Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (37 page)

Alasdair shook his head. “He wouldn’t have believed me, Broomie.”

“Oh, lad. Certainly he would. I did.” She laid her hand over her copious bosom. “I ne’er did think it e’er coulda been ye.”

It was, if he were honest with himself, an absolution he had waited years to hear. Alasdair had to draw in a deep, steadying breath to combat the vertiginous gratitude that threatened to upend him. He had to act and speak in a manner befitting both his sacrifice, and the grandfather he had made that sacrifice for. “Your faith in me is very much appreciated, Mrs. Broom.”

Her pleasure made pink buttons of her cheeks. “I liked it better when ye were calling me Broomie, like the old days. But ye’ll soon have bairns running about the place, callin’ me that, so I’ll be satisfied soon enough. We’ll just get your lass well—we’ll tempt her with some sticky toffee puddin’—and ye’ll be off the races.”

Alasdair didn’t have the heart to warn her that there might not be any bairns, much less any races. He didn’t have the heart to face that particularly hard fact himself, especially since he had not yet reckoned out what sort of race he was going to run with his new bride.
 

He could not decide if his inability to engage the lass in marital relations was, in truth, unwillingness. If he was using her injury as an excuse to hold his unholy attraction, as well as his distrust, at bay. What he had decided, was that if and when he did give in to the lust that was all but choking him, it wouldn’t be before she was good and ready, and all but throwing pebbles at his metaphorical windows to gain his attention.

Until that time, he could have to distract himself with work, and hope that sticky toffee pudding would do his work for him, and get the lass out of her bed. And into his.

Chapter Twenty-three

“Strathcairn.”

The insistent whisper woke him in the dark. Alasdair opened one eye enough to see by the low light of the fireplace embers that the clock over the mantelpiece read twelve minutes after two o'clock in the morning—not an hour conducive to receiving a visitor. Even if that visitor were one’s difficult, reluctant, insistent wife.

“Strathcairn.” Under the blanket of the dark the insistent whisperer had come closer—close enough that he felt the warm waft of her breath against his ear.
 

He pushed himself to his elbows, so she could see his scowl. “Are you ill? What is wrong?”

“Nothing. I couldn’t sleep. Are you awake?”

He subsided back against the pillows in relief, and decided to choose the most obvious answer. “Nay.”

He could almost hear her answering smile. “Good.” Her weight settled onto the middle of the bed. “I want to talk to you.”

“Talk to me in the morning.”

“Technically, it is morning now.” The bed creaked as she shifted to sit somewhere closer by his legs. “And I can’t sleep.”

His eyes adjusted enough to the dark to reveal the astonishing sight of his young wife sitting cross-legged and bare-footed on his bed, wearing nothing but her chemise and a large tartan shawl. While the shawl did an obnoxiously thorough job of concealing her torso, the firelight did interesting things to her long unbound hair. And to her long legs. And his prone position also made it possible to see other, interesting things. Things which he knew she did not mean to offer him.

And a gentleman only ever accepted what was offered.

But still, his interest, as well as another, less well-mannered part of his anatomy, was piqued. He sat up. “Ring your maid for some warm milk.”

“I don’t have a maid, and Mrs. Broom will only try to drown me in one of those gammy concoctions she calls medicine, which seem to be made entirely of whisky, dirt and twigs. And I’m tired of being all ginny. And I’m sure it would be cruel to wake her at this at this hour just to keep me company.”

“But it is somehow
not
cruel to wake me?” He shoved a pillow behind his head to prop himself up.

“Don’t be silly. Mrs. Broom didn’t pledge to love, honor and cherish. I feel quite certain that chats in the middle of the night fall under that particular clause. And I wanted to talk to you.”

There was no hope for it. Alasdair leaned his weary skull against the headboard. “And what would you like to chat about at this particular hour?”

“By jimble.” Quince crawled over to shove the bed-curtains wider, so the spill of light from the fire warmed the bed. “Strathcairn. Do you always sleep unclothed?”

“Alasdair,” he muttered. But his answer at least was simple. “Aye.”

“Holy painted tarts.” She gaped at his chest for a good long moment.
 

So long, he crossed his arms across said chest, to show her that he was a living, breathing man who wasn’t to be trifled with in the middle of the night. Not even by his inconvenient, agile, interested little wife.
 

Who was definitely interested, even if she sat back on her heels. “Do you mean to say that you are entirely naked beneath the bed linens?”

Alasdair stretched his arms over his head with as much nonchalance as he could muster while still flexing a muscle or two. “Aye. I am.”

“Entirely?”

“Absolutely entirely.” He yawned again for good measure, as if he was so often naked while in the company of attractive young wives he had not yet bedded, that the thought bored him stiff. Which it did, for entirely different reasons. Which he did not tell her. It would do her good to think she had to work to earn her way back into his good graces. Although at two in the morning, his good graces were a great deal more lax and ready to be pleased than they would be in the cold, realistic light of dawn.

There was a pleasurably long silence while his wife contemplated his physique. He also wondered if his observant little wife was going to make note of his rather insistent cockstand.
 

“How curious,” was all she finally said.

Since she didn’t seem intent on ravishing him, Alasdair asked, “What was it you wanted, Quince?”

“Oh.” She blinked at him, all rumpled bemusement. “I don’t remember. I’ve quite forgot.”
 

He would not be amused by her tame flibbertigibbet act. Nor charmed. He would not. “Then go back to sleep.”

“I can’t. I think I’ve slept too much. And I always seem to forget that you’re ginger all over.” She leaned fractionally closer, as if she wanted a better look.

He debated the wisdom of giving her one. “Aye. All over.”
 

“It rather suits you,” she allowed. “Very Scots.”

“Thank you. Tis the reason why, when I was young, they called me Sandy.”

This elicited a wide, rather wondrous smile. “Did they really? I had no idea.”

“There are many things, I’m sure, that you don’t know about me.”

She rolled onto her stomach next to him on top of the bedclothes, and propped her chin on her hands, all acute attention. “Like what?”

“Like the fact that I don’t like to be woken in the middle of the night.”

She smiled and crossed her bare feet in the air. “No one likes to be woken in the middle of the night, or otherwise. Too common. Tell me something else.”
 

He liked agile, acrobatic lasses wearing nothing but firelight and tartan. “You really ought to go back to bed. You’ve been injured. You need rest.”

“Injured? You make it sound like the veriest accident, when we both ken different—that it was entirely my fault.”

As glad as he was to hear her take responsibility, Alasdair was not about to be backhanded into an argument about the too-recent past. “It was an unfortunate accident,” he insisted for what he swore was the last time. “Which is why you should go back to bed.”

“Strathcairn, I’ve rested for days and days, until I’m tired of resting. I’m not going to die just because you put some trifling hole in me. I’m far too stubborn to oblige. And I’m in a bed.”

“You’re
on
a bed. Which is not yours.”

“Hmm.” She made a sound that was neither a yes nor a no, and settled herself more comfortably. “I didn’t come here to argue with you. I came to thank you. For the pudding.” She peeped up at him. “Mrs. Broom said it was all your doing. Though I don’t ken if you had any part in it being liberally laced with whisky.”

“Was it?” That explained why she was like a kitten in a sunbeam, all sweet animal satisfaction—she was perhaps a wee bit drunk. But even kittens had claws—he would be wise to be wary.
 

“Oh, aye. I think Mrs. Broom might own shares in a distillery, the way she promotes the whisky for all available applications. I shouldn’t be at all surprised to hear she uses it as a furniture polish.”

He couldn’t help his laugh. “Actually, I own the distillery. But I’m glad to find her so enthusiastic a patron. And I’m glad you liked it, the pudding.”

“I did. So thank you.”

“You’re welcome. How is your arm?”

“Better.” She rolled onto her back, and flexed the limb in question in demonstration. “It is only a wee bit sore and stiff. A bit pinchy, and a little itchy actually. But I suppose that means it’s healing.”

“Aye.” The tartan shawl had become much less effective in shielding her person. Alasdair had to remind himself not to stare. Even if her wee breasts were magnificent. Pert and perfectly rounded. Just the right size for his hand.
 

He had to clear his throat. “Good. You should be more careful with it. Not take on too much, too soon.”
 

“Not take too much on.” She scoffed. “It’s not as if I’m going to take to the roads of the Strath, terrorizing the local gentry. Oooh.” She narrowed her eyes. “Is that what you’re afraid of, that I’ll take to the roads?”

“You’re not going to take to the roads of the Strath.”

“Nay. Certainly not without my mare.” She rolled back towards him so he could see her teasing smile. “But if I promise not to take to the highway, do you think you could arrange for Piper to be brought north for me? I forgot to ask for her in all the flurry and haste of our leave-taking.”

Something about the fact that she was asking him for something—almost the way a real, normal wife might ask something of her husband—thawed him a little. “Your co-conspirator? Your mare with an appropriately rebellious Scots name.”
 

“Don’t jump to unfounded conclusions, Strathcairn.”

“Most of my conclusions about you are extraordinarily well-founded,” he observed. “Did not the mare aid you in your larcenous endeavors?”

“Aye, she did. And very ably. But she does not have a Scots name. Like everything else in the Winthrop household she is botanical:
Piper nigram
, the tree that gives us black pepper. By all rights her name ought to have been Pepper, but Papa named her because he bought her, so Piper she is.”

“Fascinating.” As was his wife, who seemed to be far better educated than he had thought—not many young ladies could readily recite botanical nomenclature. “Yes, I’ll send for the horse, if your father will let her come.” And if he remembered their last conversation on a bed together, he had also promised the kittenish Lady Cairn another animal. “You also asked for a dog, and according to McNab, the gamekeeper has a litter from which you can pick a puppy.”

Quince clapped her hands together in delight. “Just like that? I begged Papa for years, and he never gave in. But while I am thinking of Papa, Strathcairn, I should like to speak to you of business.”

She was like a kitten chasing a spider—all twitchy shifts of direction. All his wariness came creeping back up his spine. “What sort of business?”

“I assume you and Papa made some sort of settlement. Even in the rush to leave Edinburgh, you strike me as the type of mon who kens his worth, and would protect his patrimony from a heedless, larcenous lass like me. And while I have no interest in your money, I am interested in
mine
, so I should like to understand what sort of fortune I have, and what sort of husband you plan to be financially.”

She rolled once more onto her belly, and propped her chin up on her elbow. And gave him an absolutely spectacular view of the delicate architecture of her shoulder and collarbone, as well as the sweet pale top of her breast.

His voice slid low, into the rough Scots burr he knew she liked. “I suppose the sort o’ husband I plan to be will depend upon what sort of wife ye plan to be.” He would take every advantage he could muster with wee, wily Quince Winthrop.