Rose In Scotland (31 page)

“You little minx!” he exclaimed, glowering down at her. “And just where the devil have you been?”

Hugh glared down into Caroline’s face, torn between the desire to shake her and the equally strong desire to toss her over his shoulder and carry her up to their room and make love to her
until they were both too spent to move. He’d lived a lifetime in the hour since Mairi had come to tell him that his gently reared wife was out traipsing across the Highlands without so much as a scullery maid to protect her, rather than being tucked safely in her room as he’d thought.

He’d been about to set off after her when he’d glanced out the library window to see her scurrying up the walk. The sight, welcome as it was, had been all it had taken to set light to his temper, and now he was ready to do battle. If it was the last thing he accomplished, he vowed she would pay for the hell she had put him through this day.

“Well?” he prodded, his impatience mounting as she maintained her mutinous silence. “I am waiting.”

One of her blonde eyebrows arched in icy inquiry, and her blue eyes were glacial as she returned his angry stare. “Indeed, Mr. MacColme?” she said, using his family name in a way she hadn’t done since their first introduction. “And might one ask what it is you are waiting for?”

Those prim words, spoken in that precise, condescending tone, made his mouth tighten, and he made a Herculean effort to rein in his mounting ire. “Don’t press me, wife,” he warned, his accent thickening with his emotions. “ ’Tis sore mad I am with you, and ‘twill take little to make me truly furious. I ask you again, where were you?”

Her chin tilted up, and he was beginning to think he would have to do something truly drastic
to prove his point when she capitulated with an impatient sigh.

“I was out walking,” she said, her defiant manner daring him to object. “I went a little further than I meant to, and so was late in getting back. That is all.”

Her audacity rendered him speechless, but only temporarily. “All?” he repeated, feeling the pulse pounding in his temples. “You can say ‘all’ to me when I’ve spent the past hour terrified your bastard of an uncle may have broken his word to us, and was even now carrying you back to Oxford? When I have been pacing the floor and thinking of you lying dead and brutalized in some filthy hole?
All?”
He shook his head in patent disbelief. “My God, woman, are you insane?”

“No, I am not,” she retorted, not seeming in the slightest bit intimidated by his black fury. “Nor am I some weak-spirited miss to be scolded and shouted at as if I were no more than a disobedient child. I once told you I would not tolerate such high-handed behavior, and I meant it.”

“And I told you I wasna the man for soft words and gentle ways,” he shot back, curling his hands into fists to keep them from grabbing her by the shoulders. “Don’t do this to me again, Caroline,” he warned, making one last, desperate effort at control, “or by heaven, I will give you cause to regret it.”

There was another silence, and then she bowed her head with mocking deference. “Very well, laird,” she said, her voice cool as she met his gaze. “Now if you are done ringing a peal
over my head, there is a matter I would like to discuss with you.”

“What matter?” he asked warily, not caring for her reference to his title. It was the first time she had done so, and given the circumstances, he was fairly certain she didn’t do it out of any newfound sense of respect for him.

“Mairi and I looked at a house the day I was kidnapped, and I should like to purchase it.”

The forthright words made him scowl. “A house?” he asked, remembering his conversation with Lucien about Caroline’s money.

“Near St. Andrew Square,” she said, the ice in her countenance melting as her enthusiasm grew more obvious. “It has only just been completed, and it is really quite lovely. There are several bedrooms, and I thought perhaps Mairi might stay—”

“No.”

His blunt interruption made her pause. “I beg your pardon?” she asked, her eyes narrowing as she studied him.

He didn’t pretend to be deceived by her brittle civility. In the weeks since their wedding he had come to know Caroline well, and ’twas plain to him his usually good-natured bride was spoiling for a brawl. Unfortunately for them both, he was just of a mind to oblige her. He squared his shoulders, crossing his arms in a deliberately antagonistic stance as he met her gaze.

“I said no.”

Her chin tilted up another notch. “No, you do not wish Mairi to stay with us, or no, you do not wish to purchase a home?”

“No, I do not wish to purchase a home,” he
returned, making no effort to soften his tone. “We shall stay with Aunt Egidia when we are not at Loch Haven, and a new house would be a foolish waste of money. I will not allow it.”

Caroline’s head jerked back as if he’d struck her. A raw hurt showed in her eyes, and then she was drawing herself upright again. “I see,” she said, her voice taking on a note he’d never heard. “And if I decide the money is mine to waste, what then?”

Hugh hesitated, not certain how to proceed. He and Caroline seldom quarreled, and when they did it had always been like a summer storm—loud and violent while it lasted, but soon over, and with no harm done to anyone. But this was like a blizzard in the Highlands, all the more deadly for the cold and the ice of it. Suddenly he no longer wished to continue but he knew he could not withdraw. The battle was joined, and now there was only victory or defeat.

“Then the answer remains the same,” he said, unconsciously softening both his stance and his voice. “I have duties which hold me here, and I will not let you go alone to Edinburgh. Your uncle is still too great a danger to my way of thinking, and I’ve no wish to let you out of my sight. You are my wife, Caroline; you must allow me to do what I see as right.”

Tears glittered in her eyes, but she did not allow them to fall. “And if I disagree?”

“Then you will still do as I say,” he said, the feeling he was fighting an enemy he couldn’t see growing stronger. “Your grandfather charged me with your care, and I’ve no intention of failing him. I owe him too much to go back on my
end of the bargain. I am a man of my word.”

The glitter in her eyes grew more pronounced as she gave a bitter laugh. “Ah, yes, your bargain with Grandfather—how could I have forgotten? You must be very grateful for his help in regaining your castle and lands.”

“Aye, that I am. He was of immeasurable help,” Hugh agreed, his frown deepening. His pride would have preferred she not know he’d come to her all but a pauper, but in the end he didn’t see that it mattered. Surely she must have known he had some reason for marrying her other than the money she had once offered. He studied her too-calm expression with mounting worry.

“Caroline,” he began, reaching tentatively for her. “What ails you? Why are you behaving like this? We have always had the truth between us; you knew I never married you for love. You didn’t marry me for it, either, if it comes to that. Why should it matter so much to you now?”

She stepped away from him, her spine so straight he wondered it didn’t snap. “You mistake me, sir,” she informed him coldly. “It matters not at all. If we are quite finished, I should like to retire to my room. With your permission, of course,” she added, her lips twisting in a parody of her usual warm smile.

Hugh could think of nothing to say, too heart-sore to argue any longer. He merely nodded, his eyes brooding as he watched her walk out of the room. Even after she was gone he remained where he was, his heart and mind conducting a war that threatened to tear him apart. He’d just decided to go up to their room and demand an
explanation for her odd behavior when there was a rap on the door.

“Come in,” he called out, hoping whoever it was would not keep him overly long. If not, he had no compunction about hurrying them on their way.

Mairi stormed in, her eyes narrowed with fury as she advanced on him with a purposeful stride.

“To the devil with you, Hugh MacColme!” she said, shaking her finger at him in a fair imitation of Aunt Egidia at her worst. “You have been quarreling with Caroline, haven’t you?”

Hugh thought of the bitter words that had passed between him and Caroline, and gave a harsh laugh. “Aye,” he said, walking back to stand before the fireplace. “We quarreled.”

“And you scolded and shouted at her like Father used to rage at you,” Mairi said with a sister’s unerring perception. “No wonder she stalked out of here with tears in her eyes! Shame on you, you beast, to be so cruel to your wife!”

“Me?” Hugh’s masculine outrage rose at the unfairness of the accusation. “What of her? She did her own raging and scolding, I can tell you!” Then he frowned. “Caroline was crying?”

Mairi sighed, raising her eyes heavenward in a plea for guidance. “On the inside,” she told him gruffly. “Where the tears are the deepest. What did you argue over? The house?”

Hugh studied her through narrowed eyes. He supposed he could refuse to answer, or he could order Mairi from the room, but he did neither. Oddly, he found he wanted to talk, and who better to listen to him than his own belligerent sister?

“Aye, about the house,” he admitted, thrusting a weary hand through his hair. “And for leaving the house without escort. After what happened in Edinburgh, you cannot fault me for my concern when I learned she was gone.”

“For your concern, no, but for your shouting at her for wanting to buy a house, aye, I can fault you plenty.” Mairi shook her head at him. “What were you thinking, Hugh? No woman, not even an Englishwoman, could stomach such tyranny.”

His sister’s words called to mind the bargain binding Caroline to him—a bargain he had deliberately put from his mind. “But Caroline
is
English,” he said, as much for his benefit as for Mairi’s. “And that is something we had best both remember. It will make her leaving the easier to bear.”

Mairi’s face went blank. “Leaving? What do you mean, leaving?”

Hugh instantly wished his words unsaid. “Mairi—”

“No,” she said, shaking her head angrily. “I would know what you mean. Where would she go? And more to the point, why should she wish to go there?”

Hugh opened his lips to answer, then abruptly closed them, unable to find the words to explain either himself or the bargains he had struck with Caroline’s grandfather. “Leave it, Mairi,” he ordered his sister, his tone harsher than he intended. “It is none of your concern; this is between Caroline and myself. Stay out of it.”

“But—”

He whirled around to face her, his eyes full of bitterness. “I said stay out of it!” he roared, and
before Mairi could utter another word, he turned and stalked from the room, slamming the door hard enough to shake the house.

Caroline sat before her dressing table, repairing the ravages to her complexion and doing her best to control the pain that was shredding her heart.
You knew I never married you for love
. Hugh’s words echoed in her mind, magnifying the folly of her own errant emotions. She loved him, she realized, staring at her reflection with wide eyes. She loved him, and he still regarded their marriage as little more than the simple business transaction they had made all those weeks ago.

When had it happened? Had it begun the first night he had made such sweet, gentle love to her? Or had it been afterwards in those early days and nights when they had slowly opened themselves up to one another, coming to know the person behind the stranger?

Perhaps it had been there from the moment she first saw him, she mused, turning fanciful. Upset and determined to win her grandfather’s aid though she’d been, he was still the first thing she’d noticed after barging into the parlor. He’d been dressed in black, and although he looked every inch the gentleman, there had been something wild and dangerous about him that had caught and held her interest.

And, her heart whispered treacherously, was her awareness of him not the reason she’d acquiesced to her grandfather’s scheme with scarcely a whimper? Granted she’d had precious few choices in the matter, but had she not felt such an intense reaction to Hugh, would she have been
so willing to marry a man she didn’t know? She was no closer to discovering the answers to these puzzling questions when Mairi came rushing into the room.

“Caroline!” Mairi took one look at her face and flew to her side. “You’ve been crying!” she exclaimed, dropping to her knees in a flurry of petticoats and satin. “That black-hearted devil of a brother of mine! Just wait until I get my hands on him!”

Touched and more than a little amused at the younger woman’s passionate defense, Caroline gave her an impulsive hug. “I’m not crying, dearest,” she said, drawing back with a smile. “Although I will own to being quite hipped with your brother. He is an autocratic, impossible despot who still thinks himself to be in command of a squadron of regulars.”

“Aye, he told me you’d quarreled about the house and your going about on your own,” Mairi said, settling her skirts more comfortably about her and leaning against Caroline’s knee. “It’s a wonder he didn’t scold
me
for ‘allowing’ you to do it, as he did last time, the overweening sot. I told him then he ought to be grateful you didna hit him over the head with a bullax.”

Not knowing what a bullax might be, Caroline merely smiled. “It’s a tempting thought, but in Hugh’s defense, I must say that on that previous occasion he did have cause for concern. Although I am certain I am perfectly safe here in Loch Haven.”

“Aye,” Mairi agreed, although her green eyes were troubled. She paused, chewing her lip and eyeing Caroline with open curiosity.

“Caroline,” she began tentatively, “you dinna have to answer if you’ve no wish to, but Hugh said something else. He said you would be leaving. What did he mean? You’re nae returning to England … are you?”

Oh, God, how to answer that?
Caroline thought, briefly closing her eyes. She thought about lying or putting the other girl off with some excuse, but the effort seemed too much. Perhaps the time for the truth had finally come. And perhaps in telling Mairi, she would remind herself of the truth as well.

“Not for several months,” she said, opening her eyes to meet Mairi’s concerned gaze. “But England is my home, and that is where I will go when Hugh and I have our marriage overturned.”