The Laird Takes a Bride

by Lisa Berne

  Laws of the Eight Clans of Kilally.

  She stared at it. “Laws” did not sound the least bit interesting. And yet—

  And yet a kind of irrepressible curiosity flickered within her.

  Isobel looked over her shoulder, as if she was about to do something that was forbidden and needed to make sure she was alone (which, thankfully, she was), then reached down, and slowly opened the great hoary Tome.

  While Isobel was opening up the Tome, Duff MacDermott stood before the round mirror that hung on a wall in his dressing-room. He turned his face this way and that, inspecting it. Not bad for a middle-aged fellow, if he did say so himself. A few wrinkles, a few gray hairs, but a truly magnificent beard, the epitome of masculine vigor. To be sure, he’d gained a few pounds over the years, but that only gave him added stature. Really, he didn’t know what Dame Isobel had been muttering about last night. Himself an aging roué? A feckless profligate?

  She obviously didn’t know a dashing bon vivant when she sat right opposite him at dinner. The poor aging spinster-lady. Why, she was probably so overwhelmed by his masculine charm that she could only sputter and cluck around him! He’d be sure to behave more kindly toward her in future. They were of an age, he reckoned, but she was so fragile, so delicate, when compared to his own robust state. Perhaps he might offer a strong arm when escorting her up some stairs, or pick up her handkerchief when she dropped it. That sort of thing. Chivalry, he thought contentedly as he smoothed his mustache, was not dead, at least not while Duff MacDermott was around.

  Humming under his breath, Duff now shrugged himself into one of his nicest jackets. Earlier, he’d run into his nephew, been greeted cheerfully. Not only that, Alasdair willingly agreed to meet him at the Gilded Osprey for a nuncheon. Things were coming along just as they should. A long, hearty meal, a bottle or two of port, extended flirtations with the serving girls. Yes, it was going to be a good day.

  While Duff was putting on his jacket, little Sheila and her grandmother Margery stood before a table in their cottage, which lay just at the edge of the heather meadow. Sheila was rinsing potatoes in a bowl of water, and passing them to Margery, who patted them dry and peeled them.

  Sheila sang little snatches of an old tune as she worked, and Dame Margery shot a measuring glance her way. The child’s pale blue eyes showed none of the opaque, absent look they got sometimes, but the old lady did observe upon her narrow face a faint look of mischief, and upon the hem of her dress a trail of clinging cobweb.

  “You were up early today, sweeting,” she said to her grandchild, accepting a damp potato and enfolding it in her cloth. “Where did you go?”

  “I had something to do at the castle, Granny, that’s all.”

  “What might that be?”

  “Oh,” answered Sheila vaguely, “nothing, really. Granny, didn’t Dame Isobel make me the prettiest doll in the world? Oh, Granny, your hands are bothering you, won’t you let me peel the tatties?”

  Margery’s look sharpened. “You’ve not been to the castle to stir up trouble?”

  “Never, Granny, never!” swore Sheila, with such fervor that the old lady relented, and said:

  “Aye then, you may peel, for my fingers do pain me this morning. You’re a good lass.”

  Proudly Sheila took up the little knife. “I try to be, Granny. Though it’s not always easy.”

  The old lady rested a gnarled hand on her granddaughter’s head. “You’re more right than you know, sweeting. Now! I’ll wash the tatties, and we’ll have a lovely pottage for our dinner tonight.”

  Chapter 8

  As Alasdair confidently expected, the days ticked along smoothly, like a well-oiled clockwork, and a week swiftly passed. The usual rounds of work and play; and the nights alone with his wife had indeed fallen into a predictable pattern. He wandered in, greeted her, they had quick, uneventful congress, and he went to sleep.

  On the eighth night, he came into their bedchamber very late.

  “Are you awake, madam?”

  The question had become a ritual, only now she said:

  “Yes. But it’s my woman’s time.”

  “Oh.”

  “And I wish,” she added waspishly, “you would stop calling me ‘madam’ in that pompous way.”

  “I wasn’t aware,” he said, offended, getting into bed, “that I was being pompous.”

  “Well, you were.”

  There was a silence. Alasdair settled himself comfortably. He had heard that during this monthly interval, women could be rather touchy. So, cautiously, he asked, “What shall I call you then?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? My name is Fiona.”

  “Very well—Fiona.”

  She only gave a sniff. Huffily, he turned on his side with his back to her, and closed his eyes. Adjusted the bedcovers. Shifted his pillows around. After a while he said, over his shoulder and with a little growl in his voice:

  “I can hear you being awake.”

  “I’m just lying here. Minding my own business, I might add.”

  “It’s practically the middle of the night. Why aren’t you asleep?”

  “What do you care?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Fiona. Please just tell me.”

  There was another silence. Finally, she answered, reluctantly, as if unwilling to share anything personal:

  “I have insomnia.”

  He remembered finding her in her morning-room, napping. He recalled the dark circles under her eyes. Now he wondered how many hours she had spent in this bed, awake in the darkness, while he had serenely slept, oblivious.

  He rolled onto his back. Turned his head and looked at her. The fire in the hearth provided just enough light for him to see that she, too, lay on her back, her eyes fixed—as they often seemed to be—on the canopy above their heads.

  He cleared his throat a little. “Why do you have insomnia?”

  “I developed it as a child.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said grudgingly. “I suppose when I realized my father was often unkind to my mother.”

  “Was he—unkind to you?”

  “He was … is … volatile. Was he unkind? Well, he would sometimes threaten to beat us. So I began to lie awake at night, in case he did come into the room I shared with my sisters, in one of his rages.”

  “Were you afraid?” He turned onto his side, facing her.

  “Not really. I lay awake thinking about what I would do if he came in.”

  “What you’d do?”

  “Yes. I kept a fire iron next to me in bed.”

  “Would you have used it on him?”

  “I told myself I would. I couldn’t protect Mother, but I could at least try to protect my sisters.”

  “That was brave of you.”

  He saw her shoulders, covered by her prim white nightgown, lifting in a shrug. “I don’t know about that. He never hit us, never came into our room. Perhaps I overreacted. But the end result was insomnia.”

  “Surely there are remedies. Maybe Dr. Colquhoun could help.”

  “I doubt it. I’ve tried everything. Chamomile, hops, lady slipper, lavender, valerian. Hot baths, cold baths. Warm milk. Wool socks. More exercise, less exercise. Oils on my feet, oils on my forehead. Nothing has worked.”

  How far apart in the bed they were, he thought. The space between them seemed vast; her face was a little ghostly in the dimness. He tried to think what it would feel like to be unable to sleep, night after night, year after year. Naturally he at once felt a tremendous desire to sleepily yawn. He repressed it. Out loud he said, sincerely, “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your problem.”

  Did he imagine it, or was there, beneath her level, dispassionate tone, a note of melancholy?

  He said, on an impulse:

  “Just so you know. I didn’t ride my horse through the castle.”

  She didn’t respond for a few moments. Then: “I believe you. I’ve seen how you’re too good to your horses to do some
thing like that.”

  “Thank you.” He added, still impulsively, “May I ask you something? It’s something I’ve been curious about.”

  He saw her quickly turn to him, as if alarmed. As if there was something she didn’t want him to know. “Curious about what?” she asked.

  “About how you learned to speak French so well.”

  “Ah.” She sounded rather thankful. “There was a French family who came to Wick Bay, very poor and in distress. I spent a lot of time with them, and eventually I picked up their language. And what about you? You understood me at that dinner with Wynda? Avez-vous un tuteur, ou vous avez été envoyé loin à l’école?”

  “The tutors came later. School came first, when my brother and I were sent to one in Glasgow, where after six years there they finally kicked us both out.”

  “Kicked you out? Why?”

  “Well, we didn’t ride horses through the buildings, but we did accept other dares.” He laughed. “We were, in fact, the terrors of the school.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What didn’t we do. The pranks, the fights, the defiance. We did manage to sneak some learning in, but we hated it there. We just wanted to be home.”

  “Were your parents angry?”

  “Our father didn’t care, but our mother—my God, she was furious. She wanted to send us to Eton, but Gavin and I vowed we’d run away on a pirate ship before we’d ever set one toe in England. She knew us well enough to believe we really would do it, so we stayed home, evaded the poor tutors she brought in, and more or less ran wild after that. She gave up on us, as long as we didn’t interfere with her endless renovations.”

  Fiona was quiet, as if absorbing this, and Alasdair was already sorry he’d said so much. He hated looking backward, hated thinking about the time before—

  She said, very quietly, “I hope you don’t think I was listening to gossip, but Dame Margery did tell me about … what happened on the loch …”

  With an effort he made his voice light. “Don’t worry about it. What about you? Did you and your sisters ever go to school?”

  Again, a silence, as if she were registering his rebuff, and deciding how she wanted to react.

  Then:

  “No, we didn’t. We had a governess for a few years, a very earnest and capable lady, but eventually Father’s ambivalence about the value of female education overcame him, and he let Miss Dwight go. She found a more congenial situation in Dumfries, and Father let me buy as many books as I wanted, so it all worked out fairly well, especially since my mother was so intimidated by Miss Dwight that she completely went out of her way to avoid her.” Suddenly Fiona laughed, with what sounded like genuine amusement. “Once I found her underneath the stairs. Just sitting there. Poor Mother!”

  Alasdair smiled. And he said, still in that interested, impulsive spirit: “May I ask another question?”

  With laughter still in her voice, she said, “Yes.”

  “What’s your favorite dish?”

  “Cook’s boeuf à la Bourguignonne.”

  “Favorite color?”

  “Periwinkle.”

  “Writer you most admire?”

  “Shakespeare.”

  “Season?”

  “Spring.”

  “Dogs or cats?”

  “Dogs. Of course.”

  “Can you swim?”

  “Yes. But don’t tell anyone.”

  He laughed. “Why not?”

  “Why not?” she repeated. “That’s a good question. I suppose it’s felt like a secret for all these years. Back home I used to swim sometimes in the bay, when no one was around. Even though Father told us not to.”

  “A renegade! Weren’t you cold?”

  “I almost froze to death. But it was worth it.”

  He very nearly said, Gavin and I used to swim in the loch, but caught himself just in time. And his brain, very agile and quick, served up something else he had wondered about, thanks to her mention of the bay, and home. Was there, back there, a swain who had lost her to her precipitous marriage?

  So he instead said:

  “Why were you still unmarried at twenty-seven?”

  “Still harping on that, laird?” In an instant the mirth was gone. “Worried that there’s something wrong with me? Some defect I ought to have disclosed? After all, you’ve never seen the upper part of my body, have you? I could have three breasts, or bloody sores there, or worse. I suppose you can’t bear to look—”

  “Fiona, I only—”

  “Or perhaps I am—as you so discreetly hinted that evening in the Great Drawing-room—past my best childbearing years. Maybe it’s hopeless, and all these delightful romps together have been a waste of time.”

  Her words were blistering and sharp. If they’d been fencers in a duel, she’d be flying at him, without a fleuret on the tip, lunging to kill. And in this kind of situation, you either retreated, or you parried, just as aggressively.

  “Yes, delightful,” he said, with a snarl in his voice. “Didn’t you listen to the marriage vows we made? Our task is that of procreation.”

  “Task. It’s very obvious it’s a task.”

  “And just how would you be able to make such a judgment, madam?”

  “Are you accusing me of being unchaste?” she snapped. “Surely you were aware of the state of things when you first had me? Or was your mind elsewhere?”

  Oh God, oh God, he’d backed himself into a corner. How had things gotten so ugly so quickly? And yet, even in the heat of the fight, a little, awful part of him was rejoicing. Safe, safe, safe.

  “This,” he said coldly (and yet comfortably), “is a highly indelicate conversation.”

  “Indelicate?” She gave a sardonic laugh. “I had no idea your sensibilities were so refined, laird. Do forgive me.”

  “And I, madam, had no idea you were capable of such coarseness.” Now he was simply being an ass. He knew it. But he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

  “Well, we’ve learned quite a lot about each other tonight, haven’t we?” she said icily.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Very enlightening.”

  “And exhausting.” He yawned, loudly and ostentatiously. “Good night then.”

  He could hear her scornful huff as she flounced onto her side, with her back to him. “Yes. Good night.”

  Alasdair closed his eyes. It was almost as if the angry, ugly words they’d exchanged were still hanging in the air, taking up space in the darkness of the room. He waited, waited, for them to subside. And as he waited, it came to him then—that despite the mechanical nature of their coupling, he’d been assuming she found him attractive, as women generally did. He’d brushed aside her reply to his provocative question in the Great Drawing-room, when he’d said:

  You do not find my person comely?

  Not particularly, she had coolly answered.

  He let this startling possibility sink in.

  Yes, he’d been assuming that she wanted him, while he was the one dispensing his—ah—favors at his own convenience. That he had the upper hand, he was in control.

  Maybe, maybe, he was wrong.

  Then came another unwelcome thought, like an angel (or devil?) perched on his shoulder:

  Well, lad, you haven’t exactly done much to excite her passion, have you?

  He countered, She’s not my type.

  What’s wrong with her?

  Too thin, too pale, too blonde.

  The angel (or devil) seemed to say, slyly: Have you really looked at her, lad?

  Alasdair almost groaned out loud. Here he was, having a dialogue with himself. What the hell was wrong with him?

  The sly little voice made itself known again.

  Have you, lad? Or have you locked yourself in?

  Shut up, he tried to tell the voice. I’ve worked everything out to my satisfaction. Don’t you go—

  Rocking the boat? said the voice, a little cruelly.

  I’m done with you, Voice.

>   But you’re not done with Mòrag, are you?

  Shut up. Go away.

  Never.

  Alasdair shifted in the bed, raked a hand through his hair.

  Which reminded him. What was so wrong with red hair, by the way?

  Not a damn thing.

  He had nice, thick hair which he kept clean and well-barbered.

  He opened his eyes, turned his head to glare at her back.

  Look at her? Locked in?

  Damned stupid voice.

  And he closed his eyes again, waiting—a little guiltily—for sleep to claim him. His last waking thought was the belated realization that with the advent of her woman’s time, a hope for conception had been dashed.

  Well, he’d certainly been the compassionate husband, hadn’t he.

  Later, much later that night, Alasdair dreamed he made passionate love to his wife, who sat astride him, her curious silvery hair released at last from its braid. It covered her like a living mantle of silk. And in this dream, her pale, slender body actually glowed, as if she were on fire. It was his touch that ignited her.

  A deep coldness lay between the laird and his lady, and little Sheila was overheard saying casually to her playmates a few days later:

  “There are ghosts in the castle.”

  “We wish,” one of the other children answered, just as casually, tossing out a little piece of crockery for a marker, and they all went on with their lively, occasionally contentious game of hop-scotch.

  And a few days later after that, on a beautiful morning that held in it the tiniest hint of autumn, Fiona stood in the warm, clean kitchen conferring with Mrs. Allen, the housekeeper, and with Cook. All around her was well-ordered bustle; on a low stool near the hearth sat Sheila, playing with her doll. Isobel had made a white lace wrapper and a wee nightcap for the doll to wear, and Sheila was carefully tying the tiny ribbons, one after another. On her lap was also a big lemony biscuit, sweet with sugar and dotted with caraway seeds.

  One of these delicious biscuits Fiona had just sampled and approved. Now she was looking over Mrs. Allen’s menu suggestions for the week’s dinners. “Yes, Monday and Tuesday look fine, thank you. Cook, have you the ingredients for the vermicelli soup on Tuesday?”