The Heiress Bride - Catherine Coulter [40]
“You mean because there’s a hole in the ceiling?”
“You know very well what I mean.”
“But why ever not? It’s my dowry, and you’re my husband. Let’s get on with it.”
Douglas laughed, he couldn’t help himself.
“I think,” Ryder said, “that this means your hide just might remain on your body, Colin. Sinjun, take yourself off and the gentlemen will deal with all the money matters.”
“Good. Don’t forget Great-Aunt Margaret’s inheritance to me, Douglas. You told me once it was an impressive number of groats and all invested on the ’Change.”
“We’re as good as married, Colin.”
He turned to face her in the dark-cornered earl’s suite at the end of an equally dark and quite dismal corridor on the second floor of Kinross House. There was but one branch of candles lit and he was holding it. He set it down on a battered surface that had once held all his father’s shaving objects.
He just shook his head. “I know we must pretend that we are, and I intend to do so until your brothers leave. I will sleep with you in that bed, and as you can see, it’s large enough for a regiment. You will keep your hands to yourself, Joan, else I’ll be displeased with you.”
“I simply don’t believe this, Colin. I do hope you aren’t the sort of person who makes a decision, then sticks to it whether it’s good or miserably bad.”
“I’m right in this decision.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“A wife shouldn’t be so disrespectful to her husband.”
“You’re not my husband yet, damn you! What you are is the most stubborn, the most obstinate—”
“There’s a screen in the corner. You may change behind it.”
When they were lying side by side in the mammoth bed, Sinjun staring up at the dark bed hangings, which smelled moldy, he said to her, “I like your brothers. They’re honorable and quite fit as friends. As relatives, they’re superlative.”
“So nice of you to say so.”
“Don’t sulk, Joan.”
“I’m not sulking, I’m cold. It’s damp in this dreadful room.”
He wasn’t cold, but then again he was rarely cold. But he knew that if he pulled her into his arms, he would make love to her, and he wouldn’t break his vow, particularly with her brothers here under his roof, flesh-and-blood reminders of his perfidy.
He leaned up and grabbed his bedrobe that he’d tossed at the foot of the bed. “Here, put this on. It will wrap around you twice and keep you very warm.”
“I am overcome with your generosity and reasonableness.”
“Go to sleep.”
“Certainly, my lord. Whatever you wish, whatever you demand, whatever you—”
He began snoring.
“I wonder why Douglas didn’t demand to see our marriage lines. That isn’t like him not to be thorough.”
“He just might, mightn’t he? Shall we wed tomorrow, whilst your brothers are visiting the Castle? It turns out Douglas has a friend who’s a major there, and he wants Ryder to meet him.”
“That would be just excellent,” Sinjun said. “Colin?”
“What now?”
“Would you just hold my hand?”
He did, and felt very warm fingers. So she was on the verge of freezing to death, was she? He imagined that his soon-to-be-wife would do just about anything to gain what she wanted. He would have to watch her carefully. “I hope you enjoy my dressing gown.”
“Oh yes, it’s soft and smells like you.”
He said nothing to that.
“Wearing it, I can fancy you’re touching me everywhere.”
At ten o’clock in the morning the following day, Colin and Sinjun were wed by a Presbyterian preacher who had been friends with Colin’s uncle Teddy—not his father, Colin explained to her, because his father had been all that was sinful and a rotter. Reverend MacCauley, an ancient relic, was blessed with more hair than any old man should have, but best of all, he was fast with his lines and pronouncements and dictums, the latter being the most important consideration. When they emerged as Lord and Lady Ashburnham, Sinjun gave a skipping little step. “ ’Tis done, at last. Now, shall I volunteer to show my brothers our marriage lines?”
“No. Stop, I want to kiss you.”
She became still as a stone. “Ah,” he said, gently taking her chin in the