Page 33 of The Merciless Laird
It should have been nothing.
Yet he felt her stop. He looked at her hand, then up at her face.
Neither of them moved.
The noise of the hall seemed to blur at the edges.
He withdrew his hand first and reached for his wine, though he did not drink. He only held the cup a moment, his gaze lowered, as if choosing his words more carefully than usual.
"There is something ye should ken plainly," he said.
She set her cup back down.
His eyes lifted to hers.
"Two weeks." He said and she looked up from her plate.
"Before I claim me marital rights. Ye have two weeks. Tae settle. Tae learn the island. Tae grow accustomed tae the keep and the people in it." He held her gaze. "After that, we proceed as husband and wife in the full sense of it."
The table nearest them went very busy with their food.
A muscle moved in her jaw. She set down her spoon very carefully, the way she did when she was deciding what to do with her hands.
"Ye're tellin' me this here." A faint color had climbed her neck and reached her cheeks. She knew it had, he could tell by the set of her mouth. "Now."
"I thought it better said plainly and early."
"In front of everyone?" Her eyes moved to the nearest table, where two women had developed a sudden fascination with their stew. She looked back at him. "Ye couldnae have chosen a more private place?"
"There's nay confusion this way. Everyone kens where things stand."
"Everyone," she said, with great precision, "certainly daes."
From down the hall, a man coughed. Ivar didn't look to see who. He didn't need to.
She picked her spoon up. Set it down again. "Two weeks," she said.
"Aye."
"And this is," she stopped. Looked at him directly, "this is ye bein' considerate, is it?"
"This is me bein' clear."
"Aye, ye're very clear." She glanced at the nearest table again. One of the women had found something on the far wall that apparently required her full attention. "So is everyone else in this hall."
"They would have found out eventually."
"That," she said, "is spectacularly unhelpful."
But the corner of her mouth had gone tight in the way that showed that she was fighting something that wasn't anger, and he looked down at his wine before she caught him looking.
He shouldn't have said it there. He knew that.
He'd known it before he’d opened his mouth. He'd said it anyway because the alternative was saying it after the wedding, in private, in the chamber they would share, with no hall full of people between them and whatever her face would have done when he’d said it.
This had seemed safer.
He was no longer entirely sure it was.
