“Can you read and write?”
Caoimhe’s appetite appeared to have dwindled under his scrutiny. Her thin and delicate little fingers were playing with the stem of her spoon, making little effort to actually secure a piece of fruit. The silver clinked lightly against the dish. She glanced from beneath those lashes and around a lock of wavy hair that had fallen from her braid.
“A little, my lord,” she confessed. “But I am better with numbers than words.”
“You have learned arithmetic?”
Caoimhe nodded.
“I sometimes help Father.” She looked across at her sire, perhaps concerned that she was revealing too much. Kenneth, on the other hand, clearly felt that she was being too modest.
“My daughter is very filial, my lord,” he assured the small gathering. “She tends to my wife in her illness, sees to her nephews with a steady hand, and helps me with the coin of my trade. She even knows how to weave a sail should you require one.” The last part was clearly a joke, forged in an effort to lighten the mood at the table. It succeeded only in procuring a smile from Duncan and a humble demurity in Caoimhe, as she stared at her lap.
Kenneth was not dismayed, however, and behaved as any fine man proud of his offspring would.
“Perhaps I am blinkered when it comes to my favorite daughter, my lord, but I believe that Caoimhe will make a fine wife and mother.”
The sentiment shared in a look between father and daughter was lost on Niall as he was preoccupied, trying to imagine Fiona Brodie ever learning a trade or turning her hand to something more useful than gossip-mongering. The vision was impossible to collate and had Niall’s opinion of the young lady to his left shifting slightly. His brow dropped low as he assessed her yet again.
“Are you brave, Miss Webb?” Niall was blunt and free of the shackles of polite formality, as his mind turned to new ideas.
Caoimhe’s stare met his this time, her genuine muddlement erasing some of her shyness.
“Not particularly,” she hedged. Her tone was dignified in the admission but clearly perplexed.
“Why is it that you wish to marry my uncle?” he challenged her, ignoring the looks from across the table.
“I have always liked Lord Duncan, and I honor my father’s judgment,” Caoimhe offered back, her voice growing in strength.
“What do you think of the situation with the other Lairds in our lands?”
“Am I supposed to know something of them, my lord?”
“How old are you?”
“Niall!”
This last was an attempt at censorship, blurted from the end of the table. Duncan appeared scandalized at the very notion of breaking with decorum and asking the girl’s age. Normally, Niall would agree, but he was curious. She looked like little more than a babe and yet she spoke with the coolness of an old soul. He raised a brow at Caoimhe, expecting an answer still.
She seemed to hesitate before forming her words with care.
“Old enough to form my own distinct opinions, my lord, but not so old as to be able to understand yours, I think.”
There was quiet across the table. No one moved to take up their cutlery; the warm fruit had congealed into sweet and cool slop. Niall’s fingertip tapped upon the silk runner as the young woman attempted to stare him down.
“Duncan,” Niall said, not breaking the moment of tension held between himself and the woman, “a private word, if I might?”
Niall cared little for what the Webbs thought of his and Duncan’s sudden departure from the room, but his disregard was clearly not shared by his uncle. The man was ruddy in the face and his eyes flashed with concern over the impropriety of leaving guests to fend for themselves in an empty chamber.
“My lord, forgive me for asking, but what has gotten into you? We cannot leave my guests to isolation. They will think us ill hosts.”
“Relax, Duncan,” Niall instructed, turning as they reached a point in the hallway that was out of earshot of the dining hall. “Unless Miss Webb decides to harbor a butter knife in her skirts over the insult, I hardly think they’ll be of mischief.”
“I wouldn’t judge her for it given your interrogations thus far,” Duncan challenged back. He glanced over his shoulder towards the candlelight that poured from the open doorway behind them. The corridor was cloaked in shadows and set each of their features grotesque.
Niall’s eyes were sharp and bright as flints in the darkness.
“I have a favor to ask of you, Duncan.”
The older man settled himself and calmed his ruffled feathers. His exhale was one of acceptance, allowing that he would not be permitted to return to his abandoned guests without hearing out his laird first.
“My lord?”
“I do not intend to permit Miss Webb to be your wife,” Niall stated, the words like choking smoke between them. Duncan’s lips parted in surprise, his eyes widening. It was true that, in the eyes of God, he did not need Niall’s permission to marry. But he had been hoping to hold it nonetheless.
Stunned into silence, Duncan could only listen with further surprise when Niall declared, “I wish for your permission that I should make her mine.”
6
Tying the Knot
Caoimhe could not believe the apparent ease with which events unfolded. When the older folks of the town spoke of their weddings, they tended to look back and reminisce with such detail and emotion that it made the event itself seem as long as a year, never mind the time it took to prepare. And yet, Caoimhe’s own union seemed to come to pass in the blink of an eye.
First, there was the proposal itself.
When the two gentlemen had returned to the dining hall that evening, there had been a look of bewilderment on Lord Duncan’s face and cool resolve on his nephew’s. There had been no true discussion, no permission or courtship. A simple statement of fact that the younger of the two men wished to rearrange Caoimhe’s hand from Duncan’s to his own.
And that had been it.
Not a single person in their company had appeared unfazed by this, all equally shocked in their own manner. Caoimhe, in particular, could not begin to fathom what she had done in their single evening of acquaintance to see him infatuated with the idea of marrying her. Despite the way his eyes had followed her over the course of the meal—a fact that had pulled Caoimhe’s nerves taut and set her heart pounding—what little conversation they had shared had been brusque, bordering on rude. What man wished to marry a woman he likely thought of as a petulant shrew?
Yet, to marry her he wished. And Caoimhe’s poor father was in little position to argue. He looked at his old friend in a bid for understanding, but Duncan had simply waved a hand.
“Who are we, old as we are, to stand in the way of youthful abandon, Kenneth?” he had said. Despite his tone of easy acceptance, his eyes had glanced back to his nephew with a cautious sense of investigation. He was clearly as confused as the rest of them.
Lord Brodie had then settled matters with a single statement.
“You’ll forgive me for the suddenness of my intent, Master Webb, but I can assure you that your daughter will be well cared for as my wife. With all that I can offer as a husband and a laird, I trust that you’ll each hold no objections?”
Caoimhe had had a momentary instinct of wishing that she could, in fact, summon some form of protestation but, nevertheless, no such wisdom came. Her moment of internal rebellion muzzled, she was left to listen to the swift and easy negotiations of dowry that saw her bought and paid for before the plates from the evening repast had been cleared away.
Negotiations for the ceremony itself had been just as swift.
The laird had made it clear that there was no need for Caoimhe to move to Aberlynn before the wedding, and that the ceremony itself would be handled by his staff. A cold and efficient detachment had presided over the whole affair, and Caoimhe felt no more familiar with the idea of becoming wife to the laird on the day of their wedding than she had when her hand had first been claimed.
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With fluttering nerves in her belly, Caoimhe tried to sit demurely upon the little stool that her mother sat the children on whenever their hair needed cutting. She lifted her long, white skirts so they would not fall into the wooden tub that Aileen lay at her feet. The water was warm about her toes and her mother’s touch was soft and gentle as she washed her daughter’s feet. Speckles of moisture splashed upon her bare legs and Caoimhe felt suddenly ticklish.
The tradition of such things made her nervous, and Aileen smiled up at her when she felt her daughter’s toes curl.
“Is it strange for you, darling?” she asked Caoimhe, her hands massaging the bottom of the girl’s feet.
“No more so than it was for you, Mama, I’m sure.”
Aileen shook her head as she brushed her touch over the top of Caoimhe’s feet.
“I had many a moon to become used to the idea of marrying your father. He was not skilled at courtship.”
The two of them giggled together at the very notion of Kenneth Webb with flowers in hand and a sentimental look upon his face. With the lack of skillful wooing would have come a long period before Caoimhe’s grandfather would have offered away her hand. Aileen must have had a long time to consider the bumbling sailmaker that haunted her steps with an adoring eye.
Caoimhe sobered, as the traditional washing of her feet was complete and her mother lifted them by the ankles to dry her toes.
“It has been fast,” she conceded, a thread of unease in her voice. “I feel that such a thing cannot be real. The laird cannot hold me in regard and I offer him little as a match. It is my not knowing the reason why that has me nervous.”
“Not knowing the mind of a man is the duty of his wife, sweetheart,” Aileen assured her with a bright smile and humor in her eyes. “Perhaps he simply loved you from the first.” Her daughter’s feet dry, Aileen reached up to pat Caoimhe’s cheek. Her touch was soft and held all the maternal love that none of her three daughters had ever had cause to doubt. “I would not judge the sense of the man that falls for my daughter so easily.”
With the benefit that this union would bring to her family, Caoimhe could not summon the strength to burst her mother’s optimistic bubble and admit that she held enough doubts for the both of them.
Caoimhe’s fears were not settled on the journey to her new home. The ceremony itself would be held in the grand hall of the Aberlynn estate, followed by a banquet and dance. It was tradition for the new man and wife to retire to their chambers at the peak of midnight while well-wishers continued to trespass on the hospitality of the couple until the morning light. In lieu of a church or other location for the ceremony, the castle would normally have held all manner of decoration. And yet, the gates to the estate were laid bare, the grounds unadorned.
In fact, the laird’s home looked so exactly as it had the day that Caoimhe had arrived to meet Lord Duncan that her mother even murmured under her breath that perhaps they had arrived a day early.
Caoimhe swallowed, her fears escalating.
No man moved by great emotion into so fast a wedding would see his betrothed honored with so little.
Upon arrival, Caoimhe was shown into a small chamber that might have usually been a storeroom. Instead, it had been emptied, cleaned, and filled with flowers that made her sneeze. Three young ladies were present to tend to her appearance and be sure that her gown and hair had not been disturbed on the journey. As it was bad luck to witness her own appearance before the marriage in a silver mirror, she had only the words of strangers to believe. They assured her that the banquet hall was just through the door at the end of the chamber and that her entrance would be heralded as appropriate for a new bride. They adjusted the baby’s breath and lavender in her hair, set straight the lace upon her shoulders, and turned the ribbon on her wrist so that its silver penny was centered. The little silk ribbon was sky blue and given by her mother. Something old and blue in a single piece. Her mother had insisted that if Caoimhe were to pass it to her own daughter on her wedding day, then she might also count it as borrowed for the time being. The coin that her father had insisted be added to the center of the silk was new and shone in the light from the window.
Exhaling, long and slowly, Caoimhe’s toes curled in her satin slippers and she set her shoulders straighter. Her face felt odd, tinged with powders that her sister had purchased from a trader from London, and she had been told to bite her lips so much to see them plump that they were now sensitive to the touch. Her heartbeat was heavy in her chest and Caoimhe aired the palms of her hands. She tried to clear her mind, to not allow the plaguing doubts to sway her choice.
By the time one of the stewards arrived to insist that the congregation was ready for the bride’s appearance, Caoimhe was serene but numb of heart.
The ceremony went smoothly until the traditional tying of the tartans.
And if there was to be only a single hiccup in the entire event, for that, Niall was grateful.
When his future wife appeared at the end of the chamber, clearly set at ill ease by the number of eyes turned in her direction, Niall had barely been able to recognize her. With only that one encounter from which to draw her image to mind, Niall had retained the impression of a waif-like appearance that was modest at best and bland at its worst.
The creature who entered the banquet hall was no different in physicality—she had not grown three feet, nor blossomed into a buxom lass of the meadows. But his attention was suddenly riveted.
White lace iced the girl’s shoulders, lovingly immuring her skin. Pale herself, the brightness of the delicate fabric brought color to her neck and face, and an elegance to her thinness. The fine needlepoint graced her arms and body, fading into soft nothingness at her hands and hips. The folds in her skirts were masterfully crafted to sway with every step, hinting at fertile curves beneath. Her hair had been drawn back in a complex design of braids and lavender that gave her an air of aloof grace. And her face was a spectacle in itself.
As she grew closer, Niall admired the shape of her large beautiful eyes. There was a sweetness to his bride now that had been missing on that evening three weeks ago—a shine and polish that revealed the beauty beneath. She was far from a rounded, curvaceous specimen of female comeliness, but she held a delicacy that felt all the more feminine and set his mouth to water.
Niall had masked his features, intent on seeing the union through that day, regardless of the woman that had turned up to complete the vows. And despite the surprise of her visage, that vow remained true enough.
The young Miss Webb was the first woman he had ever encountered who appeared to hold little care for his money, his family, or his politics. She was a woman of substance and trade and, according to her father, filial loyalty to those she claimed by God. If he had to marry, produce children, and continue the Brodie bloodline, then of course he required a wife. And Caoimhe held all of the rarities that he might have wished for in a woman.
And to add to her credentials for such a role, she did not seem to like him.
Which, given as Niall had no interest in liking her, seemed perfectly fair and mutual.
His bride’s distaste for him was read in the way that she walked. She moved with a gait that brought her to his side, a foot of open space between them at the front of the hall. Her eyes remained downcast in pious humility, but he suspected that she simply wished to avoid meeting his gaze.
Uninterested in musing on the complexities of the female mind, Niall had turned to face the priest before them and bowed his head, surrendering to the ritual that would unite them in the eyes of the Lord.
With little for the bride and bridegroom to do, the ceremony went as expected. The guests—friends and family of both sides, not to mention the noble circles and wealthy patrons to the province—were calm behind them, no voice rising above any other when whispers permeated the hall. When it was time for the exchange of rings, Niall had sensed the detachment in the woman beside him, feeling the way that she almost snatched back her hand at
his touch. His fingers barely grazed hers as he secured the band of gold upon her finger. She was so careful to avoid his skin when mirroring the symbolic gesture that she almost dropped the ring she held in return. She still had yet to meet his eyes.
It was only when the tradition of tying the knot was announced that Caoimhe had looked up in surprise. Her stare was questioning, contrite at her lack of clan tartan. She was of no rank, of no import, and therefore had nothing to fuse with his colors. Had she been married to a baker’s boy, she might have been able to use a weave from one of her father’s sails, but that would not do here.
Niall’s servants had produced two strips of Brodie tartan, ready to be joined, causing a sound of protest from the bride.
“You are to be my family in a few seconds,” he commented, handing her the strip of wool with a steely gaze. “What does it matter if you use it now to confirm our union?”
For a moment, Niall thought the girl was ready to protest. Her face was stormy, her stare one of fire. The color of her eyes that he had once thought the shade of mud seemed to burn like hot coal. Her lips had thinned in distaste, and he noticed her fiddle with a ribbon of blue at her wrist.
There was a ripple of discomfort around their audience; it was this moment of suspicion that forced Caoimhe’s hand. Not able to withstand the scrutiny, she had reached quickly for the cloth and the two of them had interlaced their holds and pulled the two pieces of tartan tight upon one another.
With the tradition complete and a kiss bestowed—a token that was little more than the brush of his mouth upon hers—the two of them were wed before God and all. Niall was able to exhale.
Regardless of the doubts he might have harbored leading up to this moment, there was no going back now without declaring heresy. His mortal soul was now joined to another’s. And he had no option but to get used to it.
Haunted By A Highland Curse: A Steamy Scottish Medieval Historical Romance Page 5