"Do you think anyone would notice if we took a short drive 'round the country? For the air, of course."
Alex rolled her eyes. "Since we are second only to the bridal couple in interest. .. Yes. Yes, they would notice."
"Would you care?"
"We'd better not." She couldn't keep the mourning from her voice. "I shouldn't like to take away from Jeannie's day."
"But I missed you last night."
"Poor husband," she sighed. He had not understood in the least why Jeannie had wanted Alex to stay in her bedchamber with her.
"She is not a virgin!" he'd cried the night before. "She's not lying there in fear of the marriage bed."
Alex had mumbled something about feminine apprehensions and natural modesty, then she had rushed to Jeannie's room to giggle and gasp and compare illicit experiences. Both men had emerged with high marks.
She did not mention this to Collin as he handed her into the carriage. "Just a few more hours, Collin, and we'll be home. I promise to make you forget about your lonely night."
"I'll hold you to it," he growled, but still could not banish his smile. He was so different now that she wanted to cry out her happiness to the world.
The only regret that tainted her happiness was her lack of guilt at Damien's death. Perhaps she was unnatural indeed, to feel nothing more than thank-fulness that they were both alive and well. Jeannie had scoffed at the idea and the Kirkland brothers had patted her back. Fergus had done nothing more than pull her into a long, tight hug.
And Alex knew that Westmore was finally her home.
"By the way, husband . . ."
"Yes?"
"Jeannie asked me to pass along a message to you." He raised a brow.
"She says that you must stop blushing when you speak to her and that you may consider it payback for the time she spied on you at the River Tweed."
His face paled a bit, his quirk of a smile faded.
"You've seen naked women before, Collin."
"Well, my God, she's like a little sister to me."
"Not so little, eh?"
"Jesus, Alex!"
She laughed. Laughed until she cried and fell into his pride-stiff chest. Laughed until his arms came around her, finally, and he kissed her giggles into soft sighs.
"Your punishment will not wait for tonight, I'm afraid."
"Punishment for what?"
"Laughing at your lord and master. Just the sort of disrespect that calls for a spanking."
Her squeal could not be contained by the thin walls of the carriage. Wrens startled from their nest in the chapel tower and shot across the sky above the swiveling heads of every person still in the churchyard.
She would never be a lady. She knew that just as surely as she knew the whispers of "scandalous" and "shameful" would not disappear just because the carriage wheels began to turn and masked the sound.
She would never be a lady, or not a proper one at any rate, and that was fine. Because she was a farmer's wife. And her farmer had fallen in love with her in all her bold, unnatural glory.
She laid her head on his strong shoulder and smiled, looking forward to the quiet ride and the lively wedding breakfast and the night they'd spend alone . . . And wondering all the while if she really could tempt him into that spanking once they reached home.
