Much Ado About Marriage by Hawkins Karen

Author:Hawkins, Karen [Hawkins, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Romance - Historical, American Light Romantic Fiction, General, Romance, Fiction, Fiction - Romance, Romance: Historical, Historical, American Historical Fiction, Graphic novels: Manga
ISBN: 9781439187609
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2010-09-15T18:58:42.609000+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Fia flipped the fan open and turned it toward her, admiring the rich colors of the painted silk. A pastoral scene decorated one panel. It presented a man asleep in the golden grasses of a sun-drenched field, his long, bare legs peeping through the wheat. A covey of young, buxom nymphs admired him with wandering hands, their nudity barely covered with garlands of flowers.

She held the fan before the window and examined it more closely. The man lay naked, and the grass was very inadequate to cover his nether areas. She gazed anew at his face. “Sweet Saint Catherine, ’tis Robert MacQuarrie!”

She shut the fan with a snap, her face burning. Only Robert would own a fan so daringly painted with his own likeness. She had to laugh, though, at his audacity.

Fortunately, she grew up in a castle filled with men, and she knew how to deflate even such a high and mighty personage as Robert.

Hmm. Perhaps she would wonder aloud why the nymphs were so enthralled with such a plump little man? Of all things Robert abhorred, to be thought plain or ordinary burned him the most.

Grinning to herself, Fia danced around the cabin, an imaginary partner clasped in her arms. She was just beginning to understand the more complicated steps that Robert had been teaching her. It had been pleasant to whirl around the deck, her feet moving with the music. It had been even more pleasant to have Thomas staring at her with such interest.

’Twas a pity he hadn’t won the card game. She had waited impatiently for the outcome, pacing the cabin until Mary had sent her away. Robert had met her in the corridor, and there was no mistaking the triumph in his blue eyes.

“You won.” She hadn’t meant to say the words with such a lack of enthusiasm, but disappointment weighed her down like a heavy, wet blanket.

Robert laughed. “Do not look so put-upon, my love. The game ended just as it should have and—”

Thomas’s deep voice bellowed down the passageway from the deck above. “Montley!”

Robert sent a good-humored glance toward the deck before he grinned back at her. “I must go. When I return, we’ll practice the art of conversation. The queen is an intelligent woman and she is most impatient when bored. ’Tis important to be able to turn a phrase, tickle her wit, make her laugh or—”

“Montley! Before the hour passes, if you please!”

Robert chuckled. “Adieu, my lady.” With that he left, his short cape swirling behind him.

Fia had frowned and returned to her cabin. Her husband was a mite high-handed. ’Twas probably for the best that he’d lost the game.

Mary always said fate was what you made it, and Fia was beginning to believe that more and more. Perhaps she should take her fan and go practice her wiles on some of the sailors on deck? Simmons would be a good beginning. He was a kindly old man and always grinned when she came about.

She approached the ladder leading up to the deck just as a shadow darkened the opening.

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