“We can take it as slow as you need to in the marriage bed. There’s no rush. A week, a month. A few months,” he said.
His father could wait a little longer for male heirs.
Anxiousness etched its way into his bride’s expression, and she took another sip. “Your brother seemed eager for proof of our marriage’s consummation.”
He gave a derisive snort. “I’ll deal with Lachlan. Please don’t worry about him.” He rose and sauntered over to the nightstand,picked up his dagger and unsheathed the blade. He then nicked his palm, hissing at the sting. He returned the dagger to its sheath and waited for the blood.
She shot up from her chair, setting the glass down on the sideboard, and came to him, her brows pulled together in stark concern. “What are you doing?”
When a few drops of blood started to gather in his palm, he stepped over to the bed and smeared the blood on the counterpane. “There. We’ve consummated the marriage.”
He eyed her, a tug pulling at the corners of his mouth. Her cheeks reddened with embarrassment. “Oh,” she murmured.
She picked up his dagger, went to her night rail on the back of a chair, picked that up, cut a long thin strip from its hem, then walked the strip back over to him. Setting his dagger down, she eyed him.
“Your hand, please?” she said.
He gave her his nicked palm. She proceeded to wrap his hand with the strip of cloth. Her touch was gentle. Caring. Tender. After she was done, she looked up at him. Warmth softened her features, even though regret overshadowed her eyes. “You have my eternal gratitude, husband.”
Was he her husband if they hadn’t consummated the marriage?
Her blank expression returned. And his rage at the possibility that another man hurt her returned, stabbing his gut and twisting in his chest. He swallowed back the bile threatening to come up his gullet.
She picked up her glass, sank back down into the chair and hugged her knees with one hand, then took another sip of whisky. Slade returned to the divan, the question of how to find out what happened to Fifi bombarding his mind.
The blankness dissipated. It was erased after they’d sat in silence for a while, as she took little sips. Whisky tended to put afew layers of false strength between a person and the world. He recalled it only too well from right after Sylvia’s death.
CHAPTER 48
The flash of stark pain and gut-wrenching agony in her furrowed brows, tight lips and glassy eyes was fleeting but it sent a jagged knife straight to his heart, obliterating his insides. He would do anything to never see that expression on her lovely face again. Lie. Torture. Kill.
Slade shifted in his seat, wanting to change the topic. “We’ll have a few wedding guests to attend tomorrow.”
Fifi stared into the hearth. The fire was now mere glowing fragments of coal. “Aunt Penelope from Edinburgh is always looking for any little thing to disapprove of. To criticize. She disapproved of me leaving her home to go stay with my friend Charlotte from Ayr and her family, even though they are well liked and respected in the community. Of course, I went to work for the Bolingbrokes instead,” Fifi said, her tone laced with irony.
Slade recalled the blue-eyed woman with the blonde hair done in a ridiculous fashion in the chapel during their wedding. He made a motion above his head. “Was she the one with the ostrich plumes who sat next to your mother at the banquet?” he asked.
Fifi nodded unsteadily. “The very one. Lucky for me she was visiting the Sutherlands in the Highlands and was able to attend our wedding on short notice.” Fifi scoffed, not sounding lucky in the least. She then continued. “She’s the legitimate daughter of Sir Donald Lindsay, Baronet. My mother is his illegitimate daughter. Aunt Penelope has never let me or my mother forget that fact.”
“She sounds unpleasant,” he murmured.
Fifi made a motion toward him with her now empty glass. “Did you know my aunt is the mistress of the Earl of Stair?”
“Is she now. Well, well, Aunt Penelope does get around,” he said, feigning shock.
Her lips stretched into a genuine little smile. A smile was good, even though it was a little one. Slade’s stomach loosened.
The Earl of Stair, James Dalrymple, moved in the same circles as General Bolingbroke and the Duke of Cumberland, William Augustus, son of King George II. It was a social circle a Jacobite spy could extract quite a bit of useful information from. No doubt Phoebe’s mysterious spymaster, the one she was so willing to place her life in danger for, also traversed the same circle.
He frowned. “Was your aunt the one to introduce you to this mysterious Jacobite friend of yours?”
He purposefully didn’t use the term spymaster, for it would put Fifi on her guard.
Fifi flushed. Either from the whisky or his question, he wasn’t certain.
“Yes. We met at a soiree put together by my aunt in Edinburgh,” she said.
Slade decided he didn’t like Aunt Penelope.
