"If you'd care to go up and dress yourself, Alex," Hart interjected, "I was about to ring for tea."
"Really? I could have sworn I smelled whisky in this room. I thought perhaps you'd begun teatime without me."
It was Collin's turn to snort this time. Hart simply wrapped a hand around her braid and tugged her toward the door. "Come along. If you can make yourself decent, I'll let you have a few minutes alone with your betrothed."
"How many?"
"Five."
"Fifteen!" came her reply as she was towed into the hallway. Collin leaned his head back and smiled at the nearest cherub, wondering just what those fifteen minutes would entail and looking forward to every one.
"Wife." Alex tried the word just to feel it on her lips. "Mrs. Collin Blackburn."
Collin's smile flashed across the dim carriage.
"Mrs. Blackburn. Lady Westmore. Do you never use your title, Collin?"
"No, wife—"
She giggled.
"—I only use it when it comes in handy for selling horses. But if you'd prefer it—"
"No! I like Blackburn. It's so wonderfully Scottish."
"So it is." His teeth flashed again.
"So are you," she ventured, wondering at the way he kept his distance.
"Well." He added nothing more.
Alex slumped back into the deeply cushioned seat and pushed a curtain open with a petulant shove. She'd closed them all as soon as the carriage rolled away from Somerhart, as soon as she'd waved her last good-bye to the small crowd of wedding guests. She had closed the curtains in anticipation, had waited impatiently to be taken by her groom.
A half hour had since passed in near silence. But she would not chase him this time; her chasing days were over. She—
"Oh, what is wrong?" she cried out.
Collin chuckled and shifted his knee to sink into her voluminous skirts. "Whatever do you mean, wife?"
Alex flashed him a quick smile, then let her lips fall back to pouting.
"Are you sitting there, thinking what you'd like me to do to you?"
She crossed her arms and shrugged, refusing to let him see the way his simple words made her shiver.
"Are you wondering why I haven't kissed you, or why I haven't slipped my hand beneath your skirts just to see if you're already wet for me?"
Her chin stiffened with the effort to stay silent.
"Are you, wife? Are you wet for me?"
"I. . ." When she licked her tingling lips, he chuckled again. The sound sent spiraling tremors down her legs. All the moisture had left her mouth, but there was plenty of it elsewhere, just as he suspected. Alex squirmed.
"You could tempt a saint, Mrs. Blackburn, and I'll not pretend I'm not aching to sink inside you, but it's your wedding day—the only one you'll have, I hope—and we'll not consummate it in a carriage."
"Please?"
He laughed outright then and ran a shaking hand through his hair; the sight of it cheered her a little. "By God, I'd like to. I'd like to set you on your knees and—" He broke off to clear his throat. "But you're mine now, Alex, and I can stand to wait until I have you in a proper bed."
Her insides clenched and clenched again, but if he could stand to wait, she supposed she could too. His reasoning escaped her though. Really, what more romantic place to consummate their marriage than on the drive away from the wedding breakfast? Perhaps he simply didn't understand romance. Too bad he had such a thorough understanding of control. It was almost a character flaw.
"Fine. I am not a slave to my lust. What shall we do to pass the time?"
"A slave to your lust," Collin laughed, irritating her further. "I suppose I wouldn't mind if you were."
"Well, I'm not. Now what?"
Who could have known the man grinned so much? She told herself not to kick him. Really, that was not the story she wanted to tell her grandchildren. Well, not much of this story could be told at any rate, but the wedding had gone off smoothly. There had been no shouted objections in the church. Her breasts had not popped from her bodice at any time. And she had not once been discovered in a compromising position, primarily because Collin refused to indulge her. Propriety. Control. What had she gotten herself into?
"Have I told you how lovely you are today?"
Alex started, surprised from her brooding thoughts. Collin's eyes glowed with warmth as they swept over the daffodil-yellow length of her dress. Her irritation melted away.
"And you are the most handsome man I've ever married."
"Really?"
"Truly."
"Witch."
She tossed her head, pleased with her small revenge. "Since you refuse to do your husbandly duty, I suppose we must talk."
"I suppose."
"Will you tell me about my new home? About your family?"
"Hmm." His brow furrowed and he glanced out the window to the cloudy skies above. Alex was rather surprised to realize that he was truly thinking what to tell her. "Westmore is very old. It's large and the lands are lovely, but it's a wild place. Not what you're used to at all."
"I shall love it, I'm sure."
His mouth flattened. "We'll see. As to family . . . I have none, really. My mother has lived in Dundee these five years. She's married now and I see her rarely, though I'm certain she will be curious to come meet you."
"Have you told her?"
"I wrote her immediately, to tell her I'd found a bride. She'll be pleased."
"But did you tell her I'm English?"
"Aye." His mouth relaxed, and Alex felt some anxiety leave her shoulders when his eyes touched hers. "She will not mind, caitein. She encouraged me to embrace my father's blood. We had many fights about that over the years."
"Why?"
"My father paid little enough attention to his bastard at first, though he always sent an allowance. More than most men would do, I suppose. He had a change of heart after John was born. A fit of conscience. So when I was nine, my life changed drastically. I was suddenly besieged by tutors, then he offered to send me to school. I was horrified at the thought, scared really, but my mother insisted, so off I went to Edinburgh."
"Against your will?"
"Oh, aye. They didn't drag me away in chains, of course, but I offered some choice words for both my parents. And at school, I spoke only Gaelic for the first few weeks and suffered for it. Thank God my father didn't insist on an English school. I would have run off to be a sailor before moving to England."
Alex winced a little at that, but Collin didn't notice. He was smiling at some memory.
"My mother is a fine woman."
"What is she like?"
"She is kind and witty. Bold and generous to a fault. I always wondered whether it was her boldness or her generosity that led her to be my father's mistress. A little of both, I suppose."
Alex laughed with him, glad to know he felt so warmly toward his mother. She imagined that some men would hold a woman accountable for their low beginnings, but Collin spoke of her with love.
"She is a weaver, a skilled one. She was not a chambermaid caught by a visiting noble or some such thing. She always made clear that my father was a good man who'd left her with fond memories."
"That's wonderful."
He threw her a surprised glance. "Thank you."
"And your father? He would visit?"
"He came to meet me when I was ten. He visited every year afterward and brought John sometimes. He said we were brothers and were to treat each other as such."
Alex tried to blink back the tears that suddenly wet her eyes. "He sounds like a lovely man."
"Really, Alex," Collin snorted and handed her a handkerchief. "It's not so romantic as all that. The man drank too much and he was a terrible horseman. And he would roar curses at me if I spoke like a Scotsman in front of him. Between him and that school it's a wonder I didn't lose my burr entirely."
She nodded, but couldn't keep from sniffling one last time.
"And when he handed me the deed to Westmore, when he told me he'd purchased this dead title and it was mine . . .Oh, I wanted to knock him down. I wanted to curse him and run away and never set eyes on him again."
"Why?"
He shrugged his broad shoulders and looked back to the window, knee sliding away from hers. "I did not want to become the thing I'd always resented. But I knew West-more. I'd grown up not an hour from it, and I knew its empty stables and the lush pasture and, God, I wanted to breed horses more than anything."
"It's no more than your birthright, Collin."
"No, Alex, it is not. Bastards have a right to nothing. You know that."
"But you are his son. And he must have loved you, must have respected you to have done this."
"I suppose he did, in his way. Regardless, I took the deed and I took the title. I vowed not to use it, but I realized it was good business, after all, and so I do."
"That's nothing to be ashamed of. Many men purchase titles for less noble reasons than that."
His eyes hardened and struck out at her. "I am not ashamed."
"No," she answered, startled by his sudden anger. "I didn't mean—"
"My blood may not be as exalted as yours, but—" "Stop it."
"What?" The hardness left his face, but his mouth stayed tight and flat.
"You cannot throw my family in my face at every turn. I cannot help where I come from anymore than you."
His eyes did not waver from her face. He did not move a muscle. Alex felt a tight anxiety creep from her neck to her shoulders. This was a starting point for them. An indication of how this marriage would go. She felt afraid for the first time that he might not be the husband she'd imagined.
Then he blinked. "You are right, of course."
Her breath shook from her throat.
"I apologize for my anger."
"You do not have to apologize," she offered with a smile. Her mood bounced back to its previous high. "I suspect we will exchange words on occasion."
"Oh, do you?"
"Yes."
A smile softened his face, even as his eyes glinted with something hot. "As long as you understand that your disrespect will be punished with spankings."
Alex couldn't keep her jaw from dropping open at the picture that formed in her mind. A very naughty book was secreted away in her luggage, a book some friend of her brother's had left in the library long ago. She was suddenly curious as to its accuracy. Some of the illustrations had struck her as silly and impossible, but she now wondered at the extent of the adventures she could attempt with her new husband. This marriage business could turn out to be interesting indeed.
"Caitein, I didn't mean to shock you. It was a joke."
"Oh! Um, of course .. ." Alex dipped her head to hide the light in her eyes. She thought of a particularly detailed drawing of a man standing, his—
"Alex." Her husband's hand interrupted her thoughts, touching her lightly on the cheek. "I forget, sometimes, how innocent you are. I would never strike you, caitein"
"Oh, I am not so innocent," she offered past a giggle.
"You are. But it is one of the incongruities in you that I treasure."
Ha! she laughed to herself, taking Collin's hand in hers. She wouldn't be innocent for long, not once they reached her cottage. Once there, she would recreate page twenty-six from that naughty book and see what her husband thought of her innocence then.
Chapter 16
Naught but a few miles lay between his wife and Westmore, and each inch closer ratcheted Collin's shoulders to a new level of tension. Westmore was a castle, he supposed, but not a castle meant for a princess. It was a keep, built to house soldiers and knights, and now fit more for moaning ghosts and hibernating squirrels. A ruin. A wreck.
Constructed early in the fourteenth century, its stone walls and slate roof had stood the test of time and the onslaught of Alexandra's ancestors, but the place had been uninhabited for fifty years at least before he'd moved in. No one had ever bothered with improvements.
Westmore had no gaslight, no piped water, no elegant rooms. Not even glass in what few windows there were, just shutters to close against the cold and wet. Drafts howled through even during the summer.
Truly, it was a castle of the oldest sort. The first floor consisted entirely of the kitchen and one giant, echoing great hall. Everyone ate meals there. Together.
Collin blinked. My God, he hadn't even considered that. The Lady Alexandra—Mrs. Blackburn, he reminded himself—the grand mistress of Somerhart, dining among the stable hands and grooms. Ah, God.
He should warn her. He should. Just as he should explain that he was building a new home—a lovely, modern home—just over the hill. A home with real windows and real rooms . . . even a few luxuries like a marble bath.
