He said, very quickly, “You are not my child. However, as my wife, you are my responsibility. Naturally I am distressed. It cannot be wise of you to drink so very much.”
“You are,” she said quite clearly, “a buffoon.”
He wondered if a buffoon was better or worse than a moron and said, “You shouldn’t insult your husband,” and knew it was pathetic. At that moment he wanted more than anything to yell at her, curse at her, demand why she’d married him when she loved her damned almost cousin Jeremy Stanton-Greville, who was already married, his wife pregnant. And then, of course, that was exactly the reason Meggie had married him. She couldn’t have Jeremy, so why not take a man who obviously wanted her? But he didn’t yell, didn’t curse her. He didn’t say anything at all. If a man didn’t have his pride, he didn’t have much of anything at all.
Meggie whistled, a nice fresh spring tune about a boy and a girl and a field full of violets.
“No,” he said slowly, “now that I’ve listened to your song, now that I see the blood in your eye, I suppose that the champagne wasn’t enough. You went downstairs to drink more champagne?”
“That’s right. Mrs. Miggs and I shared a bottle.”
She wished he would leave, maybe lend her the carriage and let Tim McCulver drive her back to Glenclose-on-Rowan. She was, she realized, succumbing again to melancholia, something she recognized very well ever since that fateful morning when Jeremy had met her in the park with perfect Charlotte at his side, a sinking of spirits made only more profound after Jeremy had confessed that his loud and obnoxious act had been for her benefit to ease her pain, damn him and damn her father for knowing of her pain in the first place. And Charlotte, of course, really was a goddess, blast her.
Was Thomas that different from Jeremy? Was he in fact the real ass while Jeremy was only the pretend ass? Had he hidden his true colors until he’d gotten her to the altar? Her spirits fell lower, if that were possible.
However, when he said, cold outrage in his voice, “May I ask how many men were in the taproom to see you swilling champagne, wearing nothing but my dressing gown?” Meggie immediately perked up.
She said in a voice more serious than her father the vicar’s when confronted with an unrepentant sinner as she tapped her fingertips against her chin, “Let me think. Oh, I don’t think there were more than ten men drinking in the taproom. Were there?” She tapped, tapped, tapped, all thoughtful. “You know, it was very late. Surely most men had gone to their homes, mauled their wives, sprawled out on their bellies, taking up most of the bed, happy as clams, snoring to the ceiling.”
“If they were on their bellies, then they would be snoring to the mattress.” He held up his hand knowing a fine display of wit was ready to burst from her mouth, “No, you don’t have to tell me—you were speaking metaphorically. Now, you’re telling me that you went downstairs wearing only my damned dressing gown, your damned feet bare—and you drank champagne with ten damned men looking on?”
“Ah, I can see from your spate of curses, repetitive but nonetheless curses just the same, that you’re winding yourself up to really blast me now. I pray you won’t forget that Mrs. Miggs was there.”
She was sneering at him, playing him for the fool, and doing it quite well. No hope for it and so he climbed down from his high horse and sighed. “No, you’re lying to me and you don’t do it well, Meggie. So there were no men there, then.”
“To be certain I’m not lying to you, you will have to ask Mrs. Miggs, won’t you?”
“No, I don’t think so. You’re not a very good liar. You will stop mocking me, Meggie. A wife shouldn’t be disrespectful to her husband.”
“Well, then, should a man be allowed to do whatever pleases him to do to his new wife?”
He wanted to yell out that damned Jeremy’s name to her, but he didn’t, said only, “I don’t wish to speak about that.”