“It’s all right,” she said, voice still a little breathy. “What was it ye were sayin’?”
“I asked if it truly was Emilie who told ye that? About puttin’ the tea in the soil?”
Archer’s eyes scanned both of them, looking for any sign of humor on their face.
Because surely this had to be a joke. They knew he had been listening in on them, and so they were joking with him that his wife was not the dolt she had pretended to be, only to pull it all back down.
But the moment Archer had mentioned his wife’s name, Paisly beamed and began to nod.
“Aye,” she said brightly. “She had tons of things to say besides that. Did ye ken that the nuns had her studyin’ arithmetic and helpin’ with their finances?”
Archer just blinked at them, unable to fight the confusion that was roiling within him.
“Well, surely she was lyin’,” Archer blurted. “Just yesterday she was tellin’ me she tried to grow dahlias at the abbey and was blatherin’ on about teachin’ chickens to whistle.”
Paisly let out a giggle at his words, quickly pressing her hands to her lips as a bashful look crossed her face.
“I promise ye, she was serious,” Paisly said from behind her hand. “And I believe her.”
“How can it be true, though? If she was sayin’ all that just yesterday?”
Archer didn’t wait for them to answer as he crossed the rest of the room to the large window. It was one of the reasons he’d chosen this particular room to give to Marcus.
It had one of the biggest windows in the castle. And Marcus was like one of the small lizards he often saw on the rocks, drawn to the sun with a need to bask in it.
He was grateful for it now, staring out at the south lawn and the sprawling estate of the castle beyond. The sea couldn’t be seen from where he was standing, but he could see the forest.
And as Archer stared out at the trees, at the way they moved and swayed from the breeze off the water, his brain was working as quickly as it could, trying to put together the puzzle of everything he had just learned.
“Maybe she wanted ye to think she was daft.”
Marcus said the words as if they were a joke. He even chuckled after he ended the sentence. But they were no surprise to Archer.
Had he not been thinking the same thing since their walk the day prior?
“Why would she do that, though?” he growled, but he kept his tone low, speaking mostly to himself.
“Mayhaps,” Paisly mused, seeming to be taking this as seriously as Archer himself was, “she just wants ye to be annoyed by her?”
Archer glanced at his best friend’s wife, seeing the seriousness on the pregnant woman’s face.
What would that serve, though?
Paisly was right. He could feel it in his bones. It was the only explanation.
Her deliberately pretending to be dumb to annoy him was the only thing that made everything he had witnessed make sense.
How intelligent she had seemed to be on the carriage ride home from their wedding. The small moments of wit that had shone through when he’d talked to her. And then her making up stories about something as silly as chickens whistling.
It all added up when he thought about it under the guise of her simply doing it all deliberately.
The only thing he couldn’t figure out was why.
“If the lass wants to play a game,” he growled, paying little attention to the other people in the room. “I will show her that there are better players than she.”
Archer turned on his heel, all thoughts of what he’d come to talk to Marcus about pushed from his mind as he strode from the room. His brain only had room for one thing at the moment.
And that thing was flipping whatever game Emilie was playing back on her.