Highland Hellion (Highland Weddings #3)(54)
Would he welcome her?
She discovered herself needled by the possibility that having had her once, he might be content. Was their marriage really a service to his honor? A means of righting the wrong he felt he’d done her by taking her to his father’s land?
Both possibilities burned in her mind like coals in a fire. Of course, there was only one way to know, so she turned and set her shoulders before leaving the chamber.
*
Rolfe was waiting for her.
She enjoyed the sight, but not because she found pleasure in knowing she somehow controlled him. No, she was simply happy to see him. He was pacing back and forth across the passageway while she finished talking with Marcus.
He turned and braced himself as she emerged, his jaw tight as he waited to see what she would say to him.
“I wish you would not go to see the earl.”
Perhaps she was wasting her breath, yet she could not have stopped the words if she’d known he’d cut out her tongue.
“Morton will not deal justly with you.”
“And what of ye?” Rolfe asked softly. “Will ye keep the vows ye made with me yesterday?”
He’d moved nearer to her, closing the distance and stealing her breath with the same motion. It was so abrupt, the way she responded to him, as though her will was not involved.
No, it had always been thus since she’d first encountered him. She responded with yearnings she’d never had for another.
“I told them to take the sheet.”
Her answer earned her a softening of his lips. He nodded. “It’s hanging in the hall.”
Rolfe watched her to see her honest reaction.
Katherine stared straight back at him. “If I wanted to be free of you, Rolfe, would it not be best for me to send you off to see Morton? You forget that I know the man. You have only heard about him. I have faced him, and I ask you not to go.”
Now he smiled. It was a tender expression that warmed her heart with the way it spread into his eyes. Those green eyes were as rare as he was.
“Come.” He reached down and captured her wrist. His fingers closed all the way around it as he tugged her behind him.
He was taking her abovestairs to have her.
What would have scandalized her just two days ago was now permissible. She discovered herself delighted by the vows that made it so.
At last, Fate was delivering some treasures into her life.
Ones she was eager to touch.
*
“Ye should thank me,” Duncan Lindsey remarked before he took another bite off a chicken leg. He chewed it as he turned and looked at Marcus sitting next to him at the high table while supper was served.
He couldn’t help but notice Rolfe and Katherine were not in attendance.
“A blind man wouldn’t have failed to see the way they wanted to tumble each other,” Duncan continued.
Marcus sent him a narrow-eyed look. “Ye are speaking of someone I consider to be under me protection.”
“So I should act as though they are no’ healthy and passionate?” Duncan replied. “See…” He shook the chicken leg at Marcus. “That is why I have no’ wed. Where is the woman who can be frank with me? I have no understanding of the need to hold conversations about everything except what I crave from a lass.”
Marcus slowly grinned. “I see exactly why ye have no wife, man, if yer idea of courting is to walk straight up to a lass and tell her ye’d like to see her tits.”
Duncan stretched his arms out wide. “Is that no’ honest?” He looked at his captains. “Is that no’ what is on all of yer minds when ye encounter a comely lass for the first time?”
There was a round of chuckles in response. With no females at the head table, they indulged themselves in frank conversation.
Duncan wasn’t finished yet. He leaned on his elbow toward Marcus. “Tell the truth, man. Would it no’ be a lot simpler if yer wife told ye exactly where she likes ye to finger her?”
Marcus sent him an arrogant look. “When ye do it right, the moans tell a man so.”
Two of the captains slapped the table as they laughed.
“Unless yer wife is coddling yer ego, as husbands like their wives to do.”
They all frowned because it was the Head of House who had spoken. She delivered her words in a clear, unabashed tone while filling Duncan’s goblet.
“Which brings me back to saying send me a female who will be blunt!”
Marcus grunted and took a swig of ale from his goblet. He wanted to drain it, that much was fact, but he set the goblet back on the tabletop. His brother had two daughters to look forward to seeing grow into women.
Marcus was going to enjoy telling Bhaic how much he wasn’t going to like what men would say about his daughters.
And then he recalled that Helen had told him she would have a daughter.
His wife did tend to get her way.
Marcus reached for his goblet.
*
“That was too fast.”
Rolfe was still struggling to breathe.
Well, it was fair to say that they both were.
“I’m sorry, Kat,” he rasped out.
“Do I sound…displeased?”
Her new husband rolled over with a soft groan and peered at her from where he braced his chin on his hand as he leaned his elbows into the bed. He looked at her, his green eyes shimmering with satisfaction as he searched her features.