She could be angry, too. None of this was her fault. She’d explained that to him already. Ifthis was how they married, with him blaming her for matters out of her control, it would stop right now or there would be no wedding night.
‘I said you first to undress. Why should it be only me? If any of this is to happen between us, it must come from both of us.’
His widening gaze swept over her and then again. Whatever he was looking for, he didn’t find it because he still bore the stubborn perplexed look. ‘You are direct for a virgin.’
She was told her speech bordered on insulting, but she had never been insulted in turn. They wouldn’t dare. Everyone here knew her status and what her father would do. ‘You think I talk like a common whore?’
He blinked. ‘I meant no—’
‘You did mean offence. I’m a healer; I’ve also been a midwife. Since I was young enough to carry rags and herbs, I’ve been at the beginning and the ending of lives. I’ve seen everything in between as well. I may not have engaged in the act, but I know what needs to occur.’
His brow furrowed, but he kept silent. If he wanted it all to be told to him, she would. ‘So for us to lie together,bothof us have to take our clothes off...at least to some extent. If you want me to take off my gown, then I require you to take off an article of clothing as well.’
‘Women do not talk as you do.’
‘These are words, are they not?’
‘Not in any order I’ve heard before.’
Lochmore wasn’t that far from McCrieff. She understood him perfectly, but perhaps he had been in other lands and wasn’t used to native speech. Maybe she wasn’t being reasonable and making assumptions. ‘Have you travelled far?’
This time his mouth pursed. It didn’t, however, soften his countenance at all. ‘I’ve never left our land.’
Ah. This was an argument she’d heard since the moment she could speak in sentences. ‘You think I talk too bluntly.’
‘Decidedly.’
‘For a woman or a man?’ she asked.
‘Is there a difference?’
That stopped her. She couldn’t count how many conversations she had with villagers or those travelling through on how a woman should talk. Now he was suggesting there was no difference between a man or woman. Something in her eased at his words. If he was like her father when it came to her independence—
‘You talk too bluntly for both sexes,’ he continued.
Enough! He wasn’t so different from othermen. There was still time to show him another way of being with women, with his wife.
‘You should get used to the way I talk.’ She was a great warrior’s daughter. First born and given freedom. She knew she would sacrifice a bit of that freedom by marrying another, she knew she lost some of it when her father became Tanist. But in this, in the private chambers of their bedroom, there would be no ordering or reining her in.
‘I talked plainly instead of in riddles,’ she continued. ‘Wouldn’t this make it easier between the two of us if we use plain speech?’
‘I don’t think anything between the two of us will be easier regardless of the way you talk.’
‘How would you know?’
‘You have yet to comply with my request.’
Now it was her time to be perplexed. All she had heard since the door closed was him ordering her about. ‘Request?’
‘It is our wedding night, yet you’ve not taken off your clothes.’
There was no air inside her lungs. She needed to talk to this man she didn’t know and he ordered her to remove her clothing so he could continue with his duty. As if this meant nothing. Since his arrival there had been too much chaoson McCrieff soil, she would take back some control now. ‘And you say I talk too bluntly.’
‘I am a man and gave an order.’
‘I don’t listen to orders.’
‘Nor to plain speech.’
