The cool aristocrat of their betrothal had returned and Diantha could have ground her teeth in frustration. The instant his hands left her, she stepped away. “Stop fidgeting. We shall arrive in plenty of time.”
He said nothing to this retort, but his eyes turned to ice and remained that way until they entered the drawing room at Folkestone House.
“Try to refrain from outrageous remarks,” he murmured beneath the butler’s announcement of their presence. Diantha sucked in a furious breath.
Just then one of his more obnoxious relatives, anearl, greeted them. “I say, here’s our wild Scotsman and his merchant bride!”
Diantha nearly burst out laughing as Kieran’s jaw clenched. She patted her husband’s rigid forearm. “I will when they do.”
Despite her threat, she reigned in her disdain until after the meal. When the ladies returned to the drawing room, the duchess turned to her with a smile. “My dear, you have enchanting manners. No one would believe you grew up among wild Indians. You must tell us what it was like.”
A blistering reply rose to Diantha’s lips, but she realized the elderly woman spoke in complete sincerity. “Has Your Grace never read any factual account of life in America?”
One of Kieran’s second cousins by marriage sniffed. “Excessive reading is highly undesirable in a lady of quality.” From the nods of approval, the rest of the company agreed with her.
Diantha had had enough. She settled herself on a divan and accepted a cup of tea. “Naturally, the greatest challenge is that everything is made of birch bark,” she began.
When Kieran and the rest of the gentlemen entered after their port, they discovered her explaining, with a straight face, that promenades along Fifth Avenue took the form of covered wagon trains in order to fend off hostile natives.
Before her outraged spouse could speak, the Earl of Goring harrumphed. “I have traveled to New York myself, never saw any such thing. You owe the company an apology, madam.”
Diantha gave him a cool stare. “If you bothered to educate females or allowed them to read anewspaper on occasion, they might stop asking me how many Indian attacks I’ve survived.”
“The female mind is unsuited to the rigors of disciplined study, Lady Rossburn.” The earl delivered his opinion as he flipped his coattails up to seat himself a few chairs away from her. “At least the mind of atruelady is.”
A thrill ran through the room at the insult. Diantha merely raised an eyebrow and regarded him in silence for a full five seconds, while Kieran took a place behind her chair.
“Rot.” Turning her back to the spluttering peer, she asked the woman on her right to recommend a good milliner.
“Looks like Rossburn saddled himself with quite the oddity.” The loud whisper could have come from anyone in the room. Titters broke out from several places.
Eyes blazing, her husband raked the company with a ferocious glare. “I prefer to think of Lady Rossburn as extraordinary.”
They excused themselves shortly afterward. Despite his public support, he gave her a resounding scold on the way home for daring to turn her back on an earl.
She did not back down. “I don’t care if he’s the Prince of Wales! If that man ever sets foot under our roof, I am instituting divorce proceedings.” Fuming, she gathered her evening cloak closer around her in the chilly coach. “And if you’re so upset with me, why did you defend me in there?”
“What kind of man lets someone insult his wife?” Still angry, he sat stiffly beside her. “A fine opinion you must have of me!”
“I think more highly of you than you realize.” Diantha snapped the words out. “I only wish you felt the same. ‘Extraordinary’!” She snorted. “It makes me sound like a suspension bridge.”
Unsurprisingly, he did not come to her bed that night, a circumstance that both relieved her and irritated her further.
They continued in the same stilted manner for the following day. Neither apologized, and the impasse had not broken when they boarded their train north.
Diantha dreaded the journey, for they would first travel overnight to Aberdeen and then by coach to Kieran’s estate. Even in a comfortably fitted out private railcar and a well-sprung coach, traveling while cooped up with a surly husband would try the patience of a saint.
To her relief, Kieran became more affable as the car hummed north. The second morning of their journey, he assisted her onto the railway platform himself, and led her through the crowd to their coach. Already out of sorts from a day and night spent in the confines of the railcar, she regarded the out-of-date vehicle with a jaundiced eye. A second, even older one stood behind it to carry Florette, Davison, and the luggage. She gave the maid a sympathetic look.
Kieran exchanged greetings with the coachmen, both of whom treated him with a familiarity she did not think a peer would have tolerated.
“Come, Diantha. It’s time to go home.” He extended a hand to her with the expression on hisface of one close to attaining a long-anticipated treat. Expecting a long day jolting through vast empty tracts of land, she suppressed a sigh and permitted him to hand her up.
Inside, she discovered that the vehicle remained in good condition. A faint smell of new varnish clung to the interior, and she ran her fingers over thick cushions covered with new upholstery before settling back against the squabs.
It rolled over the busy streets of Aberdeen with scarcely a bounce. In her relief, she resolved not to fall into a foul temper over rough country roads.
As it turned out, she forgot about bumps as they moved out into the countryside. Outside her window, immense vistas of long narrow valleys stretched into the distance, some with forested sides, some carpeted with grass. She gazed, fascinated, as they passed small farms and herds of sheep and shaggy red cows. Each mile brought the peaks of the Grampians closer.
