Page 104 of The Scot Beds His Wife
“Hand to God.” She lifted her free hand like a woman about to give testimony in court. Though her other hand wasn’t on the Bible, but grasped in the warmth of his. A warmth she was beginning to consider sacred. “What did I say about interrupting me?”
“Do go on.” He traced the small curved web between her thumb and fingers in a soft, rhythmic stroke.
Doing her best to ignore the disquieting glow gaining radiance in her chest she continued. “Roseanna’s brothers allegedly murdered Devil’s brother Ellison by stabbing him twenty-six times!”
“Allegedly?” His thumb massaged the inside of her palm in slow, delicious circles.
“It’s a word Americans use when litigation is pending, which it will be in perpetuity, because Devil rounded up a mob and stole the McCoy brothers from custody, tied them to pawpaw bushes, where a bunch of Hatfields emptied a total of fifty bullets into their bodies.”
“Are ye certain Hatfield isna yer real surname, bonny?” His lazy fingers drifted to her knuckles and her wrist, and tickled the very sensitive skin on the inside of her arm. “That sounds like a veryyounumber of bullets.” For the first time ever, he enunciated the word “you.”
“Aren’t you funny?” Her tone relayed sarcasm, but in her chest, her soul might as well be dancing. She loved this part of their budding relationship. They laughed all the time, teased, and dug, and bickered, but always with a smile.
Never in her life had she smiled so often as now.
“But get this…,” she continued, doing her best to keep her traitorous emotion out of her voice and focus on the job of entertaining her husband. “Before I left the States, I read in the papers that— Hey! What the hell you think you’re doing?”
In a smooth, strong motion, he’d taken her hand captive, secured it around his neck, and scooped her out of her chair, careful of her still healing leg.
“I decided this tale would be much more interesting if ye were naked.”
She always hated it when he was right, but she couldn’t disagree in the least. “What about my pistol?” It was as close to a maidenly protestation as he would get. “I can’t just leave it on the table, Mrs. McCabe will…”
“Let her curse it.” He grinned. “I’ll buy ye new ones.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
Emotion was barely something Gavin had taught himself to identify, let alone trust. But if pressed to describe the general sense of what he’d experienced in the month he’d been married, he might be so bold as to give it a name.
Happiness.
Even as he thought the word, he wanted to shrink from it. Lest it bite him.
Lest it disappear.
If it did, he couldn’t go chasing after it just now, as he was confined to the oversized tub by the weight of his wee wife settled between his legs, her shoulder blades resting against his torso. Her head was tucked against his neck as she gently scrubbed at some of the stubborn grit from the grooves surrounding his fingernails, and he reveled in the almost innocent intimacy of the act.
Most men would happily give their right eye for a quiet woman, but it seemed that his bonny was especially silent today. Pensive. He should ask her if aught was amiss, but every time he thought to do so, he decided against it.
In case the answer washim.
It occurred to him that in spite of the fact that he was immensely gratified by their arrangement, she might not be. He cast the net of his memory back through the days since their wedding, looking for a place where he might have given offense.
Their days had fallen into an immeasurably pleasant routine rather quickly. He was pleased to find they both had a tendency to wake early, eager to set out for Erradale. His wife, he discovered, was a different person upon waking than he was used to. A bit surly, pale, withdrawn, and without appetite. She’d slip out of bed and make for the water closet at dawn, which usually roused him. Upon her return, he’d tease and grope at her mercilessly, which did little for her mood as they dressed, but amused him to no end as he learned a helpful array of American West curse words. Eventually, his harassment seemed to draw her spirit out of her, and by the time they mounted their horses and made for Erradale, she was either smiling or spitting mad, and he enjoyed her either way.
The work was hard and bitter cold, but she never complained. She ordered braw Highlanders about with the gravity and indefinable authority of Napoleon.
His own little dictator.
The men listened to her, as did he, because time and time again she proved her knowledge and skill. Erradale was beginning to resemble a right proper cattle operation.
Gavin had offered to allow her to stay home in the relative comfort of Inverthorne and keep his mother company, or take up whatever matronly hobby she desired. She’d immediately informed him that no one but she had the sense or the know-how to keep Erradale running correctly, and come the evening, he could go fuck himself instead of her.
She’d only been right on one account.
Because, of course, no matter how vigorously she bickered with him during the day, she met him with a matching spirit in bed at night. Well, notalwaysin bed, he amended with a fond smirk. A few times they’d fucked against a tree when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other in time to make it home. Then there was that once in the study when she’d been too impatient to allow him to finish the payroll ledgers, and perhaps tonight in the bath if he could tempt her away from whatever distracted her at the moment.
“Did ye have an agreeable Christmas, bonny?” he ventured, smoothing his free hand down her long hair, and splaying it across the surface of the water in rippling, dark waves.
