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roll her eyes at her fiancé’s masculine posturing and her friend’s equally testosterone-influenced taunting tone of voice. As far as she was concerned, they were both acting like idiots.
    “Richard, listen,” she began, but she got no further. At least, not that he could hear.
    With a last fuming glance in Patrick’s direction, Richard spun on his heel and strode away down the garden path with his hands clenched into fists and his back straighter than a ruler’s edge.
    Jenny sighed. All at once, the reality of every hour of sleep she had missed last night seemed to weigh on her like Atlas’ globe. She lifted a hand to her face and rubbed her eyes wearily.
    “Dinnae fash yourself over him,” Patrick said, patting her shoulder and probably trying not to sound like a self-satisfied sod. He was failing miserably. “He’ll cool down soon enough. And it will do him good in the meantime to learn not to take you for granted.”
    He dropped his hand and busied himself shrugging into his pale blue shirt and applying himself to the buttons. “Now what do you fancy for breakfast? I’m in mind of a fry-up myself, I think.”
    She turned on him and glared. “If you think I’m wasting good sausages on you, Patrick Michael MacLennan, you are in for a rare and rude awakening.”
    Patrick blinked at her, his hands frozen on his shirt front, his eyes genuinely puzzled. “What?”
    “After what you just pulled?” Jenny snorted. “You’re lucky I don’t take you over to Mr. Wallace’s farm to feed you. To his pigs!”
    “Jenny, lass—”
    “Don’t you ‘Jenny, lass’ me, you great bampot! D’you think I’m some sort of idiot that I cannot tell when you’re being deliberately provoking?”
    He frowned. “Don’t be blaming me for his sins, lass. The mon should know you well enough to know you’d never cheat on the one you’re promised to. He’s the one who insulted your honor, not me.”
    “You’re an arse.”
    “Me? Don’t you mean your precious Richard?”
    “I mean both of you.” Jenny shoved her way past Patrick and marched through the cottage toward her bedroom at the rear of the small house. “I mean the entire male sex. You’re all clunch-headed fools. Every single one.”
    She cut off Patrick’s reply by the simple method of slamming her bedroom door in his face and flipping the lock more as a gesture of her irritation than anything else. If he’d wanted the door open, one quick spell or one swift kick would have accomplished the deed. Instead, she heard some muttered curses, followed by the sharp thump of feet being stamped into a large pair of shoes. A moment later, her front door slammed shut and angry footsteps crunched through the leaves on the path across the field toward the village.
    Jenny sighed and let her irritation at Patrick drain away. She knew he hadn’t really meant any harm. Taunting Richard had become a sort of reflex action for him. Every time the two men crossed paths, it was veiled insults at twenty paces. Frankly, she was sick of it.
    Sinking onto the edge of her neatly made bed, Jenny felt her exhaustion creep back through the veil of anger and disappointment. She had expected better of her fiancé. Patrick had been right—Richard should have trusted her. She was head-over-heels in love with him, and he knew it, so he ought to have realized that there would be a logical explanation for the scene he had stumbled on this morning. She shouldn’t have to explain herself to a jealous idiot, but it looked like that was exactly what she would have to do.
    Later.
    First, though, she desperately needed some sleep.
    Levering her feet up onto the mattress, Jenny settled back against her pillows and let her body relax into the soft down quilt beneath her. She hadn’t slept in almost thirty-three hours and for almost five of those hours, she had been casting one of the most challenging spells she had ever attempted. Even with Patrick’s help, she had worried they might not pull