Page 83 of Her Baseborn Bridegroom

“I’m not an heiress,” she pointed out.

“No, you’re not.”

“But you still want me for a wife?”

“Yes.”

She lay still a moment, absorbing this. “Oh, very well,” she said at last.

“‘Very well’?” he repeated with a slight edge.

“If that’s what you want.”

She felt him come up on his elbow behind her.

“What of you?” he asked. “What do you want?”

“I want to know what happened after I fainted,” she said firmly.

He released her and she shuffled up into a seated position against the pillows, pulling the blanket up to preserve her modesty.

“I picked you up,” he said drily, then reached behind him for a cup of wine for her and the plate of fruit.

She took the wine and he placed the fruit on the covers beside her.

“But how did you answer the Queen?”

He stared at her a moment. “You heard my answer to the Queen,” he said with a frown.

Now it was her turn to stare. “No I didn’t.”

He took a swig of his own wine. “I answered the Queen. You turned pale as a ghost and fell to the floor in shock.”

“I didn’t hear your answer to the Queen,” she said. “The room was spinning and turned black before I passed out.”

He frowned. “Even if that’s true, it must be glaringly obvious how I answered, Linnet.”

“I want to hear the words,” she persisted.

He shrugged. “I said, ‘The marriage still stands.’”

Linnet felt a ridiculous sense of disappointment.

“Oh,” she said. To hide it, she took a sip of her wine. It tasted strong. She placed it on the side. When she turned back, Mason was still looking at her and he didn’t look very pleased.

“I suppose Sir Maurency would have said something a lot more flowery,” he said with a thunderous frown.

Linnet felt her face grow hot with embarrassment. “Why do you keep bringing him up?”

He flung back the covers and sprang from the bed, reaching for his robe again. “Oh I don’t know, maybe because you’ve been in love with him for the past eleven years?” he said bitterly.

“Where are you going?” asked Linnet in dismay.

He didn’t answer her, merely strode across the bedchamber and slammed the door so hard behind him that it rattled in its hinges.

Linnet felt a flash of anger and injustice. Snatching up the top sheet of the bed she wrapped it round herself like a toga and then, grabbing the biggest apple from the fruit bowl, she stormed into the adjoining room where Mason stood gazing moodily out of the window, and flung it at his head. It whizzed past his left ear and bounced off the wall before rolling to his foot. “Damn me, that female’s always throwing things,” complained Roland who sat in front of the fire playing cards with his father and Oswald. “She threw a candlestick at my head this afternoon.”

“Good for her,” answered Oswald. “You deserved it.”