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“Jordan! Cease this moment!” he ordered, plunging his leather boots into the water and moving for his wife.

She ignored him wholly, now intent on ramming her knee into Miranda’s ribs as she continued to hold her head under the water.

“Jordan!” William snapped again.

Miranda’s head came up, gasping for air and screaming an unearthly howl. Jordan managed to get another knee-jab in before William had her by the arms, pulling her up.

“Jordan, let go of her hair,” he ordered. “Let go, I say.”

Jordan’s hand was still entwined in Miranda’s hair even as her husband pulled her up, simply for the pain she knew it was giving the woman. When William tried to unwrap her fingers, she simply coiled them tighter and began tugging as hard as she could, grunting and cursing the woman in Gaelic.

“Dammit, Jordan, I said let go,” he was still fighting off a smirk, but growing irritated at her refusal to obey him. “I mean it.”

He managed to loosen her grip and pull her hand away, but not before his wife had torn out a huge clump of hair. Miranda screamed and cried and struggled to get out of the pond, falling and slipping as she clawed her way out.

William had his wife around the waist, clutched on his hip as he sloshed out of the water. His boots were ruined as was her dress, but Jordan didn’t give a damn about that. She was still furiously mad.

“Ye’d better run and hide, Miranda!” she twisted and shouted in her husband’s grip. “If I see ye again, ’twill be worse than this.”

“Enough,” William hissed at her, clapping a hand over her mouth.

She mumbled and thrashed, still holding onto the grisly trophy as they came out of the water. Miranda, fortunately, had the presence of mind to get to her feet and run as fast and as far away as she could.

William didn’t dare put Jordan down. Still holding her, she was quite heavy with the water soaking her surcoat. He carried her dripping and stiff all the way back to their apartments.

There was no one there and William wondered briefly how Kieran was faring with Jemma. Knowing Jemma, the women were probably dead by now. But that was not his concern; at the moment for he had a very angry wife on his hands.

Jordan was angry, true, but now that her thoughts had cleared a bit she wondered just how angry William was with her for the display. Really, she didn’t care much because she had no idea how long he and Kieran had been talking to the women, and she felt he had some explaining to do. For whatever level his anger had reached, she could match and beat it.

William set her down and water began to puddle all over the floor. Jordan pushed her hair off her face and turned to her husband, glaring menacingly at him. He met her look impassively.

“How long had ye been standing there with them?” she demanded harshly.

He cocked a slow eyebrow. “Not long. And I do not think I care for your tone much.”

“I do not care what ye do not care for,” she snapped. “I told ye to stay away from them.”

He was ever cool with her. “In the first place, madam, you do not give me orders. And in the second place, they confronted me and I was attempting to politely dismiss them when you came upon us.”

She started to shake, more with fury than anything else. “Politely dismiss them? I was quite rude with Daniel. Why could ye not have become rude with them? Dunna ye know that unless ye are blunt and to the point, they’ll never leave ye alone?” Her eyes suddenly widened. “Unless…unless ye like the attention.” Before he could respond, she burst into tears and threw the clump of hair she still held at him. “Then go back and find yer precious Miranda and give her back her hair. And be sure to be polite to her so she willna think ye a cad.”

She fled into their bedchamber and bolted the door, crying as loudly as he had ever heard her. He sighed with regret, moving to the door. My God, the woman could jump to conclusions with the best of them.

“Jordan,” he jiggled the latch. “Love, let me in. Please?”

Her response was to cry louder and he heard something break. It dawned on him that his wife was having a full-blown temper tantrum and he found himself fighting off the giggles.

“Jordan, unlock the door,” he asked nicely.

She screamed in Gaelic and something crashed into the other side of the door and shattered. Things were thumping and falling as she ranted and cried and yelled and had he not been so concerned, he would have been on the floor in convulsive laughter.

He could have smashed the door in if he wanted to, they both knew that. But he didn’t want to, at least not yet. He knew she was tired from the trip, and her pregnancy was affecting her emotions, and crashing through the door like a pent-up bull would not help things.

William sighed again and leaned up against the door, listening to his wife destroy their bedchamber. He reasoned that as long as he could hear her moving about, she hadn’t hurt herself. So he waited with an amused look on his face, and listened.

Kieran, with Jemma by the arm, entered the apartments a few minutes later. William’s eye widened at the sight of his wife’s cousin; her dress was torn, her lip cut, and she had a lovely bruise underneath her left eye.

“Good God, Jemma!” William exclaimed. “What in the hell happened to you?”