The Heiress Bride - Catherine Coulter [81]
“I believe I’ll lock you in the laird’s bedchamber. You can cause no more discord there.”
She stared at him. The day was warm and his beautiful black hair was windblown. His face was tanned, his eyes such a deep blue, a treacherous blue, she thought, hard now with his anger and his dislike for her. She said slowly, “Just because I’ve tried to become a Kinross you would punish me?”
“A true Kinross wife wouldn’t force everyone to obey her commands. She would be sensitive to others’ feelings. She would obey her husband. Just because you’re the heiress, you cannot behave as if you are also the laird. I won’t have it.”
She walked away from him quickly, saying nothing more. He started forward, only to stop. She went through the narrow open door and he heard her light step going quickly down the circular stairs, the newly repaired circular stairs.
“Well, damn,” he said.
Sinjun walked straight to the stables. She wished desperately that Fanny were here, but nothing had yet arrived from Northcliffe Hall, not her trunks or her mare. Murdock the Stunted was there. When he saw her face, pale and set, her eyes wide with something he didn’t understand, he quickly saddled the mare she’d been riding, a rawboned bay whose name was Carrot.
Sinjun wasn’t wearing a riding habit. She didn’t care. She saw that Murdock hadn’t put a sidesaddle on the mare. She didn’t care about that, either. She grabbed a shock of the horse’s mane and swung herself up. Her skirts were at her knees, showing her white silk stockings and her black slippers.
She was out of sight of the castle quickly.
“Good. She’s gone.”
Colin stared at Aunt Arleth. “What do you mean?”
“I mean she rode away from here and the hussy wasn’t even wearing a riding habit. Her gown was hiked up, showing her stockings. I watched her from the dining room windows.”
“Will you be able to keep her money, Colin?”
This was from Serena, who was flitting about the entrance hall, looking at herself in every shiny surface she passed.
He had no time to answer, for at that moment Murdock the Stunted appeared in the doorway, his frayed red cap in his gnarled hands.
“I be a mite worried, milor” was all he said.
Colin cursed, long and fluently. Murdock looked upon him with grave disapproval. Aunt Arleth opened her mouth to round on Murdock, but she didn’t have time. Colin was out the front doors.
He cursed all the way to the stables. His own stallion, Gulliver, was blown. He took Old Cumber, a gentle ancient fellow who’d known more feud fights than most men who lived here.
“Which way did she ride?”
“Toward the western end of the loch.”
He didn’t find her, not a trace, not a single damned track. He spent two hours searching, alternately cursing her, then so worried that one of the MacPhersons had stolen her that he shook. He found himself doubting that Latham MacPherson, the old laird, had truly managed to forbid any further raids on Kinross land. Hell, it was quite possible Robbie MacPherson had left his father’s side—that is, if he’d ever gone to it in the first place. He sweated. Finally, as the sun was beginning to set, he returned to the castle. Her mare, Carrot, was munching on hay.
Murdock the Stunted merely shrugged, but he didn’t meet the laird’s eyes. “She came in a good hour ago, milor’. Quiet she were, but all right an’ tight.”
“I see,” Colin said, and flicked his riding crop angrily against his thigh.
He wasn’t overly surprised to find the laird’s bedchamber not only empty but as sparkling clean as the rest of the castle. It was still as dark as before, but not nearly so dreary now. He hated to admit it. When he went downstairs for dinner, bathed and dressed in formal evening attire, he