Page 36 of The Laird's Masked Passion

She ignored him. She placed the cloth between her teeth, climbed onto the bed, and lay down flat upon her back.

Colin stared.

There were few sights in his life that had ever robbed him of speech. Battle had not. Death had not. A priest trembling through a forced wedding while knives flashed outside the church had not.

His wife, biting a linen strip with the solemn courage of a condemned saint, very nearly did.

She arranged herself stiffly, with her arms at her sides and her eyes fixed upon the canopy above her. The cloth made one cheek bulge slightly. Her blush had spread to her throat.

Colin looked at her. Then, at the cloth. Then back at her.

“What,” he asked slowly, “are ye daeing?”

Her eyes slid toward him. She took the cloth from her mouth just far enough to speak.

“I should have thought even a barbarian would ken.”

He folded his arms. “Enlighten me.”

Color burned hotter in her face. “Ye are taking off yer clothes.”

“Aye. A habit I have before sleeping.”

“Dinnae make sport of me.”

“I am trying nae tae.”

That, apparently, was the wrong answer. Her eyes narrowed with wounded dignity, though the effect was somewhat diminished by the strip of linen clutched in one fist.

“I ken what ye want,” she snarled.

“Dae ye?”

“Aye. Ye mean tae claim yer wife.” Her voice faltered only on the last word, and he hated that he noticed. “And since ye have already bought me, dragged me from a church, carried me about as though I were a sack of grain, and announced often enough that I belong tae ye, I have little confidence that me unwillingness would prove a mighty obstacle.”

Colin’s jaw tightened. She did not see it. Or if she did, she mistook the cause.

“So,” she continued, with the air of someone walking bravely toward a cliff, “I am ready.”

“Fer what?”

Her chin lifted. “Fer the terror.”

Silence fell. Then, despite himself, despite the anger that had risen cold and black at the thought of what had taught her to expect such things, something in him gave way. It wasn’t laughter, but rather an astonished breath that might have become it if he had not held it back.

Elspeth saw. “Dinnae laugh.”

“I’m nae laughing.”

“Ye wish tae.”

“Desperately.”

She sat up at once, looking offended. “Then perhaps ye should, and we may both be done with humiliation at the same time.”

Colin studied her. There she was, his unwilling bride, wrapped in silk and fury, armed with nothing but pride and a strip of linen, having decided that if terror must come, she would meet it with her teeth clenched and her dignity bloodied but alive.

He ought to have been irritated. He ought to have reminded her who he was, what his name meant, how little patience he had for insults in his own chamber.