Nay.
Her patience snapped, and she took a step forward.
Hannah’s eyes flicked to her before she could take a step. “Where are ye going?”
“To discuss the rules with me husband.”
“At the wedding celebration?”
“It seems appropriate,” Violet said, already moving. “He is a man who enjoys rules.”
Crossing the hall was a mistake in every direction and somehow impossible to stop. The guests noticed at once, and she could practically hear the conversations die down. A few men shifted aside quickly, and someone near the table gave a soft laugh and disguised it as a cough.
Violet did not slow down.
Connor turned fully toward her before she reached him. His eyes darkened with something that looked too much like satisfaction, which only stoked her temper.
The widow looked from Violet to Connor and lifted her eyebrows with perfect courtesy. Violet smiled at her.
“We need to talk,husband,” she said. “Would ye excuse us?”
The wordhusbandlanded exactly where she aimed it. On Connor and the widow.
She did not wait for permission. She turned and walked away, trusting him to follow because if he did not, the whole hall would see the crack in the marriage she had just publicly claimed.
Connor watched her go.
For a long moment, he stayed where he was. He had already drawn a breath to decline the widow’s invitation when Violet crossed the hall like a woman prepared to start a war.
He would not have danced with another woman. Not today. Not with Violet standing beneath his roof as his bride, flushed and stubborn and determined to pretend her new title meant less than it did.
The widow’s eyebrows rose. “Yer bride is quite decisive, me Laird.”
Connor kept his gaze on Violet’s retreating figure. “Aye, she is.”
“Peaceful marriage,” Alex murmured from beside him.
Connor glanced at him.
Alex lifted his cup. “I said nothing.”
Connor cleared his throat before walking away, following Violet. Around him, the guests pretended not to watch, rather poorly. The musicians kept playing, and the dancers resumed dancing, but curiosity had shifted like a gust of gentle breeze through the hall.
Something about the scene made quiet satisfaction curl inside him.
Did his wife just claim him?
In public?
14
The instant Connor closed the study door behind them, the noise of the cèilidh ebbed.
The music still reached the room, faint through wood and stone, with the quick pull of the fiddle and the heavier stamp of feet in the hall. Voices rose and fell beyond the door, followed by laughter. A cup struck a table hard enough to carry through the passage. But inside the study, everything held still.
Violet took three steps into the room before she seemed to realize she had led him there. Her shoulders were straight, her chin lifted, and her hands were clasped with careful dignity in front of her wedding gown.
Connor remained near the door for a moment, partly because he wanted to see what she would do with the silence.
