Slightly Scandalous by Mary Balogh

Author:Mary Balogh
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780440334019
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2003-06-02T16:00:00+00:00

Joshua was normally an early riser. He was not late up the following morning, but he was later than usual. He had scarcely slept all night, only to fall into a deep sleep when it was already light. All the Bedwyns except Freyja and Judith were at breakfast.

“She is feeling indisposed this morning,” Rannulf said, looking rather sheepish, when Joshua asked about Judith, “just as she was yesterday morning until it was almost time to leave for church. I have just been admitting to the family that she is in a delicate way. We were going to keep it to ourselves for a while, but morning sickness is a great spoiler of secrets.”

“Poor Judith,” Eve said. “I'll go up and keep her company for a while after breakfast—unless I discover that she would rather be alone.”

“And Freyja?” Joshua asked. Surely she was not still in bed, unless she had had as sleepless a night as he. It was altogether possible.

“Did you two quarrel yesterday?” Alleyne asked, grinning. “She would not come back inside after riding with us before breakfast. She said she needed more air and went striding off on foot.”

“Quarrel?” Joshua said. “With your sister? How could one ever provoke a quarrel with a sweet-natured lady like Freyja?”

Everyone at the table laughed. Even Bewcastle looked faintly amused.

“I winked at her across the drawing room just before we left Alvesley last evening,” Joshua said, “and sent her into a towering rage. People, she told me when we had a moment alone together before getting into the carriage with Morgan and Alleyne, might have noticed and thought us remarkably vulgar. Where might she have gone?”

“You might be wise,” Aidan said, “to wait for her to walk off any lingering indignation and return to the house in her own good time.”

“Ah,” Joshua said, “but no one has ever been able to accuse me of excessive wisdom.”

“There is a wilderness walk out behind the house,” Morgan said. “She usually goes there when she wishes to be alone. And if I had quarreled with my betrothed, Aidan, I would want him to come after me even if I had told everyone that I wished to be left alone and even if I had warned him not to follow me.”

“Eve is still in the process of teaching me how to understand women,” Aidan said. “I spent too many years in the military, it seems.”

It was not that they had quarreled exactly, of course, Joshua thought as he strode off beyond the stables half an hour later to where the wilderness walk began. And she had not been in a towering rage over the wink—only hotly indignant. He had made a kissing gesture with his lips and called her sweetheart when she had scolded him, and had watched her nostrils flare, and then they had been in the carriage with her brother and sister and he had deliberately drawn her hand through his arm.

No, they had not quarreled. But last evening they had had conjugal relations and everything had changed between them.

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