Takes a Bride(94)

“Fiona.”

Alasdair’s deep voice.

“Yes, laird?”

“Talk to me.”

“Certainly. What would you like to talk about?”

“About us.”

“Well, as to that, laird, you’ll have to do all the talking. As I trust I’ve already made clear, I’ve nothing to contribute. I am, of course, happy to listen, as a good wife should.”

There was a silence, empty and vast.

Fiona stared unblinkingly above her.

Alasdair slid closer to her in that immense bed.

“Fiona,” he said.

“Yes?” she answered politely.

“I want you. I want to finish what last night we began.”

In his voice she could hear the desperate urgency which she herself had experienced some twenty-four hours ago. She could feel the bewitching heat of his body. Could smell that fascinating scent which she’d come to associate with him alone, soap and clean damp hair and just a musky trace of the stables.

And she felt—nothing.

Nothing could penetrate the sadness which had apparently turned her into a living statue.

But neither did she resent his words. In all fairness, she had to admit, yesterday in this very bed she had tried to do the same thing.

“Fine,” she told him. “Just a moment, and I’ll lift up my nightgown for you.”

“What?”

“As a dutiful wife, naturally I will accommodate you, laird.”

“Oh my God,” he said, revulsion in his tone, “stop it, Fiona. I’ll have none of that.”

“As you will. I’ll wish you good night, then.” And she turned on her side, presenting him with, should he care to peruse it, an excellent view of her back. A kind of shield which would conceal the fact that she was crying. Silently, without sobs or sniffles; simply a stream of tears falling, one after the other, as if they sprang from an infinite well.



It was on the following morning, when Fiona had stepped onto the front portico to check if the weather was sufficiently auspicious for wash day, that she saw Sheila sitting on one of the stone steps, loudly weeping. Quickly Fiona went to her, and placed a gentle hand on the little girl’s bony shoulder.

“What’s the matter, hinny?”

Sheila raised a wet, woebegone face. “Oh, lady, I was running to help catch a chicken that got loose, and I fell.” She pulled up the dirty hem of her gown to show Fiona a pair of badly scraped kneecaps. “See?”

“I do see. Won’t you let me clean those poor knees? I have some very nice salve for them, too.”

“All right.” Slowly Sheila stood, wincing, and suddenly a strange, opaque look came into her pale blue eyes. “Why must trouble come in threes? Why, lady?”

“I don’t know, hinny. But I do know that Cook has made a lovely batch of gooseberry dumplings. Maybe you’d like one after we fix you up?” Fiona watched as the little girl’s face cleared and she swiftly nodded. Hopefully there wouldn’t be two more incidents to plague poor Sheila.

But, of course, Fiona could not have guessed that Sheila wasn’t referring to herself but to the troubles of some other person entirely.



The days passed. Fiona went about her business, Alasdair went about his. The harvest this year was abundant and the weather benign; the threshing barn of old Norval Smith was promptly repaired, made even better than new; the bull sent by the Colling brothers was pronounced entirely satisfactory. The dinner party hosted by the laird and his lady was talked about for some time, so elegant, so enjoyable an affair it was. The very pregnant farmer’s wife was successfully delivered of healthy twin girls. Everyone marveled over how nice the altar cloths were looking. Isobel’s beautifully attired dolls were much clamored for by the little ones of the clan, and Duff took to fashioning sticks into delightful little fishing-rods that were equally sought after.

In fact, everything really was going remarkably well. Somehow, though, in some mysterious way, somehow the atmosphere at Castle Tadgh, which had been brightening, dimmed bit by bit. It wasn’t palpable, it wasn’t anything you could touch or quantify, but there it was. Yet nobody could have suspected that despite his usual smiling, easygoing exterior, the laird was greatly troubled. Or that behind her calm, pleasant façade their lady took refuge from her anguish in an inflexible pride.

No one could have had any way of knowing that the laird and lady lay far apart from each other in the night, so divided in their relations that they might as well have been in separate beds, separate rooms, separate countries.

Isobel, perhaps, had some inkling of this deep estrangement, and more than once, as doggedly she read on through the Tome, sad tears would drop onto the timeworn pages, and carefully, so carefully, would she dab at them with her cheap, lacy, ineffective handkerchiefs from Edinburgh.