She turned slowly to face him. “You sound very pleased with yourself. How odd.”
“I’m not at all pleased. I’m concerned. You’re obviously hearing what you want to hear, not what’s there.”
“There is a wealth of conceit in your tone. All right, Colin, what if I said I was too sore? What would you do? Hire a litter, perhaps? Put a sign around my neck reading that I was unable to ride because I’d been plowed too much—like an overused barley field?”
“An analogy that is perhaps amusing but nothing more. No, if you were too sore, I would carry you before me. You would rest on my thighs and ease the pain you perhaps might be feeling.”
“I would prefer to ride by myself, thank you, Colin.”
“As you wish, Joan.”
“I would also prefer that we had not yet left Edinburgh.”
“You have already expressed yourself at some length on that subject. I’ve told you why we left so quickly. There is danger and I don’t want you exposed to it. I am taking you to Vere Castle. I will return to Edinburgh. There is much that both of us need to do.”
“I don’t really want to be left alone in a castle with people I don’t know, Colin.”
“Since you are the mistress, what should it matter? If something displeases you, you may discuss changing it with me when I return. You may even make lists, and I will certainly review them.”
“I sound like your child, not your wife. If a servant displeases me, do I dismiss the servant or just add it to the list so that the master—”
“I’m the laird.”
“ . . . so that the laird may review it like a judge and issue forth a decision?”
“You are the countess of Ashburnham.”
“Ah, and what does that entail, other than making lists and learning how to plead my cases before you?”
“You are being purposefully annoying, Joan. Look at that bird, it’s a dunlin. On your English coast you call them sandpipers.”
“How knowledgeable you are. Did you know they get a black stripe on their bellies when they wish to mate? No? Well, they certainly didn’t do all that well with your education at Oxford, did they? But perhaps some of it was your fault. You spent far too much time tupping all your ladies at the inn in Chipping Norton.”
“Your memory is lamentable. Tupping is crude. You won’t use it again. Your tongue also runs too smoothly, Joan, so smoothly that you are in danger of being tossed overboard.”
She continued, not hesitating, “Now, let me present my only item to you—the judging laird. I wish to remain with you. I’m your wife, despite everything.”
“What do you mean, despite everything? Are you referring to your less than wonderful experience in our marriage bed? All right, so you weren’t that pleased with the result of our union. You are small and I was too enthusiastic. I shouldn’t have forced it that third time. I have apologized to you several times. I have told you it will get better. Can you not trust me?”
“No. You will remain as you are, and that is too rough and too big.”
“A bit salty of tongue now, aren’t you?”
“Oh, go to the devil, Colin!”
“Have you looked at your face, Joan? ’Tis still red from the stone that slashed across it. That was a bullet. You could have been hurt, killed even. You will stay at Vere Castle until I have seen that it will stop and that you will be in no more danger.”
“But I didn’t even get to visit Edinburgh Castle!”
“Since you will live in Scotland for the rest of your life, I daresay that you will see the Castle as often as you wish.”
“The MacPhersons live in Edinburgh?”
“No, they are some fifteen miles from my lands, but the old laird is there, I was told. They’ve a comfortable house near the Parliament Building. I must see him. There are also, as I’ve already told you several times, many things for me to see to. Bankers and builders to speak to. New furnishings to consider. Sheep to buy and have transported to Vere and—”
He fell silent when she simply turned away from him. Damn him, as if she didn’t care about new furnishings, new stock for the land, new plans for building. But no, he was excluding her. She’d already given him all her arguments. None seemed to matter.
She sat down on a valise. It collapsed under her weight and she remained seated on the smashed-down valise, and tucked her legs un