Emilie’s face contorted in horror.
“A ruined woman?” she screeched, her tone dripping in disbelief. “Ye believed I was a ruined woman? And ye still married me?”
Archer shrugged. “I told ye, I just need a maither for me bairns. I daenae care much about yer virtue.”
Emilie huffed, puffing up her chest.
“Well, me virtue is still plenty intact,” she chided. “Daenae worry about that. I cannae believe ye thought they were tellin’ the truth. I was only a lass of six years when me parents gave me to the nuns. And I was with them for seventeen years. When do ye think I would have done anythin’ with a man? I was a novice nun. I would not shirk me vows to God.”
She was glaring at him, clearly offended that he would have the audacity to believe her parents’ words.
Archer, however, was having a very different reaction to the revelation.
The lass is pure, entirely unsullied by anyone else.
The thought had him stiffening. He shifted on his legs, careful to hide his growing desire beneath the swaths of his kilt.
He’d wanted her badly enough when he thought that another man had already had her. But now, knowing that no one else had?
It was a type of temptation that threatened to drive him mad.
Get control of yerself. She may be me wife, but I ken I cannae give her what she would want. Nae what she’d truly desire. I cannae love her. And that means that I cannae bed her.
Archer shoved down his desire again, something he was starting to feel he was doing entirely too often since meeting his new wife.
“I daenae like that yer parents lied to me,” he growled. “I will need to find a way to punish them for that.”
He had expected Emilie, timid and pious as she seemed to be, to balk at the mention of punishing her parents. But she did not. She simply glanced at him, lips pressed thin before nodding with understanding.
“I can imagine that a laird doesnae take kindly to deception,” she mused, but she said the words as if they were almost entirely for herself.
Archer responded anyway.
“I daenae. Now, since they have lied to me, I want to make sure. Did they inform ye of yer job here? Did they tell ye what yer duties are to be as me wife?”
Emilie chewed on her bottom lip. Archer stared at the gesture, wondering what it might feel like to have that bottom lip between his own teeth.
He shook himself before his thoughts could wander too wildly, just as Emilie shook her own head.
“Nay,” she replied. “They dinnae tell me anythin’.”
“Well,” he said, his voice dropping a bit as he spoke. “Yer parents made me quite a few promises. And they are promises that I intend to see fulfilled.”
And with that, Archer stepped forward, bringing himself much closer to where Emilie was standing.
CHAPTER SIX
“Please, daenae touch me,” Emilie said, holding her hands up in front of her as if that would be enough to shield her from Laird McGregor.
Archer stopped, staring at Emilie as if she had just grown a second head.
“I was grabbin’ me night shirt,” he said, reaching for the garment that was hanging on a hook directly to her right.
Emilie flushed with embarrassment. She could not imagine what the Laird was thinking of her. She’d been terrified and trembling one minute, indignant and hot-headed the next.
I need to get a hold of meself. I’ll nae be convincin’ him to get an annulment if I keep actin’ like this.
She watched as Archer tugged the garment over his head. A long-sleeved white cotton shift that fell to just above his knees.