Page 10 of To Wed an Heiress
You were foolish to leave New York.
You’ve been impulsive and stupid and you’re lucky you weren’t killed.
Thoughts of that nature kept her occupied while Lennox drenched her scalp with more whiskey. She clutched her hands together and hoped she was brave.
The first stitch, even dulled somewhat by the whiskey, felt like a spear going into her head. She made a sound, but Lennox merely kept working.
She was bleeding again, if the warmth on her forehead was blood. Or it could be whiskey. Heaven knew he had poured enough. She would appear before her grandmother not only nearly bald but smelling of spirits. Poor Ruthie was sporting a sling and a bandaged arm.
How could she possibly explain the situation without admitting to the accident?
He stepped back. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “Are you finished?”
“Almost.”
She took another deep breath and forced herself to relax.
“You’ve been exceedingly brave,” he said, blotting at her face with the white cloth again.
“Thank you, but I don’t think I have been. Not truly.”
“You didn’t scream.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever screamed,” she said. “Screaming doesn’t come naturally to me.”
He took another step back and studied her.
She wanted to ask him if he disagreed with her assessment. Instead, she remained silent, a difficult feat since he hadn’t stopped staring at her.
“I’d thought you were an imperious sort of woman,” he said. “But I don’t think you are. I think, perhaps, that you get angry when you’re frightened. People probably interpret that as being arrogant.”
She didn’t know what to comment on first, the fact that he had called her imperious or that he’d realized she had been frightened.
“Of course I was frightened,” she said. “Your dragon was heading right for us.”
“It’s not a dragon.”
She sighed. “Very well, your airship. Still, it was very scary seeing it nearly on top of us. I thought that I acted quite well in view of everything that happened. I certainly haven’t been arrogant.”
Yet she had called him insane. Perhaps that’s what he was referring to.
“I apologize for calling you names,” she said. “I never thought to see an airship in Scotland.”
“We are not the backwater of the world, Mercy. Scotland abounds with men of vision and enterprise.”
Here she was trying to make amends for her earlier comments and all she’d accomplished was to annoy him further. She’d been schooled in tact from her earliest memories. Why, then, was it so difficult to talk to this Scotsman?
“You are not hearing me,” she said, deciding that their problem with communication was because of him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I was attempting to be conciliatory and you inferred that I was insulting you. You couldn’t be further from the truth.”
He was gathering up his materials on the table, but he took the time to glance at her and smile. She hadn’t seen that smile before and if she had, she might have been a great deal more polite.
He wasn’t just handsome. Women no doubt threw themselves at him. Or pined after him. Or made up stories about how much he would adore them if only he gave them a second look.
“Then I should be the one to apologize,” he said.
