7
Wants and Needs
Where the ceremony moved at a glacial pace, every moment of observance and formality presenting a new opportunity for doubts and escape, the rest of the evening passed by in a blur that gave no chance of exit. Where Caoimhe had felt sick with nerves approaching the priest at the front of the hall and thought she might shake herself to pieces before the looming giant of her new husband, warmth now infused her body and a sense of security settled her fears.
She was married now, for better or for worse. Married to a man that could help to support her family and ensure that they would never know hunger, a man whose position could secure her access to physicians and healers for her mother.
While the venomous looks that she had been noting from ladies of stature around the hall told her that the Brodie lord was more desirous than simply his resources, Caoimhe had failed to notice anything about the man that would behoove her to love him. Too tall to be sheltering, he loomed in a frightful manner above her. And, while his frame was strong and balanced, it only served as a reminder of how little she was by comparison; how powerless. Caoimhe had heard tell of rumors over Niall Brodie’s handsomeness, of his dominating features and his fine breeding. But she had yet to see his face untwisted by hardness or free of suspicion.
No… Caoimhe thought.
The true value of her new husband lay in what he could do for the recent struggles of her family and in the security of her future that had been so empty of chances three weeks ago.
Security was worth more than love. And that was what she would focus on.
Spending most of the evening with her sister, Heather, or her parents, Caoimhe was able to relax in the knowledge that she had served them well in her union. She was able to eat the delicious meats and fruits without feeling queasy and able to dance while feeling merry. She talked with friends, accepted their well-wishes with good grace, and smiled and charmed those around her.
With her genuine kindness and open manner, Caoimhe was a being that instantly evoked trust in others. They warmed to her, despite her origins, and feared no deceit or game in her ways.
She was simply Caoimhe.
By the time the evening was drawing close to its darkest hour, Caoimhe was sad to feel the rich charm of the night evaporate in the nervous heat of anticipation. Her eyes moved between the windows—where the darkness grew deeper—and the tallest figure in the room. Her concerns over the approaching hour of midnight interrupted conversations and distracted her from her family. Soon, she would be forced to leave the open banquet hall for the privacy of personal chambers, where the duties of a new wife would be expected of her.
“Are you not pleased, Your Ladyship?”
The words came from behind Caoimhe’s right shoulder, and she turned to face the speaker. The face that greeted her behind the rim of his chalice of wine was one that she only knew by vague introduction. As part of the wedding ceremony, all of the guests had, in turn, congratulated the couple—Niall introduced his relatives, and she introduced her family and friends. She recalled the name that went with this one, perhaps only because her new husband had tensed upon his approaching, emitting hostility from his frame when it came to naming this particular gentleman.
“Pardon me, Lord Malcolm?” she asked. Her voice was calm, collected, and quite eloquent, but there was no denying the lack of authority and privileged education that so many others in the room naturally held. Over the course of the evening, Caoimhe had started to speak with simple words, attempting to hide her accent of ignorance under a sheen of demure modesty.
“I was asking if you were not pleased? Surely a lady of your upbringing should be positively beaming at such a turnaround. The laird of the province, no less. My cousin was hardly within your sphere of potential husbands until recently, surely?”
Caoimhe felt a nettling sensation run down her spine, as if she were one of the stray cats that lived around her father’s home, its fur rising with each flicker of anger. She wasn’t entirely certain what the man was trying to imply, but she knew it was not complimentary.
“Perhaps I am simply lucky, my lord,” she hedged, careful in what she admitted to. She had already begun to notice the way in which some of the guests watched her or murmured behind their hands. There was likely much about her that was unsatisfactory to many.
“Perhaps.” Malcolm sipped from his cup and then licked at his lips. Caoimhe noticed an almost dog-like countenance, as his sharper teeth stood proud in his mouth. “Or perhaps you have wiles as yet unnoticed. Tell me, did my cousin invite you to marriage of his own free will, or were there herbs and potions involved?”
Caoimhe straightened in affront.
The man is suggesting that I am a witch!
A crime that was executed by drownings and burnings. Just what sort of joke was this to make at her wedding, regardless of whether he held her personally in any position of ill-contempt?
Shamed in the way that her lips moved without being able to summon a witty retort, Caoimhe felt her cheeks burn in color and her fingers slip upon her own goblet as sweat slicked her palms. It didn’t occur to her that the nobleman before her may be trying to make her emotional, simply so that she might reveal the inner workings of an engagement that served his purposes. Her ignorance of the dangerous rivalry between the cousins blinded her to all but the personal insult to her character and faith.
She was saved from retorting by the deep voice that sent a different kind of shiver down her spine. Despite having barely touched her throughout the ceremony of their union, Niall approached the pair of them and settled his hands upon Caoimhe’s shoulders. His palms were coarse—rough from swordwork, no doubt—and sent awareness through her limbs. Her neck felt hot, her head held at an odd angle under his touch, and she swallowed upon nerves in her belly.
“Forgive me, Cousin,” he commented, with absolutely no apology in the tone of his voice, “but I believe it is time for my wife and I to take a dram and retire.”
As if his words had been broadcast to the entirety of the room, instead of spoken quietly to one side, the congregation turned to face them and a servant appeared, as if from nowhere, with the traditional pewter dish.
With handles on either side, it was designed to be drunk from with both hands. The bride was to take a drink of however much she could manage of the fine whiskey within; it was rumored in the Brodie lands that if the new husband could not manage to consume whatever she left behind, then the marriage would be doomed from the start. A couple that could not aid in one another’s weaknesses was an unlucky one, to be sure.
While such superstitions were not believed by everyone, Caoimhe had felt enough judgment over the course of the evening to recognize that even the silliest of rituals would only lend fuel to an already nettling fire—which meant that she needed to be assured of completing the little ceremony without causing herself or Niall further embarrassment.
She took hold of the dram firmly with both hands, careful not to spill the whiskey within. Feeling the eyes of everyone upon her, Caoimhe lifted the cup and drank from its rim. And, as she did so, there was a humph of disregard from behind her.
The noise, made by Malcolm in a dismissive judgment of their union, had Caoimhe inhale in surprise. She coughed, spluttered, and the burning heat of the whiskey struck the back of her throat and had her breaking with the dram after only barely a sip. She coughed for a moment as their guests laughed and joked about the new bride’s timidity and her inability to hold her spirits. Caoimhe’s eyes watered a little, as she tried desperately to comport herself, one hand breaking with the dram in order to cover her mouth.
She glanced, ashamed, at her new husband, but the man seemed to care little for the fact that she had left the drink almost entirely full. Instead, he simply took the dram in both hands and then drained it as only a man could. With his head back and the pewter tilted, Caoimhe watched as the column of his neck rose and fell with the consumption of the whiskey. He gave no reaction to its fire,
no hesitation in downing it singularly, and was perfectly sober upon lowering the cup and handing it back to the servant entirely empty.
For a moment, the way that Niall looked at her had Caoimhe smiling a little.
No bad luck for us...
At the conclusion of the little ceremony, there was a cheer from those that had gathered, and the announcement that the new man and wife were now to retire to their bedchambers. An applause broke out amongst the women, and most of the men were gentlemanly in their respect of such things. Only a few made comments of vulgarity that had a slightly nauseous feeling curl within Caoimhe’s belly. She glanced at Niall, who only offered her an arm to take and then, without responding to the calls and jeers of his fellow men, simply led her from the room.
Niall went to bed that night but not beside his new wife. The ceremony had been completed, and he was now a married man, entitled to take what he wished from the woman in the chamber beside his. But, until now, his thoughts on marriage had been for the benefit of his house and his name. He had considered children as if they were a foregone conclusion of chaste marriage, his plans too abstract and pragmatic to consider the personal connection involved. It was only when Caoimhe had walked towards him in the banquet hall, gowned in lace finer than breath, that he had doubted the alacrity of his plans.
Sitting on the edge of his bed now, Niall was still fully dressed in the formal tunic of his wedding. In the low candlelight of nighttime shadows, his gaze followed the gold trim that hung just below his knees, his elbows resting on his thighs. He rubbed a hand down his face.
He felt a little trapped by his own ethics. If the woman in the next room had been more like the ladies he was used to—comely and welcoming to the male form, used to the acts of lust—then he would have felt no uncertainty in approaching them. And yet, if Caoimhe were such a woman, ambitious and seductive, she would not have become his wife nor been in that chamber in the first place.
He was caught in a trap of his own making, now restrained by God to love only one woman. And yet each time he had so much as touched the girl, she had shied from his fingers or tensed beneath his hold. She had married him because she had had little practical ability to say no. It also seemed as though she was repulsed by his touch.
Barbarous and wrathful Niall’s reputation may have been, he was not the sort to force himself upon an unwilling woman.
With a sigh, Niall stood and removed his belt. The sheath of his knife nudged against his leg as he unbuckled the leather and set it upon the newel post of the bed. His signet ring and the cross, worn beneath his tunic for the day, were removed next. He was about to sit and discard his boots when the flickering light that had sparked beneath the nearby door went out. It was the door that led to Caoimhe’s room.
Either the woman had blown the candle out, or the taper had reached its end, settling the room beyond into darkness. In a strange sort of moment, it was like a chance was being extinguished before his eyes, and Niall was helpless to the instinct that led his hand to the door. He hesitated only a moment before he pushed it open, a shaft of light breaking into the shadows beyond.
Caoimhe had not blown out the candle. It sat smoking upon the cabinet beside the bed while she was rolled and curled around herself on the other side.
Niall found it amusing that she had seemed so frightened, so surprised when he had left her to possess the bed alone, and yet now she would not claim it. She lay as if a man should be curled around her back, possessing her even in her sleep.
Moving towards the candle and waving a hand to shoo the smoke away from where she slept, Niall felt the temptation to disrobe, to slide beneath the blankets naked and hold in his arms the ethereal creature he had seen that day.
That temptation only grew when the girl sighed and shifted in her sleep, her coverings slipping to expose the bare line of her neck to her shoulder. Niall glanced about the room at the unopened chest of clothes and the fine white dress that had been carefully folded upon the bureau. It did not help his clarity of thought to know that she—his wife—now lay entirely unclothed beneath those sheets.
Unable to resist, Niall leaned over the bed. One hand reached out, his fingers seeking to brush the hollow that lay at the side of her neck, wondering if it was as smooth to the touch as it looked. Her paleness practically glowed in the darkness, a beacon to draw him in.
And then she moved.
Caoimhe twisted in upon herself, perhaps from a bad dream or the sense of his presence. He heard the shift of the sheets as her knees drew up around her. Her shoulders moved in and her head dropped down. The soft points of her spine cast shadows over her suppleness, fragile and delicate. Breakable.
Afraid.
Niall’s fingers curled back into his palm before they could reach her. He was immediately upright once more, his frame straight and his ire set to a low burn. Feeling the cut of rejection so deep that it had even reached his wife’s subconscious mind, Niall left the room, ignoring the frustration in his heart and the ache in his belly.
8
All the Faults of the Day
The next morning confused Caoimhe as its harsh light broke through her window. The angle of the sunshine was off, and it was far too bright upon her pillow for daybreak. The cushions themselves were wrong too. Her neck was aching from sleeping at a funny angle, as the pillows beneath her ear were too soft. The mattress was thicker than what she was used to, and she felt no ache in her hip from whichever bed board she had been propped against in the night. The blankets were thick, woolen, and so warm that she could only vaguely remember dressing nude for bed in order to stay cool throughout the night.
It was only in the presence of so many oddities that Caoimhe remembered that she was no longer at home.
Blinking, Caoimhe spotted a cup of tea upon the bureau beside her burned-out candle. It was accompanied by a little plate with pieces of fruit and a bread roll that smelled freshly baked. Glancing down at herself, Caoimhe blushed as she realized that someone must have entered her room while she lay prone and indecent. Whether that was a servant or her new husband—that she finally remembered she now had—she didn’t know, but neither sat too comfortably with her.
Looking to the window, Caoimhe took a moment to realize that the light was different because the sun was higher in the sky than was normal for her waking hours. Her family were traders, used to selling to men upon the docks when they were at their easiest to speak with, which was before their morning ship out. Many a morning, Caoimhe was up before daybreak to aid her father and then secure the morning repast for her mother and the little ones. To languish in bed until the sun was almost to its peak was so uncommon for her that it was entirely disorientating.
Yet, despite her internal judgments, it could not be argued that the previous day had not been tiring to the soul.
She had also not slept well the previous night. Despite Niall seeing her to her chambers, he hadn’t stayed. He had hovered only long enough to wish her a good sleep and left through the adjoining door to his own bed.
Caoimhe hadn’t known what to make of such an anticlimax over her neuroses. She had lain in bed for hours, her ears pricked to the sound of any noise, and her eyes darting to the corners of the room as candlelight made the shadows dance. She had assumed that her husband would come back, that he would wish to consummate their union on their first night as man and wife. She had been tense to all shapes and sounds and unable to drift into slumber.
At one point, she had stirred. She had fallen into that odd sense of dozy wakefulness that was more dream than reality and thought she saw a light, or a movement. There was the soft scent of smoke and then a noise behind her. She had tensed, fearing whatever it might be: ghoul or man. And then it was all over and there was no one to be heard or seen. She had chalked it up to a heightened imagination and frightening daydreams.
Now, in the bright and harsh morning, it was clear that Caoimhe’s difficulties with sleeping had caused her to doze late. The roll on the side was now chilled
to room temperature, and the tea was tepid. It had been a while since breakfast.
It was her first day holding the duties of a wife, and she would be lucky if she began such responsibilities before midday.
Rubbing at her face, Caoimhe fought with the bedding so that it might yield one of its undersheets to wrap around her body, and then set about the adventure of quickly finding something to wear. If she was to prove that she could be a useful wife to the man that had claimed her for his own, she could not do so from her back in bed.
Her face flaming when that errant thought conjured up all sorts of visuals, Caoimhe turned her mind to focus on the task at hand.
By the time Caoimhe was able to descend from her chambers, she was washed and gowned and had braided her hair into a solid rope that hung to the middle of her back. She wore little jewellery and had pulled on the satin slippers she had worn to her wedding, not trusting the little heeled shoes that she had been provided in her rooms. While the dress was of fine quality, it was simple and a pretty dark green. She had warmed to it immediately but, clearly, her state of dress was less impressive than what was expected by those that worked the kitchens.
For, as soon as she descended the steps into the lower levels of the estate, where the cooks and maids busied about their business, she received shocked and confused looks.
In the long and slightly lost tour that she had made of the household, Caoimhe had seen no sign of her husband and had followed the sounds of pots and pans to the kitchens. At least there, she thought, she might have found someone she could speak with.
“My lady!”
The head cook of the kitchens was a woman of fine figure and large bosom. She was dressed in white with an apron that practically crackled, it was so clean, and she was quick to wipe down her floured hands when her new mistress entered the hot baking rooms. She turned towards Caoimhe with a hasty and awkward curtsy that Caoimhe felt decidedly uncomfortable with.
Haunted By A Highland Curse: A Steamy Scottish Medieval Historical Romance Page 6
