Subdued amusement played on his face. “You have only attempted to do so twice. I am hoping now that you are wed to me, you are of a different bent, especially since we already know one another well.”
“I thought you were not coming,” she said after a moment, her quiet tone filled with emotion she did not want to feel.
He unbuttoned his waistcoat and stepped forward at last. “You thought wrong, love.”
She forced herself to breathe evenly. “Who will serve as witness?”
He set the waistcoat atop her trunk against the wall. “Does it matter?”
She looked about at the walls, attempting to spy cracksor holes in the stones. Then she remembered the hidden door, the way she had escaped that afternoon. Ruark’s hand came alongside her jaw and stopped her from searching. The odd bit of lace on his cuff fell around his finely shaped hand that seemed to belie its strength. He had moved without a sound to stand beside her.
“ ’Tis no one you know or will ever see again, Rose.”
She tightly hugged her torso, drew in her breath on the heel of a pause and nodded. “I suppose that is no mean feat. I know very few people.”
His eyes swept her. “Are you chilled?”
She should not be cold with him standing beside her. “A little.”
He walked over to the single brazier in the corner of the bedchamber, where he knelt and added more coal. She watched the way his shoulders pulled at the fine lawn of his shirt.
After a moment, he braced one elbow on his knee and saw the box. He fingered the faded plaid, then turned the letter over in his hand and skimmed the script. “Tucker was here?”
“Clearly, he had an idea that I would not be returning to the abbey,” she said jutting her chin toward the box. “ ’Tis all I had that was truly my own. Strange, I am an heiress, yet it still feels as if all I am is in that box.”
She had not meant the words to sound so cold, but they did, and then she realized she didn’t have to care what anyone thought of her. At least her thoughts were hers and hers alone.
Ruark walked over to the table and poured a glass of wine. “Wine?” he asked, holding out the bottle to her.
Her hands trembled a little. “I have drunk enough. If we are to have an audience, I will remember what I do this night.”
Yet, her heartbeat tripped over itself. How fast her resolve crumpled. “Did you see Friar Tucker before he left?” she asked.
“Nay, I did not. Colum handled the details.” He studied her over the rim of the goblet, then drained the glass. “Is it necessary to talk about this tonight?”
Perhaps he was telling her he was in no mood for conversation or that particular conversation, or perhaps he was only telling her that nothing they said was between only them. Privacy was an illusion. The stone walls gave the false impression they were alone.
Rose cast about for something relevant to say but could not seem to wrap her thoughts around anything solid.
He turned his head. His glance took in the rest of the simple quarters including the narrow bed hardly large enough to fit her much less the both of them. “Have you been comfortable here?”
“This room is better than most in which I have stayed,” she said.
She could have said the mattress was hard and lumpy and the ropes squeaked, but the look that passed through his eyes told her he already assumed as much.
“Certainly ’tis better than spending this night bivouacked outside with your men,” she said.
And just that fast, the matter between them suddenly wavered and shifted to the forefront.
He seemed to recognize this as well.
A small shiver slipped under her skin as she fixed her gaze on his. He framed her face with his hand. “There can be no doubt when this night is gone that ours is a legal marriage, Rose.”
The tenor in his voice told her he was not referring only to her father but to questions that might be raised by his own people later. He was not so much protectingher as he was securing the future for any children they might have together.
Children.
Of course, she would have his children.
