Chapter 22
“Lassie, if ye tie that ribbon any tighter, the flowers will look as though they regret blooming.”
Caitlin did not so much as glance up from the arrangement in her hands. “And if ye say lassie to me one more time, I may begin pretending I do nae hear ye at all.”
Erin gave a satisfied little sound from the chair by the window, where bundles of greenery and dried herbs had somehow taken over half the room. “That would require discipline.”
“It would require patience,” Caitlin corrected.
“Same thing, in yer case.”
Iona stood in the middle of the chamber with a length of pale cloth draped over one arm, watching the two women with a kind of stunned amusement she had long since stopped trying to hide.
It had been scarcely a day since she had agreed to marry Frederick, and already the keep had transformed into something busy and bright and faintly unruly.
Caitlin moved through it all with the delighted purpose of a woman whose hopes had been answered far more generously than she had dared ask.
Erin, rather than removing herself from the fuss as any sensible person might, had inserted herself into the middle of it with the authority of an old queen and the sharp tongue of a crow determined to improve everyone in sight.
Somehow, against all reason, it worked.
“Should the flowers hang there or there?” Iona asked, lifting the end of the garland slightly as though that might make the choice easier.
“Neither,” Erin said at once.
“There,” Caitlin said at the exact same moment.
Iona looked from one to the other. “That is helpful.”
“It is there,” Caitlin said with complete confidence, crossing the room to take the garland from her. “Erin thinks every decorative thing should look as though it grew by accident.”
“Because that is how the finest things grow,” Erin replied. “Naturally. Nae strangled into shape by noble hands and too much ribbon.”
Caitlin adjusted the greenery with careful fingers. “And yet here ye sit in me chamber telling me how to decorate it.”
“I am improving it.”
“Ye are criticizing it.”
“Aye,” Erin said. “That too.”
A laugh escaped Iona before she could stop it.
The sound drew both women’s attention for a moment, and Caitlin’s expression softened at once.
“There now,” she said. “That is better. A bride ought to laugh at least once each morning, or everyone around her becomes unbearable.”
“Then we are all doomed,” Erin muttered.
Across the room, a small wooden cup tipped over and rolled beneath the table.
Jamie gasped as though a kingdom had fallen.
“I had it there,” she insisted, dropping to her knees with a cloth doll tucked beneath one arm and a carved pony in the other hand. “It was standing proper.”
“It was standing on a blanket,” Iona said, moving automatically to crouch beside her and retrieve the cup before it vanished entirely beneath the wardrobe. “That is nae the same as standing proper.”
Jamie accepted the cup solemnly and set it beside the doll with renewed care.
The bed had become a whole world in the child’s hands that afternoon.
Dolls in borrowed ribbons. Tiny wooden animals gathered in one corner.
A folded square of scrap fabric serving as a cloak, then a blanket, then a royal mantle, depending on what story Jamie had decided upon that moment.
More than once, Iona had caught herself simply watching.
There was still a kind of wonder in it.
Her daughter no longer glanced toward the door before picking up a doll. No longer shoved the toys aside if footsteps sounded in the corridor. No longer reached first for what might pass unnoticed.
Jamie still moved with the habits of hiding now and then.
That would not be erased in a day, or a week, or perhaps even a year.
But each hour she spent sprawled among ribbons and toy cups and pretty nonsense with no thought but play seemed to loosen something Iona had not realized remained clenched inside her.
“Will this one be invited to the wedding?” Jamie asked, lifting the cloth doll with grave concern.
Caitlin turned at once. “Certainly.”
“And this one?”
“That one as well.”
Jamie held up the carved pony. “What about him?”
Erin snorted. “That creature looks like it would attend whether invited or not.”
Jamie grinned and hugged all three toys to her chest.
A rap at the open door sounded before Iona could answer whatever question would come next.
Lennox appeared in the threshold, one hand braced against the frame, his expression already wary in the way of a man who had learned that being summoned into a room full of determined women rarely ended well for him.
“I was told,” he began carefully, “that someone required me.”
“Aye,” Erin said at once. “Come here.”
Lennox looked as though he might rather face a line of armed men. Still, he entered.
“What is it this time?” he asked.
Erin pointed with one gnarled finger toward a stack of stools against the wall. “Those.”
Lennox blinked. “Those?”
“Aye. We need them moved.”
“Where?”
Erin looked at Caitlin. Caitlin looked at Iona. Iona looked at the stools and fought a smile.
“By the hearth, perhaps?” she offered.
“Nay,” Caitlin said. “Too warm.”
“Near the window,” Erin said.
“Too much draft,” Caitlin answered.
Lennox closed his eyes briefly. “I see that I have arrived in the middle of a thoughtful and measured discussion.”
“Ye have arrived in the middle of useful work,” Erin said. “Move them.”
He obeyed, though with the expression of a man being punished for crimes not yet committed. Jamie watched him drag the first stool across the room and leaned toward Iona with a whisper that was not remotely quiet.
“He is afraid of her.”
Iona bit the inside of her cheek. “Hush.”
“I am nae afraid of that old batty woman,” Lennox said without turning.
“Aye, everyone kens that ye are,” Erin replied. “And it keeps ye tolerable. So, daenae go around denying anything at all, Lennox Mathias Cochrane. I saw ye into this world, I can easily see ye out of it.”
And in the heartbeat of spare time in which this conversation was carrying on, Iona let out a hearty laugh, and Lennox grabbed the stools at once.
“Iona, the flowers will wilt if they are handled so often,” Caitlin said as she entered back into the room, not unkindly, though there was a note of urgency beneath it as she adjusted the garland once more.
“I have hardly touched them,” Iona replied, though even as she said it, she realized her fingers were still lingering along the stems.
“Aye, but ye have moved them three times already,” Erin added from her chair. “Things do nae improve simply because ye keep shifting them about.”
“I am only trying to make it right,” Iona said, a sharper edge slipping into her voice before she could stop it.
“It will be right,” Caitlin said gently. “It already is.”
Iona let out a breath that came faster than she intended. “It does nae feel right. There are too many choices. The flowers, the table, the dresses, the food. Every time I think something is settled, there is another question waiting behind it.”
The room stilled, if only for a moment.
Caitlin’s hands lowered slowly from the garland.
Erin watched her with narrowed eyes, not unkind, but attentive.
Iona pressed her lips together, the weight of her own tone settling in too late. “I am sorry,” she said quickly, her voice softer now. “That was nae meant for either of ye.”
“It was meant for the situation,” Erin said. “We ken it just as well, lass.”
“Aye,” Caitlin added, stepping closer. “And the situation is a happy one, even if it is a busy one.”
Iona nodded, though her chest still felt tight. “I ken. I do.”
And that, perhaps, was the strangest part of all.
She felt him arrive before she saw him. Iona turned slightly to take in the sight of him.
His gaze moved across the room first, taking in Caitlin among ribbons, Erin upon her throne by the window, Lennox burdened with furniture, Jamie on the bed with a doll tucked beneath her arm. Then he looked at Iona.
The room shifted quietly around that look.
He crossed to her with the same calm purpose he brought to everything else, though the warmth in his eyes belonged to no laird conducting household business.
“I have come to rescue ye,” he said.
“From what?” she asked.
He glanced over her shoulder toward the room at large. “From all of this.”
Caitlin made a disbelieving sound. “She is the bride. She is meant to be in the middle of all this.”
“Aye,” Frederick said. “And she is already being ordered about by three people and a fourth who claims nae to be afraid of an old healer.”
Lennox, still holding a stool, muttered, “I said nothin’ of the kind.”
Frederick ignored him and turned back to Iona. “Come with me.”
She frowned faintly, though more from surprise than resistance. “Where?”
“A walk.”
“That again?”
“Aye.”
Iona let him draw her only a few steps into the corridor before she stopped. “Frederick.”
He paused and turned back toward her.
“I cannot simply leave all of that,” she said, gesturing toward the room they had just quitted, where Caitlin’s voice could still be heard arguing with Erin over whether greenery ought to drape or loop.
“Ye can,” he said. “Watch.”
He stepped back to the doorway. “Maither, she is with me for a quarter hour.”
Caitlin waved a hand without even turning. “Take an hour. I have Erin and Lennox.”
Lennox looked deeply offended. Erin looked delighted.
Frederick returned his attention to Iona with quiet satisfaction. “There.”
She shook her head as she went with him, unable to stop smiling.
They walked no farther than the southern gallery overlooking the lower court, but even that short distance seemed to thin the noise of the keep around them.
Sunlight spilled over the stone, warming the wall beneath her hand when she rested it there.
Below, a pair of stable boys crossed the yard carrying tack between them.
Somewhere farther off, someone was singing badly while hauling water.