Page 144 of Claimed Highland Brides

LEGALESE

Barclay sank onto his bed with a sigh, his head in his hands.

“Sir?” Angus’s voice cut through his preoccupation, and he looked up. “Is anything the matter?”

“Not really. I…think I might have made a mull of things this evening with Miss Douglass but…”

“Miss Douglass? Which one?”

Barclay shook his head. “Never mind. I’m tired. I would like to sleep.”

“Yes, sir.”

Barclay lay back on the bed, after taking his shoes off, and stared at the ceiling, head cradled on his arm. He thought back to his conversation with Aileen, trying to understand where it all went wrong.

He had thought she would be flattered by his proposal. After telling him that she had no expectation of ever marrying, he’d thought she would be ecstatic.

Instead, she had acted as if he had hurt her.

I don’t understand.

He tried to put himself in her shoes. A woman’s entire life revolved around the prospect of one day being a wife and bearing children for her husband. It was that or live out a life alone and unfulfilled.

I am saving her from that. So why did she look like she wanted to cry when she said she would think about it?

Barclay didn’t understand why she had not acquiesced right away to his proposal.

Is it because of the land? Does she not want me because I do not have my inheritance? Perhaps she thinks we will have no home to go to. She did not say no, however. She said she would think about it and give me an answer.

If he was being honest, his pride was hurt that she had not jumped at his offer right away. But he was a patient man, and he had every confidence that she would agree to his proposition. He wasn’t optimistic enough to believe that a marriage would be enough to sway his step-uncle, however.

I need to speak with the governor and persuade him to help me.

He closed his eyes, resolving to sleep on it. In the morning, there were many decisions to be made.

* * *

Aileen had a hard time falling asleep, Barclay’s words reverberating in her mind. It was a great shift in her thinking to imagine the prospect of being someone’s wife after years of the an ingrained belief that she would never be. On one hand, she was worried that perhaps Barclay was mocking her, playing a cruel joke on her. But she could not see any reason why he would do that. She could not come up with one instance in her memory of him being deliberately unkind to her before.

But if she discarded the possibility that he was playing with her, then she had to contend with the fact that he was serious in his proposition.

Can I really marry him?

She wiggled around in her bed, a strange heat in her belly at the thought of doing with him what married people did. Her thoughts went to Fiona and Jamesina, the intimate way they looked at their husbands. The random touches. The long kisses and caresses. The sometimes early nights from which they emerged at breakfast glowing with a special light.

I want a marriage like that.

She chuckled, thinking that it had taken her all of a few hours to go from no expectation of marriage to very high expectations.

We knew each other so long ago, so far away, as children. Will that be enough to build a family?

She felt she was being naïve because many marriages started with much less than that. Peter Saunders, their tacksman, recently married a woman he’d never met before his wedding day. His family arranged the entire thing as he had managed to go for thirty years without choosing a bride for himself. Yet they seemed to be doing reasonably well.

She sat up in bed, looking around the darkened bedchamber, lit only by the embers of the dying fire. Focusing on her breathing, she tried to calm herself down and think about things logically.

What is the worst that could happen if I married him?

She blinked a few times, trying to think. By the wetness she could feel between her thighs, she could surmise that passion might not be a problem. At least not for her. Fiona had not been remiss in educating them on everything they needed to know about sex. Upon Jamesina’s engagement, she had taken it upon herself to educate all of them on the joys and sorrows of married life.