"Your father sent me the wrong bride!"

Madeline gritted her teeth. "Sir, you are not the only one who has been inconvenienced by this. I just spent forty-six days on a damp, creaky ship, and now you tell me in front of everyone that I' m not the one you ordered, and I shouldn' t have bothered. I believe I' ve had quite enough insults for one day. My father assured me you had asked for my hand. I had no reason to question the truth of it."

Adam' s chest heaved with a sigh. "No reason to question it? Do you not have a mind of your own?"

Oh, this was too much. "To tell you the truth, Mr. Coates, I do have a mind of my own—a mind to poke my father with a knitting needle, and if I may say so, you could use a poke yourself!"