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She could hardly expect to have a husband as devoted as Geoffrey. No, her marriage would be more like that of her parents. She and Graeme would come together for the purpose of having an heir and for meals. Otherwise, she expected to learn as much about Highgate as possible in order to manage the castle affairs. That, at least, she’d been trained to do.

This? The consummation of their marriage? Gillian had planned to ask Sara to tell her about it in more detail, but she’d never had the chance. Of course, she had thought at the time she’d be marrying a very different sort of man than Graeme. Had she been forced to lie with Covington, she would have merely stared up at the ceiling and waited for it to be over. Graeme was different.

When the door opened, Gillian looked up. Her husband stood in the doorway, dressed casually in nothing more than hose and a loose linen shirt that hung well past his waist. Her heart raced, knowing what was to come.

“She’s leaving on the morrow,” he said.

Graeme had stayed behind in the hall after dinner, apparently to speak to Agnes. The woman had spent the evening glaring at her, and Gillian, for her part, had not given her the satisfaction of a return glance. Instead, she’d done exactly what her mother had advocated in such a situation. Simply ignored the woman. And while her father had never openly flaunted his mistresses, neither did they typically dine in the castle’s great hall. But Gillian was proud of her effort and knew her mother would have been too.

“Very good,” she said, folding her hands in her lap.

By now she was more accustomed to being in the same room with Graeme in nothing but her shift. The first two nights, she’d hidden under the covers. But he would simply pull the coverlet away and admonish her not to be ashamed in front of him.

A difficult feat, to be sure.

Graeme looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. The furnishings included only a bed, a circular brazier in the corner, a wooden trunk, and two wall torches that servants had lit while they were at dinner.

“I’ve not been in here in years,” he said. By his tone, Gillian didn’t think he wanted to be in here now either.

“’Twas your mother’s?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“Aye,” he said. “She died the day after I turned two and ten. An illness none could identify turned her frail and weak in the end. I try not to remember her as the woman who lay in that bed for so long. I’d rather think of her as the mother who smiled as she admonished my brother and me to stop chasing each other through the corridors.”

Lost in thought, Graeme fell silent. And then abruptly extended his hand to her. “Come with me,” he said.

Mutely, she obeyed, taking his hand and allowing him to lead her through the darkened wardrobe, a room filled with trunks. Mostly empty ones, Fiona had said earlier, except for the ones that contained the jewels of the former lady of Highgate.

Wrapping one hand around hers, a familiar gesture she’d come to enjoy these past few days, Graeme used the other to push open a wooden door that led to the lord’s chamber.

“Did Fiona bring you here?”

Gillian shook her head. Graeme’s bedchamber was nearly as large as the one at Kenshire! Only once in her life had Gillian seen such a room.

A hearth nearly as large as the one in the hall took up a large portion of one wall. The bed, a canopied wooden one, looked as fine as the king’s. Well, her king. Gillian did not know much about Graeme’s sovereign, but he must also have a bed that enormous. Topped with fur coverlets and pillows, it also looked quite comfortable.

Gillian looked away when she noticed Graeme watching her.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Gillian turned her attention back to her husband.

“For your homecoming today. For Agnes.”

Gillian sensed he was sorry for more, but he’d stopped talking. He’d released her hand upon entering the room. Pity.

“None of that could be helped,” she said.

Graeme’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t care that a woman who shared my bed sleeps just down the hall? Or that—”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You might as well have.”

What did he want from her?

He continued to watch her, and the nervous, fluttering feeling in her stomach intensified. The one she’d had on the night they met and on nearly every occasion Graeme was in her presence.

“Your father kept other women,” he said as if just realizing the fact.