Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“She was so kind.”
The sound of Paisly’s voice floated to Archer from around the corner, and he stopped in his tracks.
He had been on his way to find Marcus, assuming that he was likely in the small room he’d converted to a workroom for his man-at-arms years before. But Archer had not expected Marcus’ wife to be in there as well.
“She’s seemed that way any time I’ve been around her,” Marcus’ voice chimed, a soft tenor in it that was often only reserved for when he was addressing his wife.
Curiosity bubbled within Archer, wanting to know who they were talking about.
“Smart as a whip, too,” Paisly continued to babble as if Marcus had never spoken. “She was tellin’ me all about how she got her tomatoes to grow at the abbey when I told her we were havin’ trouble. I’m excited to try out her suggestions.”
The abbey? Surely, they cannae be talkin’ about me wife. Nae if she’s sayin’ she’s smart when it comes to plants.
“What else did she tell ye about?” Marcus prompted his wife.
“Said we needed to mix the grounds from our tea into the soil,” Paisly chimed excitedly. “Accordin’ to Emilie, that’ll make nearly any plant perk right up.”
They are talkin’ about me wife. But that cannae be right.
Archer’s mind flicked back to when they had been walking the day before, and she’d blathered on about planting dahlias. Granted, shortly after he’d begun to catch on that she was putting on an act.
But he hadn’t been entirely certain how deep the act would go. All he knew was that there was something to her tip about putting used tea leaves in the soil.
It was something his own mother used to do, back when she had been lively enough and still cared to do things like garden. She’d had a way with plants and had been able to coax the most beautiful blooms from even the most neglected of stalks.
“She told ye about usin’ tea?” Archer mumbled, walking around the corner in one quick stride.
He hadn’t been able to stop himself; his curiosity about everything that they were talking about was getting the better of him.
Paisly whirled. When Archer had entered, her back had been to the door. But now she was staring at him with wide open eyes, one hand pressing into her chest and the other hovering protectively over her stomach.
She let out a scream of surprise, which had Marcus chuckling and Archer immediately apologizing.
“I dinnae mean to scare ye,” Archer muttered, stepping into the small workspace beyond.
Marcus had moved in a bit of furniture over the years. There were shelves for his weapons to be displayed along the walls, a small bookcase, and a writing desk in the center of the room.
It was at the writing desk that Marcus was sitting, with Paisly standing right before it. He crossed the small space in a few quick strides, coming to stand beside Paisly.
By the time their shoulders were aligned, she seemed to have settled quite a bit.
“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.
“But what were the nuns like? Were they mean? Marcus always says nuns are mean,” Louis asked, grabbing a piece of cured meat from his plate and bringing it to his mouth.
“Nuns arenae mean,” Emilie scoffed, pausing just long enough to take a bite of the small red tomato she’d been toying with on her own plate.
Havin’ lunch with the bairns is quite nice without me husband menacin’ around.
Emilie had been pleasantly surprised when she walked into the dining hall and found the twins waiting for her, with her husband nowhere in sight. She had made a fool of herself the day before. She had gone too far with mentioning the chickens.
It was something Emilie knew all too well. And, while she knew she couldn’t annoy him into an annulment if she wasn’t actually around him, she also knew she needed to take a moment and re-formulate her plan.
“But Marcus says they are!” Louis argued back, pointedly.
Emilie arched a brow at the young boy.
“Did Marcus give ye any examples?” she asked pointedly. “Did he tell ye why he thought nuns were mean?”
Louis’ mouth snapped shut, his face turning contemplative as he no doubt racked his brain for the precise words that Marcus had used.
Aurora shifted beside her brother, chomping on one of the strawberries with juice dripping down her chin.
“What did ye do at the abbey?” she asked, cocking her head to the side. “Did ye just pray all day?”
Emilie shook her head. “There was much more than that. I was busy from sunup to sundown, most days.”
It had been like that since the moment she’d sat down. Apparently, Catherine had mentioned to them that she had spent most of her life at the abbey, and the twins were endlessly curious about what her life had been like.
And so she told them. Emilie recounted for them the days that she had had while tucked within the cloisters of the nunnery.
She told them about her garden and how carefully she had tended to it. She told them about helping the nuns account for their funds and do their ledgers.
Emilie had just launched into a story about Laura and some of the other novices when someone strode through the door to the dining room.
Out of the corner of her eye, all Emilie made out at first was a hulking form. She knew immediately who it was without having to look; the feeling in the bottom of her belly told her exactly who had just walked through the door.
It was further confirmed by the twins. Louis was the first to divert his eyes, darting them to the side to land on the newcomer. And the moment they did, she watched as he wilted.
Aurora glanced next, her expression withering exactly like her brother’s.
The twins shrank back in their seats, the excitement that had been shining within their eyes dimming entirely as they glanced down at their plates.
Emilie stared at them, her eyes darting between Louis and Aurora, as she tried to figure out why on earth they had that reaction to their father.
It was a question that had plagued her more than once. But as she watched it in real time, she saw the swift change from how lively they had been to how docile they were now.
It was jarring.
“Are ye havin’ a nice lunch, wife?” her husband asked, pulling back his chair at the table and sliding into it.
Finally, Emilie looked away from the twins and to Archer.
He was staring at her, gray eyes flinty as they rested on her. A muscle ticked in Emilie’s jaw as she clenched her teeth, frustration bubbling within her.
Why did he have to come in here and ruin the perfectly good luncheon we were havin’?
Before she could say anything, Archer’s eyes flicked to his children.
“It’s gettin’ rather late in the day,” he said, his gaze raking over the twins who still had their heads bowed. “Ye bairns need to run along and get back to yer studies.”
The twins immediately pushed back their chairs, obeying their father without question or hesitation. As fast as a blink, the children were scurrying out the door, heading off to their studies, exactly as Archer had suggested.
Emilie scoffed at the sight. She understood exactly why everyone else who encountered her husband would be afraid of him. She understood why they would clamor to do his bidding, absolutely she did.
But what she didn’t understand was why his own children seemed to be so afraid of him.
The same spiral she’d gone down time and time again started in her mind. Wondering how cruel he really was, and if there was something she wasn’t seeing.
For the past few days, she had been able to stamp down that curiosity. She had been able to quiet it, to rationalize and tell herself that she didn’t need to dig any deeper.
But now the curiosity was too strong. Emilie had no idea why the twins seemed to be so frightened of their father. But the one thing she did know—she was no longer going to sit idly by and simply ponder it.
Whatever it was that was going on with this family, she was going to get to the bottom of it.