The Sherbrooke Series Novels 1-5 (95 page)

“I am glad you’re back,” she said in her soft voice, and his eyebrow arched upward a good inch.

“All of you—Dahling, let go of my leg now; Philip, take your sister away from here. Where? Anywhere, I don’t care. Arleth, a moment, please. Where’s Joan?”

“I’m here, Colin.”

He looked up to see her coming down the wide staircase. She was wearing a new gown, a very simple muslin of soft pale yellow, not at all stylish, a gown such as a country maid would wear, but, somehow, on Joan it looked smart as could be. He’d missed her. He’d thought of her more than he’d liked and had come home before he’d accomplished all he’d needed to in order to see her. Yes, he thought, she looked very nice indeed, and he couldn’t wait to strip off that gown and kiss her and plunge into her. Then he sniffed, and his pleasant fantasy vanished. Beeswax and lemon. Images of his mother rose to his mind and he stiffened, for that was surely impossible.

Then he looked around and what he saw made him blink.

Everything was spotless, not that he’d ever noticed that it had been particularly dirty before. But now he remembered, oh yes, he remembered.

The chandelier looked to be new, the marble floor was so clean he could see his reflection. He didn’t say anything. He was stunned. He walked into the drawing room, then into the Laird’s Inbetween Room. There were new draperies that appeared nearly the same as the old but weren’t, and there were what couldn’t be new carpets, yet their blues and reds shone vivid in the afternoon sunlight.

“It’s nice to see you, too, Colin.”

He looked at his wife, saw that her lips were pursed, and he said low, “I see you have been busy, Joan.”

“Oh yes, we all have. You will notice the draperies, Colin. They are new but I copied the same fabric. Can you believe the warehouse in Dundee still carried the same fabric? It’s a pattern from nearly fifty years ago! Is it not wonderful?”

“I liked the draperies as they were.”

“Oh? You mean you liked dust and years upon years of grime dripping onto the floor?”

“Those carpets look odd.”

“Assuredly so. They are clean. They no longer send up clouds of dust when you walk across them.”

He opened his mouth but she forestalled him, raising her hand. “Let me guess—you preferred them as they were.”

“Yes. As I said, you have been busy, have done things I did not approve.”

“Should I perchance have lazed about on a chaise, reading novels that you don’t have in that moth-eaten chamber you call a library, eating broonies?”

He realized they were standing three feet apart, but he made no move to close the distance. He was
in the right and he had to make her understand, make her apologize. “You should have waited for me. I specifically asked you to make your lists for my review and then we—”

“Papa, she is cruel and nasty to Philip and me! She even made me stay in my room one morning and it was a lovely day.”

“Even my children, Joan?” Colin looked down at his daughter. “Go to Dulcie. I wish to speak to your stepmother.”

“We don’t want her here! You will tell her not to beat us anymore?”

Sinjun stared at the little girl, then gave a shout of laughter. “That is really quite good, Dahling. A front shot of the cannon. Quite good.”

“Go, Dahling. I will see to Joan. Ah, Aunt Arleth, you are here, too? Please leave now and close the door. I’m speaking to my wife.”

“You will tell her to stop ruining everything, will you not, Colin? After all, ’tis you who are the laird, the husband, and the lord, not this girl here. It isn’t she who is in charge at Vere Castle, it is you. You will see that she—”

“Send her to a convent!” Dahling yelled, then disappeared from the doorway.

Arleth merely nodded and took her leave. She closed the door behind her very softly. They were alone in the middle of the beautifully clean and scrubbed Kinross drawing room. Even the battered old furniture had a fine patina to it, but Sinjun wasn’t paying any attention to all her accomplishments at the moment. All her attention was on her husband. Surely he wouldn’t believe Dahling’s dramatic performance, surely . . .

“Did you strike my children?”

She stared at him, and he was beautiful and her pulse speeded up just at the mere sight of him, but
now he seemed a stranger, a beautiful stranger, and she wanted to hit him.

“Did you, Joan?”

It was absurd, ridiculous. She had to stop it and stop it now. She quickly walked to him, laced her fingers behind his neck, and rose to her tiptoes. “I missed you dreadfully,” she said, and kissed him. His lips were firm and warm. He didn’t open his mouth.

He grasped her arms in his hands and drew them down. “I have been gone for nearly three weeks. I came back only to see you, to assure myself that you were safe, that the damned MacPhersons hadn’t tried anything. I couldn’t find that damned Robbie MacPherson in Edinburgh. He’s avoiding me, curse his coward’s hide. Of course, I would have been told if something had happened, but I wanted to come myself and see for myself. You are quite the queen of the castle, aren’t you? You have made yourself quickly in charge and done whatever it was you wished to do. You had no care for my opinions. You ignored my wishes. You ignored me.”

She felt his words wash over her. She wasn’t used to words that hurt so very much. She looked at him now and said simply, “I have done what I believed best.”

“You are too young, then, to be trusted to know.”

“It’s absurd and you know it, Colin. Ah, here is Serena, doubtless here to kiss you again. Do you wish to continue your sermon with Serena present? I can call the children and Aunt Arleth again if you like. Perhaps they can harmonize in a chorus, singing of my sins to you. No? Very well then, if you wish, you may come to your tower room. You might as well relieve yourself of all your bile now.”

She turned on her heel and strode away, just like a young man, he thought, his jaw tightening,
almost no female sway to those hips of hers, yet he knew the feel of her, and his hands fisted at his sides. He followed her, saying, “It would have been nice had you made an effort to befriend my children. I see they still think you’re an interloper. I see that you dislike them as much as they dislike you.”

She didn’t turn about to face him, merely said over her shoulder, “Louder, Colin. Children tend to behave in the ways of their parents, you know.”

He shut his mouth. He kept on her heels all the way to the north tower. He could smell the beeswax and the lemon here and knew that she’d had the gall to do as she pleased to his room—the only room that was truly his and only his—as well as to the rest of the castle. He speeded up. When he saw the repaired tower stairs, he said, “I didn’t wish to have them repaired in this way. What the devil have you done?”

She was three steps above him when she turned. “Oh, what would you have authorized, Colin? Perhaps you wished to have the stairs placed diagonally? Or perhaps skipping every other stair, with a dungeon below for those who were not careful walkers?”

“You had no right to interfere with what is mine. I told you not to.”

He said nothing more, pressing past her on the narrow stairs. He opened the brass-studded door of his tower room, and the fresh smells that assailed him were more than he could bear. He stopped in the middle of the circular room, staring at the vase of summer roses set on his desk. Roses, for God’s sake, his mother’s favorite flower, and the smell mingled with the tart scent of lemon.

He closed his eyes a moment. “You have overstepped yourself, madam.”

“Oh? You prefer filth, then? You prefer that your books continue to rot? They were quite close to it, you know. Naturally, the shelves upon which they sat had worm rot and beetles and God knows what else. It was a close thing.”

He turned then to face her, furious and feeling utterly impotent. She was right, damn her, he was being a dog in the manger, but he’d wanted to oversee things, it was his home, his rags and his tatters, his responsibility. But no, she’d set herself up as the arbitrator of everything, and done just as she’d wished to do and without any direction or permission from him. He could not forgive it. He’d exiled himself to protect her, and she’d done him in, taken over, all without a by-your-leave. He continued to wax eloquent in his mind, then blurted out, a new outrage coming to the fore, “I despise lemon and beeswax! The smell of roses makes me want to puke.”

“But Mrs. Seton said your mother—”

“Don’t you dare speak about my mother!”

“Very well, I won’t.”

“You came into my room, the only private room in this entire pile of rubble that has belonged to me since I was bloody well born. You came in here and you changed it to suit you.”

“I changed nothing, if you would but cease being an unreasonable boor and look about you. The roses, yes, but nothing else, and they’re not a change, just a mere temporary addition. You think you would prefer that the tapestries your great-great-grandmother wove lose all their magnificent colors in years upon years of filth and fray until they turn to dust? And the stones, Colin, you could have easily broken your leg had they not been replaced and reset. I did nothing differently. You will even notice that the damned stones match. And the carpet, dear
God, that beautiful Aubusson carpet, at least now you can see the vibrant colors in it.”

“It was up to me to have it done.”

He was dogged, she’d give him that. Once the bone was in his mouth, he wasn’t about to let go of it. She drew on her depleted control. “Well, it cost little to replace the stones. Why didn’t you do it, then?”

“What I did or didn’t do is my affair. I don’t have to explain any of my actions to you. This is my house, my castle. What you have done is wrong.”

“I am your wife. Vere Castle is also my home. It’s my responsibility.”

“You are only what I allow you to be.”

“By all that’s fair, you’re being an idiot! I’ve waited and waited for you to return home. Nearly three weeks and not a single bloody word from you. Well, my lord, you seem to forget that you also have responsibilities—such as your children.”

“My children! They appear to dislike you as much as they did when you first met them, and there’s probably an excellent reason for it. You did raise your hand to them, didn’t you? You probably saw yourself as taking my place—what with you having all the damned money—and you decided that a man would stride about and give everyone orders and buffet children who didn’t immediately conform to what it was you wanted.”

Sinjun was careful not to touch the first-edition Shakespeare. She chose instead a thick tome written by some obscure sixteenth-century churchman and hurled it at him.

It struck him solidly in the chest. He grunted, stepping back. He stared at her, not believing that she would hurl a book at him. Had she had a sword available to her, she probably would have tried to run him through.

He’d looked forward to coming home, be it just for a day or two, had looked forward to seeing his bride, and she’d thrown a book at him. He’d seen himself seated at the grand dining table, she as his bride in her place, his children well scrubbed—doubtless by her own soft hands—smiling and laughing, happy as little clams with their new stepmother. He rubbed his palm over his chest, staring at her still. His pleasant fantasy vanished. Damn her, but he was in the right of it. Because she was the heiress, she’d thrust herself into his role and made herself the master of his home. He wouldn’t tolerate it.

“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.”