The Reluctant Highlander

by Scott, Amanda

  Unable to think of an acceptable response to such a statement, Fiona finally said, “It is a bit narrow. But I have found it comfortable.”

  Lady Sutherland gave her the same speculative look she had given the bed. “Your mother died when ye were but a bairn, did she no, dearling?”

  “Aye, when I was seven,” Fiona said.

  “And your sister Gellis married dunamany years ago, aye?”

  “Aye, madam, before I was born, for she is the eldest.”

  “You are not close then, I think.”

  “Gellis and her family live in Galloway, so I rarely see any of them.” Not, Fiona added mentally, that I miss her.

  “Then, unless ye’ve talked o’ such matters with young women whose ken be greater than yours, I expect ye ken little o’ what a man expects of his lady wife.”

  “I can run a household,” Fiona said. “I like children, and they like me.”

  “But d’ye ken how bairns come tae be born?”

  “I think so, although the exact manner is not clear in my mind,” Fiona said. “Robina, my brother Davy’s wife, explained much to me. But hearing is one thing, the doing is often altogether different, I think.”

  “Then, let us talk a wee bit longer, child.”

  “Getting married? What the deevil d’ye mean, married?” Hew Comyn demanded of his cousin that evening. They had met at the sole alehouse in the village of Bridgend, where Dae’s family lived, across the bridge from St. John’s Town. Since it was well before suppertime, and a Sunday, the place was much quieter than it might be on another day.

  Even so, Hew lowered his voice when he said, “We canna let that lass marry anyone. What if he takes her away someplace? How will we capture her, then?”

  “But he will take her away, won’t he?” Dae replied. Swilling a deep draft of his ale, he wiped his lips on his sleeve before adding, “They say it be a Highlander a-marrying her. So, he’ll take her home wi’ him, aye?”

  “Who is he?”

  “I dinna ken, but I’m thinkin’ it may be the same chappie we saw whilst we waited on the Inch that night. Some’un pointed him out at yon alehouse in the High Street, and he’s big and brawny like that ’un we saw. I didna get a close look at either one o’ them, but they did say she’s tae marry a knight o’ the realm, knighted by Jamie hisself. I dinna think we dare irk such a man.”

  Hew agreed that it might be dangerous but knew better than to say so. If he did, his nervous cousin might demand that they abandon the plan altogether.

  “I’ll tell ye who the man is,” a grim, gravelly voice behind Hew said, startling him to his feet.

  “Sir!” he exclaimed as he turned to face his father, Comyn of Raitt.

  Eyes narrowed, Raitt was plainly unhappy with him. “’Tis twice now ye’ve failed tae follow directions,” Raitt said. Glowering at his nephew, he added, “Ye’ve done nowt tae aid him, Dae, but ye might get tae your feet when I speak tae ye.” When Dae hastily obeyed, Raitt added, “We’ll move tae yon corner. I dinna want tae make a gift o’ this discussion tae anyone else wha’ comes in.”

  When they had seated themselves at a table there, Raitt leaned across it toward his son and muttered, “First, ye bungled getting Donal Balloch’s message tae Alexander that we carried here from the west. Now, ye two ha’ failed tae capture the lass. So ye’ve likely spoiled what chance we had tae force Ormiston tae back us against James.”

  “Only because some chap came along and foiled our first attempt,” Hew said. “Dae said he’s heard the chap be a Highlander, so—”

  “That chap is Sir Àdham MacFinlagh, foster son o’ me irksome neighbor, Fin o’ the Battles. And, just as Dae told ye, James knighted him . . . at Lochaber.”

  “Sakes, I wouldna recognize him if I’d seen him, for I’ve scarce clapped eyes on the man since he were a bairn,” Hew said. “Moreover, I ha’ lived wi’ Dae’s kinsmen here since our Rab died, as ye ken fine, since ye sent me tae them then. I dinna ken what ye—”

  “Hush yer gob, and I’ll tell ye what ye’re going tae do!” Raitt snapped.

  Àdham had also discovered that news of his intentions had swept through the royal court. Some people expressed less pleasure than his grace and Ormiston had, though.

  Caithness was the first to congratulate him, Monday morning, while Àdham was breaking his fast in the alehouse taproom. “So ye’ve snatched that lovely lass from everyone else’s grasp, have ye?” the young earl said with a broad grin. “Ye’re nobbut a heathenish thief, cousin!”

  “Don’t tell me that you wanted her,” Àdham retorted. “You told me when we first met that you intend never to wed.”

  “I did not say I wanted to marry her,” Caithness said with a cheeky grin.

  “Have a care,” Àdham said. “Thanks to his grace and her lord father, her ladyship and I are as good as betrothed now, so—”

  “Not unless ye’ve bedded her,” Caithness said, raising his brows. “That is the custom in this shire, and I thought ’twas likewise in the Highlands.”

  When Àdham moved to stand, Caithness said hastily, “I cry pardon, cousin. My tongue ran away with my good sense. I make you my deepest apologies.”

  “Her ladyship is unlikely to look twice at a rogue like you in any event,” Àdham said with a grin. “And, as the wedding takes place tomorrow morning, and his grace would take umbrage if I knocked you on your backside again . . .”

  “I beg ye’ll do nae such thing,” Caithness said, ruefully rubbing his jaw. “I’m still sore from the last time. Besides, I came to tell ye that I mean to ride as far as Blair Castle with your party on Wednesday. I’ve had my fill of my father and a number of his kinsmen.”

  “Has Atholl offended you, then?”

  “Every day, aye. My lord father despises my friends, my clothing, my taste in wine, and most of all my politics. Sithee, I like Jamie, and so did Atholl when Jamie returned from England. Sakes, he hied himself off to greet him. But now he and”—he shot a hasty, speculative look at Àdham—“and others who oppose Jamie talk of matters that sound to me distressingly like treason.”

  Àdham said, “You speak of my uncle, Sir Robert Graham, I think.”

  “I do. If it offends ye to hear me say such things of him . . .”

  “Nae, Alan, but take care where you say them.” He shot a meaningful look toward the tapster wiping off a nearby table. “You are welcome to ride with us,” he added. “I know not what plans Sir Ivor has made for each day’s travel, but I doubt the ladies will want to ride farther than Moulin.”

  “Dinna be daft, Àdham, Wednesday night ye’ll stay at Blair, all o’ ye. My father said he’ll stay in town till the end of the month. Even my stepmother is away now, so I can house your entire party.”

  “I doubt Atholl will approve of your housing a party of Mackintoshes, though.”

  “Perhaps not, but I do often house my friends. Moreover, your bride will be more comfortable at Blair. I’d wager the lady Fiona has never slept on the ground.”

  Since Àdham had not spared a thought for her ladyship’s past travel habits, he said, “I’ll talk to Ivor. You’re certain that you will be the only Stewart at Blair Castle?”

  “Aye, as certain as we can be that ye’ll be the only one kin to a Graham.”

  Chapter 10

  The morning of Fiona’s wedding day dawned bleakly under cloudy skies. But the air was warm, and Lady Sutherland assured her that all was in train to see her properly wedded and bedded before she left for her future home.

  Although Fiona remained uncertain about the bedding, she told herself that if every other bride had survived it, she would, too.

  Concerns lingered about her future husband and her own ability to adapt to a way of life about which she knew almost nothing. Even so, the strongest emotion she felt was anticipation, even eagerness, to see what lay ahead.

 
The other maids of honor and their seniors, including the Queen, were eager to aid in her preparations. Joanna, Lady Sutherland, and Lady Malvina were the only ones, however, whose insistence that they would miss her seemed sincere.

  Others, including Lady Huntly, seemed more interested in discussing who might take Fiona’s place when she left. Such positions were highly prized, and noblemen and women of all ranks schemed and competed fiercely to place their sons and daughters as close to the royal couple as possible.

  Political maneuvering was the least of Fiona’s worries, albeit a primary cause of her increasing eagerness to enter the new phase of her life. Even so, some fears remained strong. Several had an irritating tendency to interject themselves just as she was growing eager to learn what marriage was all about.

  While those helping her bathe and perfume her body chattered with one another, her thoughts drifted to the man who was about to take her away from the life she knew.

  Would his people like her? She had not met any of them, unless one counted his friend Caithness. He and Sir Àdham seemed to treat each other more as kinsmen than fellow warriors or casual friends. Moreover, Àdham said he had not been to Perth before, so the two had not met in St. John’s Town. She had no notion where the Earldom of Caithness was, though. Perhaps it neighbored Àdham’s Strathnairn.

  Although her first impression of Caithness had been startling, she had quickly come to like the young earl’s cheeky smile and his charm.

  Àdham did not fit her image of charming or courtly. Kind, yes, and untidy, but she would try to persuade him to furbish himself up after they married.

  She had never seen him angry. How, she wondered, would he behave then? Although they had briefly discussed men who beat their wives, and he had admitted that Highlanders sometimes did, she did not recall his saying that he would not.

  She would simply have to learn to read him and understand his moods.

  Doubtful now, she grimaced into her looking glass, because although she could read her brothers and her father, she had oft managed to anger them, even so.

  She would be so far from home and all that she knew. Faith, she was far from home now, but by suppertime tomorrow she would be miles farther away.

  Feeling salty tears prick her eyes, she dashed them away and got up to make sure that Leah was packing her clothes carefully.

  She had pictured her husband and their wedding quite differently.

  In her imaginings, her husband had been a strong, handsome warrior, much like her brother Davy—or Àdham, come to that—lanky and agile, but refined and lacking every vestige of Davy’s devilish temperament. If that husband had sported a beard, it would be stylish, not so shaggy that one could see naught of his face save his hawklike nose and his intriguingly green eyes under their thick, dark brows.

  Her imagined husband would have been somewhat smaller, too, and less overwhelming. At over six feet, Àdham was too big. His frame was also too powerful-looking and muscular to suit her notion of perfection. Everything about the man, including his hands and feet, was large.

  “Fiona-lass, it be time tae don your dress,” Lady Sutherland said. “We ha’ less than an hour now, wi’ the wedding tae take place afore midday High Mass.”

  “Aye, my lady,” she said quietly. Leah helped her take off her robe, under which she wore only a new white kirtlelike silk shift that she had had made to wear with her court dresses but not yet worn. It felt soft and clingy against her skin.

  The gown Joanna had chosen was a yellow houpland, its sleeves and hem trimmed with ermine. Royal seamstresses had made it for her grace, and those same seamstresses had altered it to fit Fiona’s slimmer figure. The houpland’s wide sash, gaily embroidered with colorful wildflowers, nipped it in loosely below her breasts.

  Her head was bare, her hair unbound, and the lacings of her houpland and shift untied, all as tradition demanded. But Joanna had assured her that people at what amounted to a royal wedding, attended by both the King and Queen of Scots, would never so far forget themselves as to snatch the laces from the bride’s gown, let alone from her shift, as often happened at less stellar weddings.

  “It is time to go,” Joanna said quietly a short time later. “Art sure this marriage is to your liking, Fiona?”

  Fiona looked directly at her and smiled. “I am content, your grace. Faith, even were I not, I would lack the courage to say so to his grace.”

  “If you want to say nae, you need say it only to me,” Joanna replied calmly. “James believes strongly in the rule of law. He particularly believes that our laws must be clear and apply to every citizen, including himself. The laws of Holy Kirk and those of Scotland agree that a woman can reject marriage to any man, regardless of who demands that marriage. Now, what do you say, my dearling?”

  Fiona hesitated but only because she realized that her curiosity about Sir Àdham had long since overwhelmed any fear she might have had of marrying him.

  “By my troth, your grace,” she said, “although I am more grateful than I can say for your concern and your kindness, I am content.”

  “So be it, then,” Joanna said, indicating that the others should precede them.

  Àdham stood in the transept of the monastery chapel, near its high altar, flanked by his grace on one side and the Mackintosh and Sir Ivor on the other. The King had informed him on his arrival that he would aid him in his dressing and meant to stand up with him. So, Àdham, unhappily clean shaven, constrained, and uncomfortable, now stood between his grace and the burly Malcolm.

  The monastery chapel’s soaring nave teemed with townspeople and most of the nobles who had come to St. John’s Town for the King’s Parliament.

  Barefaced, in a fashionably tight-laced, tight-fitting doublet, to which James’s own manservant had attached a pair of too-snug woolen hose with thongs, their thread-wrapped tips passing through brass-wire-lined eyelets, Àdham felt more exposed than when he was naked. Worst of all was the baglike thing called a codpiece. Trussed with similar thongs to both doublet and hose, it confined his genitals snugly, too snugly. The whole process of dressing had taken too long, and how the devil he was to untangle himself from the lot later, he knew not.

  “Stop twitching,” the Mackintosh growled. A thickset man, the top of whose head barely reached Àdham’s shoulder, Malcolm’s voice carried nonetheless easily over the liturgical chanting of friars in their choir stalls. “And dinna scratch!” he added. “Ye be behaving more like a gallous heathen than a knight o’ the realm.”

  A man who knew his own worth and capabilities, Malcolm often boasted that, built lower to the ground than most Highland men, he was better able to endure extremities of weather, scarcity, or want of rest. Although unpolished with letters, he had been fortunate in war and had accomplished most of his goals in life.

  “I note, sir, that you do not wear such garb as this,” Àdham muttered. “Nor have you shaved off your beard.”

  “I wear what I choose tae wear, as always. And I’m fond o’ me beard.”

  James said, “Ye’re wearing Lowland garb to please your lady bride, sir.”

  “As ye agreed, yourself, to do, Àdham, the shaving likewise,” Sir Ivor added sternly from beyond Malcolm, ignoring the fact that Àdham’s agreement was to trim, not shave, his beard. “So snick up, and leave that fool hat be, too. If ye knock it off to the floor, I’ll give ye a clout.”

  The clarion blast of a trumpet from the west entrance silenced them, and the friars’ chanting faded when minstrels with a harp and lutes began to play.

  At the far end of the center aisle, the women of her grace’s court had gathered in readiness to approach the transept.

  The congregation rose to its feet from collective prayer stools and everyone turned to watch the procession, led by the Bishop of St. Andrews and two acolytes.

  Her grace’s three remaining maids of honor followed the bishop, one by one, and fo
ur of her senior ladies came next, two by two. The Queen walked serenely behind them, alone. When the bishop stopped at the foot of the altar dais, his acolytes continued up two steps to stand, one on each side of the high altar.

  The Queen’s ladies turned toward the empty choir stalls left of the transept and took their places facing the friars and lay brothers in their stalls on the right.

  Àdham saw Ormiston then, beyond her grace, at the nave’s entrance. He did not yet see Fiona but assumed that she stood beside her father.

  When the last two maids of honor stepped from the aisle into the ladies’ choir stalls, Joanna entered the transept, moved to the left, and turned with her hands folded at her waist to look back toward the nave entrance.

  Àdham had his first full view of Fiona then and realized from her stunned expression that it was also the first time she had been able to see him or, perhaps, recognize him in his fashionable and damnably uncomfortable splendor.

  She was beautiful. Her yellow gown opened from just beneath her bosom to the floor, revealing shimmering white silk beneath it. The hem of that white garment, edged with a band of pink, yellow, and green embroidery, skimmed the tops of pale yellow slippers. The slim fingers of her right hand rested on Ormiston’s left forearm, those of her left hand gripped a small bouquet of pink and yellow flowers, doubtless plucked from the Gilten Herbar.

  Her dark hair, crowned with a circlet of similar flowers, flowed unbound, unnetted, and unveiled down her back, reminding him of his first view of her. When she turned to hand the bouquet to her grace, he saw that her hair gleamed in midday sunbeams from the clerestory windows and reached well past her hips.

  He smiled ruefully as she approached, and saw her eyes widen. He decided then that her earlier shock did stem from belatedly recognizing him, so he grinned.

  To his delight, she grinned back, raised her chin, and left her father standing at the transept, while she walked with head high to join Àdham before the bishop.