Once seated at the table, she gave her full attention to her breakfast. After eating her fill, she spent an extraordinarily long time pushing her cold eggs back and forth on her plate. Bored with this pastime, she chanced to look up and saw Julien gazing at her, his eyes alight with amusement.
She felt a bolt of panic, then anger, then she calmed herself. Lightness, she was all sweetness and light. “Do forgive me, sir. I was raised to think it rude to stare at others who haven’t yet finished their meal, but then, perhaps you are in a hurry to quit these rooms and think that I am much too slow at my breakfast. Do allow me a moment longer.” She gave the eggs another couple of shoves.
He laughed, he actually laughed. “As to the urgencies of your breakfast, I fear that your toast is by now like dried leather and your bacon stiff with age. Those poor eggs have long since plummeted over the precipice.”
“Perhaps they have. Now, I long to hear what delights you’ve doubtless planned on this altogether lovely day. Any drugs, my lord? Any threats, perhaps?”
She was good, quite good. He drew out his watch and consulted it. “My pleasure, my dear, is that you’re packed in an hour. Why the look of surprise? We are, after all, on our wedding trip. We’re leaving for Switzerland this morning.”
“Switzerland? I’ve never cared for Switzerland.”
“Really? How very curious of you. I wasn’t under the impression that you’d ever traveled to that country. Could I be mistaken? Did I completely misunderstand Sir Oliver? Did he give you a grand tour as a child?”
“Very well, I haven’t visited Switzerland, that’s true enough, but I’ve been given to understand that it is quite inferior to England.”
He burst into laughter.
20
He laughed himself silly. She wanted to hurl strips of her stone-cold bacon at him, but suddenly he stopped, drew a steadying breath, and said, even as he gave her a huge, white-toothed grin, “I thought you were singularly undisturbed by other people’s opinions, Kate. I must confess that I find myself somewhat disappointed that you don’t wish to form your own independent judgment.” Then he had the gall to sigh like a martyr. “I’d hoped that, unlike most other women, you would not be content to merely parrot words. I fear I hear the sound of poor Bleddoes’s absurd pompous opinions.”
“You’re a bloody sod, well, perhaps not that, but it isn’t true, as you must know. I couldn’t bear Robert and his prosing and his prudery and . . . all right, so he did say on occasion that Switzerland wasn’t— damn you, you are a sod, and I won’t sit here and be ridiculed.” She jumped to her feet, sending her cold eggs plopping over the edge of the plate, her cheeks so flushed it looked as if she had the fever.
He sat back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “An hour, Kate?”
She flung her napkin on the table, turned on her heel, and strode like an angry boy from the room.
Julien remained seated for a moment longer, looking at the recently slammed door. It had never before occurred to him to bless his quickness of wit. It came to him with something of a shock that she was behaving more arrogantly than he had done himself when trying to bring her to heel in London. That she would ride roughshod over him given the least opportunity, he did not doubt. For a fleeting instant he envisioned his life as a marital battleground.
As he rose to ring for a lackey, he wondered idly how long she would insist upon wearing the same gown.
The post chaise he’d procured for their trip to Switzerland was well-sprung and elegantly furnished with blue-satin squabs and warm blue-velvet rugs. But though the horses stood at over fifteen hands and were blessed with broad chests and powerful thighs, Julien found that they didn’t possess the speed of his own bays.
He watched his new wife with some amusement as she tried valiantly not to appear interested in the French countryside. He well understood her dilemma and thought her altogether adorable. He also thought her so appealing that he had to shift position several times for the pain it brought to his groin.
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