coast, where raiders could easily steal them.” He lifted a manure fork. “Davey, you and your friend run along now.”
“Don’t you want us to muck out the boxes?” Davey asked.
“No,” Aidan said.
“Aye, but they be needing it, Laird. If we don’t do it, who will?”
Aidan smiled. “My wife.”
Chapter 8
Anne stood in her yellow Kashmir shawl and fine periwinkle morning dress and couldn’t believe her ears. “You’re joking.”
Aidan shook his head, as the two boys ran off. Holding the manure fork high, he asked, “Have you been around horses, Anne?”
“I had a pony as a child.” She still didn’t want to believe.
“Good. Then I won’t have to explain it all to you. I like new bedding laid daily. It is better for their hooves.”
“Mucking a stall is simple enough.” She frowned. “But you can’t expect me to do it dressed like this?”
He acted as if he’d just noticed her fine clothes. “Do you have anything else to wear?”
“Hardly. You know I lost most of my clothes when the trunk broke. They were blown every which way. You were going to send someone to see about fetching what had to be left behind. Did you?”
He snapped his fingers. “I forgot. I’m sorry, Anne. I’ll send someone to do it now. Also, I had word this morning from the Reverend Oliphant in Thurso. He will arrive this afternoon to bury your coachman.”
Anne nodded, suddenly solemn. It was a relief to know Todd would be given a decent ceremony. “I need to write your sister and tell her. I was so busy yesterday…” Her voice trailed off. She was usually very good about details. She rarely put off even unpleasant tasks, but Todd had died and she’d yet to inform anyone. Worse, she hadn’t given him a moment’s thought the day before. “Poor man.”
“Yes,” Aidan agreed soberly, then brightened. “All right. As I said, not all the boxes are in use. Muck the ones that need it and see fresh hay is laid.”
“You really are going to make me do it?” Anne felt her temper begin to sizzle.
He was all innocence. “Anne, I thought you wanted to be my countess.”
Incoherent words of anger twisted her tongue. She swallowed them back, tasting bitter bile. To think she’d almost imagined herself in love with this, this, this—she searched her mind for the worst word she could think of—bounder!
In a voice shaking with her effort for control, she said, “I’ll do what you want because I won’t give you the satisfaction of making me run. I won’t return to London.”
She grabbed the manure fork out of his hands. Her cheerful yellow shawl fell down over one shoulder. She shook it off and shoved it right into his stomach. “Here, take this to the house.” In spite of his abdomen being hard as the stone walls around them, she caught him off guard. His grunt of pain gave her great pleasure.
Anne marched into the first stall and picked her way gingerly through the straw to a pile of manure. Her hair flopped forward into her face. With an irritated shake of her head, she rested the fork handle against her chest and quickly braided it. “I wish I had pins,” she muttered.
“What did you say?” Aidan asked.
“Nothing to you,” she snapped. “Why are you lingering around here? Or don’t you think I can muck without supervision?”
He laughed at her display of temper. “I rolled the wheelbarrow out for the muck. When you’re done, take it out back and there is a place to dump it. You’ll know where immediately.”
“I’m sure I will,” she echoed, images of overturning the load on his boots making the situation more palatable.
“Well,” he hedged with a sly, wicked, ungrateful smile—how had she ever thought his smile charming?—“I’ve other matters to attend to. Enjoy.”
She grimaced through clenched teeth. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of defeat. Picking up the fork, she scooped manure and carried it to the wheelbarrow.
This was not a task one did in a skirt one wanted to keep unsoiled.
Anne efficiently cleaned the stall and moved on to the next, planning to lay fresh straw in all the stalls when she’d finished. Already she itched from the chaff stirred up into the air. A blister started to form on her right hand which had been tender from the work the day before.
The whole situation was deeply humiliating!
Halfway through cleaning the second stall, she’d almost convinced herself to find Aidan and tell him she wanted to leave for London this very day.