The MacNaughton Bride (7 page)

“Good.
 
Now, what do you say we go in and join
our guests at our reception, Madame
MacNaughton
?”
 
He surprised her by rising with
 
her in his arms, shouldering open the
door and stepping out of it with her still in his arms.
 
A lot of their guests were milling
about outside, waiting for them to decide to get out of their carriage.
 
It seemed that the two of them were
adopting a habit of spending inordinate and discourteous amounts of time locked
away in conveyances while everyone waited for them to appear.

Chapter
4

But when they all got a
gander of the new Lady
MacNaughton
in the arms of her
dashing husband, a great cheer rose up from the crowd.
 
Kell
kept her
in his arms until he settled her into her throne like seat at the head
table.
 
The guests poured in around
them, offering the bride their best wishes and the groom their congratulations
on a fine marriage.
 
Aislinn
was hugged by everyone she saw, even the brothers,
who each took the opportunity to hug her (again?) as they made their way to
their own seats at the head table.

Kell
pulled
out his chair and sat down as the signal that everyone else should, and the
meal began.
 
When
Aislinn
mentioned to Jenny – who was amazed to find
herself sitting next to her little girl – how gorgeous she thought the
hall was with the ribbons and sprigs of heather artfully displayed everywhere,
Kell
leaned over and whispered into his wife’s ear that
their servants had decorated both the church and the hall for them as a
present.

“Oh, how can we thank
them?”

He was enchanted by her,
more so than he wanted to be.
 
If
she was truly as innocent and wonderful as she appeared to be, he was going to
be a lost cause.
 
She was going to
be able to wrap him around her finger any time she wanted to.
 
He would have to be on guard against
that – it wasn’t what a wife needed, as far as he was concerned.
 
She needed a firm – but loving
– hand.
 
Not a besotted
husband who didn’t have the will to correct her when need be.

Chuckling slightly, he
moved a bit closer.
 
“If you like,
I can arrange for them to introduce themselves to you tomorrow morning.”
 
Kell
took her
hand and lifted the back to his lips.
 
“We won’t have time right now for a real honeymoon,
Aislinn
.
 
I’m sorry, but I just can’t get away
right now.”

She had never expected to
have any kind of a honeymoon, so she wasn’t going to miss it, and although she
thought it might be a mistake to do so, she said exactly that to him.

His chuckle turned into
outright laughter.
 
“You’re nothing
if not forthright in your speech, are you, lassie?”

Aislinn
shrugged and continued to look up at him, her face open and guileless.

“Well, I hadn’t intended to
put you to work immediately, so it’s up to you.
 
You can wait a while if you like before you dive into
running the house.
 
We’ll take a real
honeymoon in the spring – maybe go to London or Paris?”

“I would love to go
anywhere.
 
Besides going to my
Uncle’s, I’ve never been out of the town I grew up in, but I’ve always read
about wonderful places.”

“You read for
recreation?”
 
Kell
asked as he casually took a sip of the champagne from one of his – their
– fine crystal flutes.
 

“Oh, yes, since I was about
three.”

He was impressed.
 
Most upper class women read and did
maths
, but only enough to run a household and not get
cheated in the market place.
 
“Did
you go to school?”

“No, not a formal school,
but Jenny was a teacher early on, before my Father hired her to help my
Mother.
 
She taught me all sorts of
things – reading, writing,
maths
– which
I didn’t excel in – some French and Italian, art, literature . . . it was
the literature that started me reading.
 
She read me to sleep with Shakespeare when I was little, and I graduated
from there on my own.
 
I’ve even
written myself a little, but I never like what I write.”

“Then you’ll be glad to
know that I – “ he grinned almost stupidly at her as he corrected
himself, “we have a fairly good sized library.
 
It’s in my office, on the second floor, but you’re welcome
to come in any time and read while I work or take a book back to our room,
whatever you like.”

“Thank you, Sir –
your Lord – “

He stopped her from
stumbling over her words by pressing his finger over her lips.
 
“Try
Kell
.
 
You’re my wife not my scullery maid.”

Aislinn
smiled, tentatively, for the first time that day – at least that
Kell
had the pleasure to see.
 
It transformed her already beautiful face into something
that Rembrandt or
Boticelli
should have painted, but
even then he decided neither of them could have done her justices.
 
She was radiant.
 
Now if he could get her to do that more
often.
 
“
Kell
,”
she said, as if trying the name on her tongue, like a vintage glass of
wine.
 
“What, exactly, is a
scullery maid, anyway?
 
I don’t
know of any part of a house – or a castle like this – that’s called
a scull, do you?”

He knew he was grinning
like a complete idiot, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself.
 
He was enchanted by her, and it felt
good to let himself go with someone, anyone, and since she was his wife it just
seemed appropriate.
 
He was the
eldest, and with his brothers he’d always had to be just that – the one
that made sure that the two of them didn’t kill themselves, putting a stop to
their stupid stunts as a judicious older brother should.
 
He was the Lord of his manor, and had
to be staunch and confident and somewhat stern with his employees.
 
Especially since he’d assume the title,
Kell
hadn’t had much chance to just be himself, to
let his guard down. His most carefree time had been when he was in London as a
youth, and that was a long time ago.

If she was as fresh and
innocent as she appeared to be, and as intelligent and inquisitive, he was
going to like this being married thing.
 
“
Hmmmmm
.
 
Not that I know of, although I think I remember reading somewhere that
there used to be a room of the kitchen that was called something like an ‘
esculier
’ several hundred years ago, or something like
that.
 
It’s probably been corrupted
since then down to scullery maid.”

Speaking of scullery maids,
one of them had been pressed into serving in the Hall, and handed plates to
both the bride and the groom.
 
Aislinn
accepted hers and thanked the girl, which made her
color and walk away quite flustered.
 
She wasn’t hungry in the least, probably partly since her husband kept
looking at her like he was going to devour her any minute.
 
“Did I do something wrong already?” she
asked, raising an eyebrow.

He frowned, and she decided
that that was a look she would endeavor to receive from him as little as
possible.
 
He looked positively
scary when he scowled like that.
 
“No, why?”

“Because you’re looking at
me as if you’re slightly amused at something I’ve done.”

Kell
,
who was tucking into his own dinner with gusto, noticed that she was playing
with hers, pushing the food around the plate but not eating anything.
 
He took a bit of roasted chicken breast
on the end of his fork and turned it towards her, feeding her from his own
plate.
 
Their audience thought this
was incredibly precious, and “
oohed
” and “awed” at
them until she took the chicken just to shut them up.
 
Aislinn
had never gotten applause
just by taking a bite of dinner, and she wasn’t sure she liked the idea at all.

“No, you haven’t done
anything wrong, but I do like the way you are with the servants.
 
Up here, they tend to be long standing
members of the family – rather than in the South just treating them as
chattel.”

Aislinn
nodded, chewing thoughtfully.
 
“Jenny is the person I’m closest to in the world – she’s like my
mother.”

“Well, not everyone would
bother to use courtesy with their servants.”

“I don’t really think of
myself as someone with servants – Jenny and her husband Arthur are more
like friends.
 
I’ve never had maids
or butlers or anything like that.”

“Now you do.
 
It’s a big place, but if you’re
organized, running it is relatively easy.”

“I’ll do my best, my Lo
–
Kell
.”

The reception was loud and
raucous, and that was just the meal.
 
Afterwards, the tables were moved so that there was room for dancing and
a lot of country dances –
ceilidhs
– that
were extremely fervent and joyous, with everyone smiling and laughing.
 
Aislinn
hadn’t got to any dances so she didn’t know any of the steps, but her husband
dragged her out onto the floor anyway, patiently showing her the steps, then
catching her up in it and not saying a word when she stomped on his leather
clad feet several times while he was whirling her around the floor.

Kell
was amazed to find that she didn’t know how to dance, but delighted in teaching
her.
 
She was a quick learner, and
after the frenzy of the reels, a small group of country musicians who lent
their services to their Lord as a gift on his wedding day settled things down
by playing a waltz.
 
The teaching
process began again for
Aislinn
, but since the waltz
was much less complicated than a lot of the
ceilidhs
,
she was letting him guy her around the room in seconds, much to everyone’s
satisfaction.
 
Everyone else moved to
the sidelines and left the bride and groom to dance alone.

They were wonderfully
matched – she came just to his shoulder, and her bright coloring
complimented his darkness perfectly.
 
Despite the Highlanders’ natural inclination to hate anything English,
this little bit of a woman was warming their hearts.
 
And the fact that she’d chosen to wear a bit of their plaid
as a part of her wedding ensemble had cemented their favor towards her more
surely than anything else they could do beyond producing a healthy air as
expediently as possible.

Full of food and more wine
than she’d ever consumed in her young life, as well as unfamiliar feelings
about her incredibly gorgeous and masculine new husband she wasn’t at all sure
she wanted to explore.
 
They left
her with a slow ache in the pit of her stomach . . . but not quite her
stomach.
 
Lower, and in an area of
her body she’d always been taught to staunchly ignore.

Kell
kept a lazy eye on his wife as he allowed various women to entice him into a
dance or two.
 
Despite the fact
that he was a giant of a man, he was an excellent dancer – very light on
his big feet.
 
She didn’t seem
particularly concerned that he was dancing with other women, and he liked that.
 
Of course, she didn’t know that the
current occupant of his arms was a woman he almost married.

“
Kell
,
darling, you’re still the best dancer in Scotland!” Charlotte Douglas
rhapsodized as she fluttered her fan at him.

Not for the first time, he
wondered exactly what he’d seen in her – she was brassy and bold and wearing
more makeup than an Edinburgh trollop.
 
Charlotte certainly wouldn’t have put up with him dancing with other
women at their wedding, but then that was probably because she was just as
likely to proposition a married as a single man, and she considered that every
other woman had her complete lack of scruples.

He shuddered as he thought
just how close he’d come to ending up with her.
 
She was his first real love – crush really – and
he thought the sun rose and set in those emerald green eyes.
 
Thankfully, his brothers had sat him
down before he’d asked her father for her hand, and set him straight about the
fact that while she’d been dangling herself in front of him as the ultimate
virginal prize, she’d been busily copulating her way through the Highland
countryside – quite literally.
 
Some picnickers had stumbled on one of her trysts near a stream on a
picturesque hillside.
 
There was no
mistaking what had been going on.