He was telling Archer to behave, to stop being so beastly to the girl. But Archer didn’t know what Marcus expected.
The way Emilie was currently behaving was enough to drive anyone mad.
Either way, he still nodded at his man-at-arms, a solid promise that he would try to be on his best behavior. It wasn’t much,and Archer knew that his patience would likely wear thin rather quickly.
But he would try for as long as he could.
Both he and Emilie were quiet for a moment, the pair of them waiting as Marcus exited. His footsteps echoed as he traversed the stairs, going from the root cellar where the whisky was stored to the world above.
When Archer was certain that Marcus was gone, he turned his attention back to his wife. He steeled himself, reminding himself internally to be patient as he spoke again.
“Marcus is gone,” he said, making an attempt not to glower at her like he had a moment before. “What did ye want to speak about?”
Emilie looked a bit taken aback by the switch in his tone. She blinked at him for a moment, seeming to assess what she wanted to say next.
“The curtains,” she mumbled eventually, the word spilling past her lips quickly.
Archer stared blankly at his wife, unable to believe what he’d just heard.
“Curtains?” he asked, arching a brow in Emilie’s direction. “Ye came to talk to me about curtains?”
Somehow, the unexpectedness of it all had disarmed him almost entirely. He’d been annoyed when she’d first come down to the cellar, had wanted nothing more than to lose himself in his work for the day.
But because of the absurdity of what she was saying, he lost all ability to be angry about it.
“Aye,” Emilie answered, regaining a little bit of the composure she’d had when she’d first come down.
She straightened her shoulders, fixing him with another bright, cheek-splitting grin. He was less annoyed with it this time, moving into a state of what felt a bit like amusement.
Now that he wasn’t as heated as he’d been a moment before, he could notice the nervousness in his wife.
Her shoulders were straight, but her hands were trembling. And her voice kept cracking as she prattled on, letting Archer know that it wasn’t used to being that high.
“I want to change the curtains,” she continued. “And I want to paint our bedroom a bright, sunny yellow. Do ye think they could do that? Wash the walls in yellow? I ken they’re stone, but surely there is a way to make ‘em all shine like the sun.”
“Ye want to paint our room yellow?” Archer parroted, once again unable to believe what he was hearing.
Emilie nodded vigorously, a jolting movement that seemed unnatural.
“And it’s nae just our rooms,” his wife prattled on. “I also would like to redo quite a few things I saw in the castle. Fill it with color.”
“Why?” Archer cocked his head to the side.
He couldn’t figure his wife out. One moment, she was timid. The next, she was prattling in his ear about wanting to redo the entire castle.
The fake smile was still plastered on Emilie’s face.
“To bring in a little bit of color, of course,” she said brightly.
“I thought ye grew up in a nunnery,” Archer fired back. “I would think a bit of color might be foreign to ye. That ye would be used to livin’ in drab conditions. But now, ye want to infuse everythin’ with yellow?”
Her smile faltered a bit, nothing more than a slight drop to the right side of her mouth and a flicker of worry crossing her eyes. It was gone as quickly as it had come, replaced almost immediately by the same foolish grin. But it had been there, all the same.
Why did that comment bother her so much?
A slight headache started to bubble between Archer’s eyes. He couldn’t keep up with everything that was happening.
The swift change in his wife’s mood. The immediate switch of his own emotions, moving from annoyed to amused within seconds. It was befuddling Archer’s mind and making his head pound.