Hehadmarried her in order to have a helpmeet who legally could never leave.
How appallingly pathetic.
Had the fear of people abandoning him become so great that he felt compelled to tie this poor woman to him with unbreakable bonds?
He took another swig from the bottle.
“You are not a servant.” That much he could acknowledge.
“Aye. I am not.” She straightened further—head upright and shoulders unbowed, just as she had earlier with Tam in the courtyard. But the suspicious brightness of her eyes lashed Fox’s heart.
“I may belong tae ye now, Fox Carnegie, but I refuse tae be down-trodden,” she continued. “So know that I will stand up for myself when needed. Though I will try, for your sake, tae keep my opinions tae myself in the future. I will go search the south wing for Madeline. What ye decide tae do—look inside the keep or outside upon the moor or nothing at all—” She looked again at the bottle. “—well, that’s up tae yourself.”
And with that, she swept from the room.
11
Leah all but ran through the closed door into the shuttered south wing—bottom lip quivering, eyes blinking furiously.
She wouldnotbe so pathetic as to cry in front of the servants and workmen.
It was the tiniest morsel of dignity she had left.
But the image of Fox—bottle tilted, throat rolling as he swallowed whisky like water—seared into her brain.
She hadn’t been married even three days, and yet she had already seen her husband drinking more than eating.
No wonder his household was so shambolic.
Men drank more alcohol than women, Leah knew this. Malcolm liked a finger or two of whisky on a cold evening. But he rarely became drunk enough to loosen his tongue, much less drink himself into a stupor.
Fox, however, was well on his way to being roaringfoutoday, and it was scarcely luncheon.
Regardless of the cause, their conversation had confirmed the most cruel of her own cutting thoughts:
Captain Fox Carnegiehadmarried her to secure an indentured housekeeper—one paid in pin money, a dower, and a married surname.
Despite all his pretty words about weariness and wanting a companion, at the heart of it, Fox had married her because he was tired of hiring yet another servant after driving the last one off due to his drink and neglect.
In her enthusiasm to become his wife, Leah had failed to see that Fox’s actions—no proper courting, no attempt to know her as a person—signaled a lack of regard.
His continued reticence to tell her intimate details, such as how he had come by his substantial wealth or any snippet of Madeline’s history, were merely extensions of this lack of respect.
Leah paused in the shadowy hallway, lifting her face to the ceiling, pleading with gravity to tame the tears welling in her eyes.
Ridiculous.
Thisgreitinghad to cease.
Hiccupping, she dug a handkerchief out of her pocket, wiping angrily at her cheeks.
It was just . . . the weight of this new life was unexpectedly heavier than she had supposed.
The castle, Madeline, and the household were one thing.
A drunken sot who considered her little better than a drudge was something else entirely.
Leah’s thoughts drifted to Mrs. Donaldson, an elderly woman who lived above the haberdasher in Fettermill. She had lost her husband to consumption a decade past, and then her four sons had perished, one after another. The poor woman had taken to the bottle to deal with her grief. But like Fox, she had good days and bad days. When she wasn’t drunk, Mrs. Donaldson laughed and charmed and was an absolute delight. However, when under the influence of too much whisky, her moods became mercurial. She could be kind or hilarious, or just as quickly, morose, irritable, and melancholy.
