Page 33 of The Laird's Masked Passion

“Dinnae touch me as if I require steering,” she murmured.

His mouth remained severe, but she felt the slight shift in him. “Then dinnae look as if ye plan tae stab the first man who speaks.”

“I plan tae wait until the second.”

“A wise strategy.”

“I thought so.”

They reached the high table. Colin drew out a chair beside his own and Elspeth looked at it with immediate suspicion. To sit beside him before all these strangers was to accept, in public, what had been forced upon her in a cathedral. Yet to refuse would give them exactly what they wanted: evidence of uncertainty and shame.

So she sat, very calmly and very gracefully, as if she chose the chair, the hall, the husband, and perhaps the Highlands themselves.

Colin took his place beside her, and the room resumed motion with the uncomfortable haste of people pretending they hadnot been arrested by curiosity. Conversation returned in broken pieces.

Elspeth lifted her chin and looked down the hall.

Let them stare, then.

A man at the near end of the high table was the first to lean forward. He was broad and fair, with steady eyes and the air of someone who had learned patience from long habit rather than sweetness. He did not smile, but neither did he glare.

“Lady MacKenzie,” he said, inclining his head. “Breac Ross.”

The name was offered like a hand, not a weapon. Elspeth accepted it in the same manner.

“Lady Elspeth Fraser,” she replied. “As I havenae yet decided whether tae keep the other name polished.”

A faint cough came from Colin’s other side. Breac’s mouth twitched, though he mastered it quickly.

“Ye have had a difficult journey,” Breac pointed out.

“How kind. I feared it might have looked effortless.”

This time the twitch became almost a smile. “Nay one could accuse ye of that.”

“I should hope nae. I put considerable labor intae me displeasure.”

Colin reached for his cup. Elspeth didn’t look at him, but she sensed the smallest satisfaction in his silence. It irritated her. She hadn’t sharpened her tongue for his entertainment.

On Breac’s other side sat a darker man with a harder face, black hair tied back, and eyes that seemed to weigh everything they touched. He had the look of a man who distrusted first and apologized never.

“So,” Murdoch said, “Fraser sent us a bride who speaks.”

The nearest voices quieted. Elspeth turned to him. Murdoch’s expression did not alter, but his gaze searched her as one might test the edge of a blade. The words weren’t loud enough to start a quarrel, nor soft enough to be ignored.

Her fingers tightened once around the stem of her cup beneath the table. Fear stirred in her. She was tired. She was among enemies, or near enough. Her mother was absent and perhaps harmed. Her maid was upstairs. Her husband was a stranger. The hall waited to see whether the new lady would tremble.

Elspeth smiled, but it was not a warm smile.

“Aye,” she nodded. “A terrible disappointment, I am sure, tae men who prefer wives delivered silent.”

A murmur moved down the table.

Murdoch’s eyes narrowed. “I prefer strangers tae prove useful before they prove loud.”

“How fortunate that I dinnae measure meself by yer preferences. I should be exhausted before the soup.”

Breac looked into his cup, with his shoulders suspiciously still. Colin said nothing. But Elspeth felt him watching her.