The Heiress Bride - Catherine Coulter [34]
She wished he’d yell as Douglas and Ryder did, but he didn’t, saying only, very calmly, very coldly, “Mine, naturally. I’m the man. I will be your husband and you will obey me. You can begin obeying me now. It will doubtless be good for your character.”
“No one has ever spoken to me like that except my mother, and she I could always ignore.”
“You won’t ignore me. Don’t be childish about this. Trust me.”
“You’re as autocratic as Douglas, damn you, even though you haven’t yelled.”
“Then you should realize your only choice is to shut your mouth.”
“Take out your own stitches,” she said, utterly infuriated with him, and turned to look out the window.
“A spoiled English twit. I might have known. I’m disappointed but not surprised. You can back out of this, my dear, you surely can, with all your English virtue still intact. You’re not only outspoken, you’re a termagant if you don’t get your way, a hoyden, and perhaps even bordering on an overbearing shrew. I begin to think your groats aren’t worth all the suffering.”
“What suffering, you beetle-brained clod? Just because I disagree with you, it doesn’t make me a termagant or a shrew or anything else horrible you just called me.”
“You want to back out of this? Fine, have the man turn the carriage around.”
“No, damn you, that would be too easy. I will marry you and teach you what it is to trust someone and confide in someone, to compromise with someone.”
“I’m not used to trusting a woman. I already told you that I liked you, but anything else was out of the question. Believe it. Now, I’m so tired my eyes are crossing. You will be my wife. Act like a lady, if you please.”
“As in fold my hands in my lap and twiddle my thumbs?”
“Yes, a good start. And keep your mouth closed.”
She could only stare at him. It was as if he were trying to drive her away, but she knew he couldn’t want her to back out of the marriage. It was male perversity. Besides, she also had no choice but to marry him. She wanted to yell that it was too late for her, far too late. She’d given him her heart. But she wasn’t about to let him become a tyrant, and groveling at his feet with such a confession would surely make him into a veritable Genghis Khan, given his present attitude. Oh yes, she knew all about tyrants, even though Douglas assumed the tyrant mantle now very rarely. Ah, but she remembered those early days when he’d first wed Alexandra. She gave Colin a sideways look but held her peace. She became silent as a stone. Colin slept until they arrived at the Golden Fleece Inn in Grantham late that evening.
Sinjun assumed that Colin did take out his own stitches, for he again procured two bedchambers, bade her a dutiful good night before her door, and left her. The next morning he hired a horse, merely telling her shortly at breakfast that he was bored with riding inside the damned carriage. Ha! He was bored with riding with her. He rode outside the carriage for the entire day. If his leg bothered him, he gave no sign of it. In York, Sinjun hired a horse, with a look daring him to object, but he only shrugged, as if to say, it’s your money. If you insist upon wasting it, it doesn’t surprise me. She was glad now that he’d decided not to go to the Lake District, though she’d argued vehemently with him at the time. He wanted to get home more quickly, and even her warnings of Douglas with three guns and a sword hadn’t dissuaded him. She thought, as the wind whipped through her hair, that Lake Windermere was too romantic a spot to share with him. This endless gallop north with the silent man riding just ahead of her wasn’t at all the way she’d imagined her elopement to Scotland