by Trisha Telep
No, he wasn’t a violent man, and if she was wrong, well, she was fleet of foot and nimble. She could always run away. She’d been planning to run away from Uncle Ewen anyway, only she hadn’t yet worked out how to do it without a bean to her name. A different situation would offer different opportunities.
A home of her own. The woman of the house. Not a servant or an indigent relative, taken in begrudgingly and reminded of it daily. Her own home. And a place of honour in it as his wife.
It was probably a joke. He was making a may game of her, but oh … oh, if it were true. Mad or tetched or drunk, he was young and beautiful and the thought of those lithe, powerful limbs wrapping around her made her shiver.
She gazed into his eyes, trying to read his mind. His steady hazel eyes stared back at her, telling her nothing. But they were steady, not wild.
She moistened her lips with her tongue and took the plunge. “Ye truly mean it?”
“I do.” He gave a curt nod to emphasize it.
He sounded sincere. He looked sincere. Oh God let him be sincere, she prayed.
She took a deep breath. “Well then, I’ll marry you.”
The man who’d tried to kidnap her gave a loud whoop, causing his horse to toss its head and plunge restlessly. “She said yes! I win! Pay up, Donald!”
His words punched into Jeannie’s gut. All the breath left her lungs. It was a joke after all. A bet. See if you could get the gullible girl to believe a strange man would offer her marriage.
And the fool girl had believed. Had even allowed herself to hope. After all she’d been through in the last few years, had she learned nothing?
She tried to look as if she’d known it all along, as if disappointment and humiliation weren’t about to choke her. “A bet, was it, lads? A laugh at my expense?” she said with an attempt at breezy unconcern. “Very funny. Enjoy your winnings. I’m awa’ then to my sheep.” She turned away so they would not see the hot tears prickling at her eyelids.
A firm hand wrapped gently around her elbow, holding her back. “It wasn’t a joke,” he told her. “There was a bet, yes, but my cousins will bet on anything and everything.”
Jeannie stared down at his mud-caked boots, angry and ashamed, hearing the sincerity in his voice and refusing to be caught a second time.
“I meant it,” he went on. “And you said you’d wed me.”
She jerked her arm away. She wouldn’t be made a fool of twice. “As if you’d marry a girl like me, a girl you don’t even know. And as if I’d marry a man on an acquaintance of five minutes.”
“You said you would.”
She made a rude noise. “I was just going along with the joke. Why would I want to marry a man I’d just met?”
“Perhaps because you’re desperate—”
She looked up at him then, glaring, ready to spit in his eye.
“—maybe even as desperate as I am,” he finished.
His words stopped her cold. “You? Desperate?” she managed after a moment. “Why would you be desperate?”
“I need to gain control of my inheritance. My uncle – my trustee – is spending it like water. I inherit when I turn thirty, or when I wed. If I wait much longer there’ll be nothing left.”
Jeannie turned his words over in her mind, then shook her head. “You’re saying you’re to be rich? But there’s nobody else you can marry? Just a girl you fished from a bog?”
“There are plenty of other girls,” he admitted. “But I swore I’d marry the first woman I met. And that was you.”
Marry the first woman he met? Jeannie couldn’t believe her ears. She glanced at his cousins who sat on their horses, watching wide-eyed, like great gormless owls, to see what would happen next.
“Is this true?” she demanded. They nodded.
“You’d truly marry a stranger, just to get your hands on your inheritance?”
“I said I would and I never break my word,” he said.
“He never breaks his word,” the cousins chorused.
“That’s the daftest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said.
He shrugged. “Maybe. So, will you marry me?”
Jeannie stared into the steady hazel eyes, trying to read his true intent. She could read nothing, so she looked away into the distance, trying to decide what to do. She could smell the mud on her, feel it tightening on her skin as it dried. She must look a sight.
“I give you my word I’ll take good care of you, Jeannie Macleay.”
His word. The one he never broke. And he had big, broad, lovely shoulders, even if he was cracked in the head. “When?” she asked.
“Today.”
Jeannie closed her eyes, counted to ten, and then counted again, just to make sure. And then she tossed commonsense to the wind. “All right, I’ll do it. Were do we go?”
“The nearest kirk. St Andrew’s-by-the-burn?”
She nodded. It was the closest church, though her uncle wasn’t a believer and she’d never been there.
Cameron Fraser mounted his horse and held out his hand help her up behind him.
She hesitated and glanced back at the sheep waiting in a close huddle at the end of the causeway. Rab, the sheepdog, lay quietly, watching her, watching the sheep, ever vigilant.
Cameron Fraser followed her gaze. “If you want, Jimmy will stay to take care of your sheep.”
She looked sceptically at his cousin who swayed on his horse, grinning muzzily. “They’ll be safer wi’ the dog. Have ye a handkerchief?”
He handed her a clean, folded handkerchief, no doubt thinking she meant to clean herself with it. She was beyond one handkerchief.
She picked up a stone, plucked a sprig of heather growing by the side of the road and knotted them both into the handkerchief. Then she let out a shrill whistle. The dog raced towards her like a dart.
She tied the handkerchief on to his collar. “I’ll miss ye, Rab,” she whispered, stroking the dog’s silky ears. He’d been the only source of love and affection she’d had in four long years. She’d miss him, but Rab would be all right with Uncle Ewen. Her uncle was a lot kinder to animals than he was to people.
“Away home wi’ them Rab,” she said. “Away home.” The dog raced back and began to circle the sheep. A bark here, a nip there and the herd began to move. They’d be home soon.
“Will no one worry when the sheep come home without you?” Cameron Fraser asked her.
“No. My uncle will understand the message in the handkerchief. He won’t be troubled, as long as no sheep are missing, and Rab will get them home safe.”
It was the exact same message her mother had left when she ran off with her father more than twenty years ago. Mam had left a stone, a sprig of heather and a note. A stone for Grandad’s heart and heather for Mam’s hopes for the future. Jeannie had no paper for a note, but her uncle would remember.
He frowned. “But he’ll want to know where you’ve gone, surely.”
Clearly it didn’t reflect well on her that she had no one who cared. Jeannie tried to pass it off with a laugh. “He’ll be relieved to have me off his hands.”
Cameron Fraser quirked a brow at her. “Trouble, are you?”
“Aye, I eat too much and I’m the worst shepherdess he’s ever had.”
He smiled for the first time, and it was like the sun reflected off the silvery loch. It set off a flutter deep inside her.
“He never wanted me in the first place. I was dumped on him when my mother died four years ago.” Lord, she was babbling. She bit her tongue.
“You can eat what you like and you’ll never have to look after sheep again.” He held out his hand.
“I’d marry the devil himself for that promise.” She took hold of Cameron Fraser’s hand, swung up behind him and, heart in her mouth, rode off to meet her fate.
Three
The small stone kirk of St Andrew’s-by-the-burn was the last remnant of a hamlet that was slowly dying. The elderly minister and his wife were in the front garden, tending to the rose b
ushes.
“Good day to ye, Reverend.” Cameron dropped lightly to the ground, placed his hands around Jeannie Macleay’s waist and lifted her down.
“Cameron Fraser, is it you?” The minister came forward, brushing twigs and leaves from his clothes.
“Aye, Reverend, it is. I hope you and Mrs Potts are well.” Cameron was well aware of the minister’s shrewd gaze running over them all, noting his cousins’ inebriation, his own muddy state and finally coming to rest on the muddy scrap he’d just help dismount.
“And what is it ye want of me, Cameron? This is no’ a social call I’ll be thinking.”
“I need you to perform a marriage.” Cameron said it briskly, as if there was nothing at all strange in such a request. He held a hand out to the scrap and drew her to his side. “This is Miss Jeannie Macleay, originally of the Island of Lewis, and we are betrothed.”
There was a muffled sound from the minister’s wife, but the man himself didn’t turn a hair.
Cameron continued, “We wish to be married today. Now, in fact.”
The minister frowned. “No banns?”
“If ye can’t do it now, just say so and we’ll go elsewhere,” Cameron said calmly. He’d prefer a church wedding, but Scottish laws ensured he didn’t need the minister’s cooperation. A declaration before witnesses would do it, and the minister knew it.
He eyed Jeannie dubiously. “Are ye of age, Miss Macleay?”
“I’m nineteen,” she said, sounding quite composed for a girl with half a bog on her.
The minister pursed his lips. “Very well, then. I suppose I should be glad you’ve come to the kirk for it. Better an irregular marriage with God’s blessing than a godless arrangement. Come ye in. We’ll get the details down. I expect they’ll be glad of a cup of tea, Elspeth.”
“Indeed, indeed,” his wife said, looking curiously at the girl behind Cameron.
Cameron made to lead the scrap into the minister’s house, but she didn’t budge.
“I’m no’ going into the house, not like this.” She gestured at her muddy garments. She turned to the minister’s wife. “Would it be possible for me to wash around the back of the house, ma’am?”
The minister’s wife brightened. “Of course my dear. I can see you’ve had a nasty encounter with some mud. Come along with me.” She held her hand out and gestured to the path around the side of the house.
The minister waited until they’d disappeared from sight and then said, “Now Cameron, you’d better tell me what kind of a mess you’ve got yourself in this time.”
“I’m not in a mess, Reverend Potts,” Cameron said stiffly. The man was some kind of distant relation but it didn’t excuse his familiarity.
The minister’s brows rose sceptically. “Not in a mess? And yet you turn up out of the blue demanding to be wed to a lass who’s mud to the eyebrows, here and now, no banns, no witnesses except for those feckless young wastrels—”
The feckless young wastrels made indignant noises, but Rev. Potts swept on, “—and none of the celebrations that one would expect of the wedding of the laird.”
“None of that matters,” Cameron told him. “Just wed us and be done.”
Reverend Potts put a hand on Cameron’s arm. “What is it, lad? Has the girl trapped you into this?”
Cameron shook off his hand. “She has not. And I don’t propose to discuss it. If you’re not willing to marry us, then say so and we’ll be off.”
The minister took a step back. “Now, now, laddie, no need to be like that. As long as you’re happy about it, I’ll wed the pair of ye, and gladly.” He glanced down at Cameron’s muddy breeches and boots. “But you’ll not want to be married wi’ your boots and breeks in such a state.”
“It doesna matter—” Cameron began.
“It’s not respectful to your bride to be married in dirt,” the minister went on inexorably. “Come ye in and get cleaned up.”
She was in an even muddier state, Cameron thought, but he followed the man anyway. He could at least clean up for her, he supposed.
In the large, cosy kitchen at the back of the house, Elspeth Potts and her cook were firmly stripping Jeannie of her muddy clothes. “Och, child, ye canna go to your wedding reeking of the bog, I’d never forgive myself,” Elspeth said. “There’s plenty of hot water, so just you climb into the tub there and scrub it all off. Your hair, too – Morag, beat up an egg.”
“An egg?” Jeannie’s stomach rumbled.
“Aye, followed by a vinegar rinse. T’will give your hair a lovely glossy finish. Now hop in, my dear, before you get cold.”
With the last of her clothes stripped from her shivering body, Jeannie had no alternative but to climb into the tin bathtub. She’d been prepared to scrub the worst of it off with a bucket of cold water, but Mrs Potts wouldn’t hear of it. “Cold water? Nonsense. A bride deserves the best we can give her, isn’t that right, Morag?”
So Jeannie luxuriated in a tub of warm water and scrubbed the dirt from her body. The bath water was soon black and the minister’s wife ordered a second bath, with hotter water. This time, instead of the strong-smelling soap Jeannie had used the first time, she gave her a small oval cake that smelled of roses.
“It’s beautiful,” Jeannie said, inhaling the rich scent as she lathered her body for the second time.
“It’s French,” the older lady admitted. “A terrible indulgence for a minister’s wife, but I confess, I cannot resist it. Now, close your eyes and Morag will shampoo your hair with the egg.”
It seemed a waste of good food, but Jeannie sat in the deep tin bath with her eyes closed while Mrs Potts and Morag fussed over her. The hot water was blissful. The last four years she’d bathed in lukewarm water: Uncle Ewen’s kettle only held a small amount of hot water and he didn’t approve of wasting fuel to heat water for baths.
She felt herself relaxing as Morag’s strong fingers massaged her scalp. It was so long since anyone had seemed to care if she lived or died, let alone felt clean and smelled good. Four years since Mam had died, but now, with her eyes closed, she could almost believe Mam was here, helping prepare her for her wedding.
She stood while Morag rinsed her down like a child, wrapped her in a large towel and then rinsed her hair carefully, several times, with water, then vinegar, then with a mixture that also smelled of roses.
“There you go, lassie, sit ye down by the fire now and drink this.” Morag pushed a cup of hot, sweet tea into her hand. Jeannie drank it gratefully.
She dried her hair by the fire, using her fingers to untangle it. The pile of muddy clothes lay on the stone floor where she’d discarded them and her heart sank. Not much use in being clean and sweet-smelling when the only clothes she had were muddy cast-offs. The dresses she’d brought to Uncle Ewen’s four years ago were long outgrown or worn out. The skirt she’d worn today was a patched together creation of what remained of them. But she had no choice. She’d have to dry her clothes by the fire and brush off as much mud as she could.
“Here you are,” Mrs Potts swept into the room with an armful of clothes. “We’ll find something pretty for you here.”
“But—”
“Hush now, I can see you’ve lost your own clothes, and I’ll not let a bride be wed in those.” She flapped disdainful fingers towards the muddy pile. “Now, let’s see.” She pulled out a couple of dresses, held them up, shook her head and tossed them on a chair. “Ah, this one, I think. Matches your bonny blue eyes.” She held up a dress in soft blue fabric, glanced at Morag for confirmation, and nodded. “Now, let’s get you dressed.”
She handed Jeannie a bundle: underclothes of fine, soft lawn, edged with lace, finer than anything Jeannie had worn in her life.
“But I canna accept—” Jeannie began, pride warring with longing for the pretty things.
“Pish tush, they’re old things I have no more use for. They don’t even fit me now, see?” Mrs Potts patted her rounded shape comfortably. She added in a softer voice, “And it would give
me great pleasure, Jeannie Macleay, to know that you go to your wedding dressed as a bride should be, from the skin out. You’ve a handsome young man there who’ll appreciate them later.” She winked. “Come now, indulge an old woman.”
Blushing and wordless at the unexpected kindness, Jeannie donned the chemise and petticoat. She picked up the stockings and looked up in shock. “These are silk.”
Mrs Potts flapped her fingers at her. “Well of course – silk for a bridal. Besides, what use are silk stockings for an old woman like me? Now, no argument. And try these slippers on.” She handed Jeannie a pair of soft brown leather slippers.
They were a bit big for Jeannie, but once Morag stuffed the toes with wool, they fitted.
“Now for your hair.”
Jeannie began to twist it in a rope around her hand.
“No, no, no! Leave it out. ’Tis your glory, child, and as a married woman you’ll be covering it up soon enough. In the meantime leave it out to dazzle that man of yours.”
Jeannie wasn’t sure she had it in her to dazzle anyone – she was no beauty, she knew – but if Mrs Potts said her hair could dazzle, Jeannie would leave it out.
She had no idea what marriage to Cameron Fraser would be like, but she would do her best to make it work. And Mrs Potts was giving her a head start.
Producing a brush, Mrs Potts brushed out Jeannie’s long hair till it shone, then produced a veil of creamy, precious lace, which she placed carefully over Jeannie’s head. “’Twas my own bridal veil, and both my daughters wore it at their weddings, too.”
She stood back and smiled. “There, a bonny bride you are indeed, is she not Morag? Right now, I’ll just—” She broke off, hesitated, then said, “Child, do you have no kith or kin to stand up with you?”
Jeannie shook her head. “There’s only Uncle Ewen, and he wouldna come. He doesna like people.”
Mrs Potts and Morag exchanged glances. “Would that be Ewen Leith, the one they call ‘the hermit’?”
Jeannie nodded. “My mother’s brother.”
“I never realized he had a young girl living with him. I’m sorry lass, if I’d known you were alone up there in the hills, I would have visited.”