“I thought we had agreed that you would call me Rob?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. His question somehow sounded like an accusation.
“I’m sorry, Rob,” she answered tightly. “I forgot.”
“Well don’t forget again!” he snapped. “I cannot have my wife calling me by my title. What will people think?”
At that moment, Grace could cheerfully have strangled Robert and smiled while doing so, and it was on the tip of her tongue to say that she could not give a fig what people thought. However, she resisted and said nothing, much though it pained her to stay silent.
“Let’s go and have some wine,” Robert suggested. “I feel in the mood for a little refreshment.” He turned to leave, but stopped immediately when Grace spoke.
“It is rather early in the day for me,” she said. “I prefer to wait till dinner.”
“I don’t care what you prefer,” Robert told her firmly. “We may as well start as we mean to go on, Grace. I am the Laird, I will be your husband, and therefore the head of the household. I will tell you what to do from now on. Do you understand?”
This time Grace could not hold back her anger. “Yes,M’Laird,”she snapped. “I understand. I am not a simpleton!”
They glared at each other for a second or two, and a serious argument might have ensued, but at that moment a guard approached Robert, and he turned away to speak to him.
“You have a visitor, M’Laird,” the man told him. “The blacksmith needs to see you.”
Robert grunted and made his way downstairs, but not without a malevolent backward glance at Grace.
As she saw him disappearing, Grace breathed a sigh of relief.‘Thank God,’she thought, but then a more somber notion occurred to her.‘How will I cope with this for the rest of my life?’She felt like weeping, but resisted the impulse out of sheer stubbornness. She would not give Robert the satisfaction of seeing tears on her cheeks, and knowing he had put them there.
Accordingly, she waited until she judged that enough time had passed for him to meet his visitor, before tentatively descending the stairs. However, just as she stepped into the courtyard, she looked up straight into Fergus’s eyes, and she could not look away. What she read in them gave her hope; it seemed that he was not as indifferent to her as he was making himself out to be.
9
Fergus gazed at Grace helplessly. He knew that what he felt for her was written all over his face, but he could simply not help himself. She was no more than a few yards away, but she was so unattainable that she might as well have been standing on the moon.
She looked particularly beautiful today, as she was wearing a sage-colored kirtle that brought out the green flecks in her hazel eyes. Her hair was tied back in a loose knot at the back of her neck, and secured with gold combs that shone brightly against her wheat-colored hair.
She was staring at him intently as if by doing so, she could look into his mind. He knew that his thoughts were transparently obvious. He took a step towards her and saw her whole body tense. Surely she was not afraid of him?
As he could think of nothing better to say, he cleared his throat and asked awkwardly, “how are you, Grace?”
Grace thought that she must be looking sick, because people had been asking about her health all day. However, this was the man she loved, so she smiled as she answered him. “Quite well, Fergus,” she replied. “And how are you?”
“Also well,” he answered, then dropped his gaze to the ground, staring at it intently, as though he was looking for something.
“We missed you at lunch time,” Grace told him.‘Look at me,’she thought desperately.
“I’m sorry,” he replied. “I was very busy with tenants.” Even to his own ears, the excuse sounded lame, but at least it wasn’t a lie.
‘Look at me.’Grace thought angrily.‘Why are you so scared of me?’
As if he had read her mind, Fergus raised his eyes to hers, and a spark passed between them. This time he gazed at her steadily, and as the seconds ticked by, the tension between them became more and more intense.
If he could, Fergus would have opened his arms to her, and Grace would have gladly thrown herself into them, but they were constrained by the circumstances in which they had found themselves. Standing in the middle of an open courtyard was not a place for intimate conversations.
At last, he spoke. “Will you walk with me?” he asked. “I need to speak with you.”
“Yes,” Grace replied, puzzled. What could he possibly have to talk to her about? All the decisions about their future relationship had been made; he was going to be nothing more than her brother-in-law. She had resigned herself to that fact, and discussing it over and over again would change nothing. She was trapped, and she knew it.
They strolled along to a wooden bench beside the stables and sat down side by side.
Fergus shifted sideways a little to make sure he put a respectable distance between them, then turned to Grace, and now she could not mistake the longing in his eyes.
“Grace… I wanted to ask… are you happy about marrying Robert?” he asked tentatively.