“What is yourfavorite food?” Catriona asked her husband the next morning over breakfast.
Alessandro paused, forkful of eggs raised halfway to his lips, suspended in midair. “Qué?”
Catriona flicked a glance toward the butler, who had followed them from London and who, she had discovered, knew Spanish.Whatmouthed the butler.
Bless him.
“Your favorite food,” she repeated, sending the domestic a grateful smile. “What is it?”
Her husband scowled at her. “Why are you smiling at the wall?”
He was in a dreadful mood this morning, was he not?
“I am smiling at Johnstone,” she informed him, smiling at him now, with a cheer that was rather forced.
He had been gloomier than a storm cloud ever since she had first met him in the dining room for breakfast. After he had escorted her back to her chamber following their torrid encounter in the temple, he had simply walked away. She could only presume he had spent the night sleeping in the chamber adjoining hers, but she did not know for certain.
“You may go, Johnstone,” Alessandro ordered without bothering to look in the butler’s direction. “Lady Rayne and I shall finish the breakfast on our own.”
“My lord,” the butler began.
“That will be all,” Alessandro clipped, interrupting what was sure to have been Johnston’s protestation against not being allowed to dance attendance upon them.
Over her husband’s shoulder, the domestic sent Catriona a long-suffering look. Her lips twitched, but she suppressed the urge to laugh.
“Of course, my lord,” said Johnstone.
The servant was already much aggrieved by the state in which they had found Marchmont. But this breach of protocol would surely be viewed as an insult. She waited until the butler had gone, discreetly closing the door at his back, to raise a brow at her husband.
“Was it truly necessary to dismiss him?” she asked.
“Yes.” He lowered his fork, glowering at her. “Why are you asking me about food and flirting with the butler?”
“Why are you so angry?” she countered.
She had not particularly appreciated being abandoned at her bedchamber door last night. Not after what they had shared. Not after he had kissed her. But she had understood all too well the struggle he was facing, an inner battle being waged between his past and his present.
Catriona had told herself to ignore his cool demeanor this morning.
She had told herself to try.
She wanted to please him. She wanted to make the best of their circumstances. Lord help her, she had believed, after last night, he may have begun to soften toward her. That his feelings for her had deepened, at least to the point where he no longer felt kissing her on the lips was a betrayal of his previous wife’s memory.
But she had been wrong.
Dreadfully wrong.
On all counts.
“I am not angry,querida,” he denied, assessing her with his molten gaze. “I am merely…perturbed.”
“Youare perturbed,” she repeated, pursing her lips. “Withme.”
“Yes.” He frowned at her. “What is this asking me about food? I do not like it. And then all these covert looks with Johnstone. This too, I distrust.”
Had she thought him in a dreadful mood? How wrong she had been. He was being completely mad. That was what he was doing.
She settled her fork on her plate, ignoring the jarring clink it made upon the fine china—one of the few objects of value Alessandro’s steward had not robbed. “I am asking you about what you like to eat because you are my husband and I wish to please you. I am planning our menus for the next week today, allowing for the organization of this undeniably lackluster household. The staff needs to acquire provisions as there is precious little stores here remaining. Perhaps I should have asked you what you do not like to eat.”
