The Heiress Bride (Sherbrooke Brides 3)

“Then you should realize your only choice is to shut your mouth.”

“Take out your own stitches,” she said, utterly infuriated with him, and turned to look out the window.

“A spoiled English twit. I might have known. I’m disappointed but not surprised. You can back out of this, my dear, you surely can, with all your English virtue still intact. You’re not only outspoken, you’re a termagant if you don’t get your way, a hoyden, and perhaps even bordering on an overbearing shrew. I begin to think your groats aren’t worth all the suffering.”

“What suffering, you beetle-brained clod? Just because I disagree with you, it doesn’t make me a termagant or a shrew or anything else horrible you just called me.”

“You want to back out of this? Fine, have the man turn the carriage around.”

“No, damn you, that would be too easy. I will marry you and teach you what it is to trust someone and confide in someone, to compromise with someone.”

“I’m not used to trusting a woman. I already told you that I liked you, but anything else was out of the question. Believe it. Now, I’m so tired my eyes are crossing. You will be my wife. Act like a lady, if you please.”

“As in fold my hands in my lap and twiddle my thumbs?”

“Yes, a good start. And keep your mouth closed.”

She could only stare at him. It was as if he were trying to drive her away, but she knew he couldn’t want her to back out of the marriage. It was male perversity. Besides, she also had no choice but to marry him. She wanted to yell that it was too late for her, far too late. She’d given him her heart. But she wasn’t about to let him become a tyrant, and groveling at his feet with such a confession would surely make him into a veritable Genghis Khan, given his present attitude. Oh yes, she knew all about tyrants, even though Douglas assumed the tyrant mantle now very rarely. Ah, but she remembered those early days when he’d first wed Alexandra. She gave Colin a sideways look but held her peace. She became silent as a stone. Colin slept until they arrived at the Golden Fleece Inn in Grantham late that evening.

Sinjun assumed that Colin did take out his own stitches, for he again procured two bedchambers, bade her a dutiful good night before her door, and left her. The next morning he hired a horse, merely telling her shortly at breakfast that he was bored with riding inside the damned carriage. Ha! He was bored with riding with her. He rode outside the carriage for the entire day. If his leg bothered him, he

gave no sign of it. In York, Sinjun hired a horse, with a look daring him to object, but he only shrugged, as if to say, it’s your money. If you insist upon wasting it, it doesn’t surprise me. She was glad now that he’d decided not to go to the Lake District, though she’d argued vehemently with him at the time. He wanted to get home more quickly, and even her warnings of Douglas with three guns and a sword hadn’t dissuaded him. She thought, as the wind whipped through her hair, that Lake Windermere was too romantic a spot to share with him. This endless gallop north with the silent man riding just ahead of her wasn’t at all the way she’d imagined her elopement to Scotland to be.

The morning they rode ahead of the carriage across the border into Scotland, Colin reined in and called out, “Stop a moment, Joan. I would speak to you.”

They were in the Cheviot Hills, low, rangy mounds that were mostly bare, stretching as far as she could see. It was beautiful and lonely as the devil and not a soul was to be seen, not a single dwelling. The air was warm and soft, the smell of heather strong. She said to him, “I’m pleased you remember how to speak, given how long it’s been.”

“Hold your tongue. It defies belief that you are angry with me just because I wouldn’t bed you, and here you are a young lady of quality.”

“That isn’t the point—”

“Then you’re still holding your sulk that we didn’t go to the Lake District, a ridiculous ploy that wouldn’t fool an idiot.”

“No, I’m not angry about that. All right, what do you want, Colin?”

“First of all, do you still want to marry me?”

“If I refuse, will you force me because you must marry me because you need my money?”

“Probably. I would think about it, perhaps.”

“Excellent. I won’t marry you. I refuse. I will see you in hell first. Now force me.”

He smiled at her, the first time in four days. He actually smiled. “You aren’t boring, I’ll give you that. Your outrageousness even occasionally pleases me. Very well, we’ll marry tomorrow afternoon when we reach Edinburgh. I have a house on Abbotsford Crescent, old and creaky as the devil and needs money poured into it, but not as badly as Vere Castle. We will stop there and I will try to have a preacher wed us. Then we will ride to Vere Castle the following day.”

“All right,” she said, “but I will tell you again, Colin, and you really should believe me. Douglas is dangerous and smart; he could be anywhere waiting for you. He conducted all sorts of dangerous missions against the French. I tell you, we should wed immediately and—”

“That is, we will ride to Vere Castle unless you’re too sore to ride. Then I will prop you up in the carriage.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about taking you—our wedding night—until you’re raw with it.”

“You’re being purposefully crude, Colin, purposefully nasty and unkind.”

“Perhaps, but you’re in Scotland now, and you will soon be my wife, and you will learn that you owe me your loyalty and your obedience.”

“You were one way when we first met. Then, when you were ill, you were really quite nice, albeit irritable because you hate weakness. Now you’re just being a fool. I will marry you and every time you’re a fool in the future, I’ll do something to you to make you regret it.” There, she thought, that was setting things straight. She loved him to distraction—a fact she knew well that he knew, and thus his outlandish behavior toward her—but she wouldn’t allow his character flaws or his outmoded notions of husbands and wives to interfere with what she insisted that he be.