He retreated to the sofa, set at a right angle to the fireplace. Upholstered in a green and flowery fabric, it was a bit too feminine for his tastes. Perhaps an English parlor was a woman’s domain.
Veronica didn’t sit beside him. Instead, she stood in front of him and repeated her first, surprising, question.
“Are you returning to America?” she asked.
“Why would you ask that?” Caution tempered his words.
She took a step toward him, then another, halting only when she was an arm’s length away.
“Why did you give me a settlement?”
When he didn’t answer, she frowned at him, standing in front of him as if he were a boy in short pants and she his chastiser. He wasn’t particularly fond of being chastised.
He leaned back, folded his arms, and regarded her.
“You’ve provided quite adequately for me, Montgomery. Is that supposed to make up for desertion?”
“Desertion?” he asked, surprised. “I provided for you, Veronica,” he said. “Be satisfied with that.”
She studied him for a moment, as if deciding whether to believe his answer.
“You didn’t come to me last night,” she said, finally, startling him again.
He wasn’t used to her straightforwardness. She didn’t flirt. She didn’t hide behind double entendres. She wasn’t the type to hint at anything. Instead, Veronica came right out and told him what she was thinking.
A woman’s wiles had no effect on him, but her directness was fascinating. So, too, her voice. With her accent of Scotland, she changed words, made them sound new, as if English were a language he’d just started to comprehend.
How the hell did he answer her complaint?
“I’m not prepared to bed a stranger,” he said, giving her the truth.
She blinked at him several times.
Did shefeelsomething from him? Oh, for the love of God, was he beginning to believe she actually had a Gift?
“How will we be anything other than strangers if you continually avoid me?”
“I haven’t continually avoided you,” he said. “We haven’t been married a full day yet.”
“It’s been a full day,” she said, glancing at the mantel clock.
“Are you always this argumentative?”
She considered the question. “I believe I was,” she said. “Not lately, of course, but when I lived with my parents. My father liked to debate. I often took the other side of an argument simply to please him.”
Before he could comment, she took another step closer. “You’ve never even kissed me,” she said.
“Why do I worry you?”
She blinked at him again.
“Last night, you said I worried you.”
“Oh, good heavens, Montgomery, you’re an American. You’re different from anyone I’ve ever met. You’re a stranger. I’d be a fool not to be worried.”
“Yet you still wanted me to come to your bed.”
“I’m a bride. You’re supposed to come to my bed.”
