Chapter 24
“Hold still.”
“I am holding still.”
“Ye are swaying.”
“I am breathing.”
“That is nae the same thing.”
Iona tried not to laugh as Caitlin circled her for what had to be the fourth time that morning, smoothing a fold here, adjusting a ribbon there, stepping back only to move in again as though the success of the day rested entirely upon whether one strand of her hair lay properly beside her cheek.
The chamber had been transformed overnight.
Fresh flowers rested in bowls along the table.
A soft length of greenery had been fixed around the window frame, and the scent of crushed herbs mingled with clean linen and candle wax.
Erin sat near the hearth as though she had not been ordered into the role of witness and keeper of peace at the same time.
Her expression suggested she would have preferred one and been saddled with both.
Jamie, already dressed and fidgeting despite every warning given to her, stood on the little stool near the bed and turned in place so she could admire herself from every possible angle.
“Does it still look bonnie from the back?” she asked.
“It looked bonnie the first five times ye asked,” Caitlin said without taking her eyes off Iona’s sleeve.
Jamie twisted farther. “But does it?”
“Aye,” Iona said, smiling. “Very bonnie.”
That satisfied her daughter for all of half a minute.
The dress Frederick had chosen for her fit beautifully, soft and bright without being too grand for a child. Jamie had been unable to stop touching the skirt since the moment it had been laced. Each time she moved, she did so as though the fabric might vanish if she forgot to feel it there.
Erin watched the child with open amusement. “She is going to tear that hem before supper.”
“Nay, she is nae,” Caitlin said.
“Then she will test the claim so thoroughly that the hem will surrender on principle.”
Jamie gasped. “I wouldnae.”
Ye would, Iona thought, and nearly laughed again.
Her own hands were not steady, though not from fear. But there was no cold weight in her belly. No sharp instinct urging her toward the nearest exit. Only a strange, tender restlessness that had been building all morning, not unlike joy and not entirely unlike disbelief.
This is truly happening.
She had thought the words a dozen times already, and still, they felt unreal.
Caitlin stepped back at last and pressed both hands together with satisfaction. “There. If he does nae look half-struck by the sight of ye, I shall assume him blind.”
“I think he has already established he is nae,” Erin said dryly.
The comment brought warmth to Iona’s face. She looked down, smoothing her palms once over the front of her gown, though there was nothing left to fix.
There came a knock at the door, followed by Lennox’s voice from the other side.
“Me lady mother says if we are all prepared, the hall is ready.”
Caitlin moved to the door at once and opened it just enough to peer out. “And is Frederick where he ought to be?”
“Aye,” Lennox replied.
“Is he behaving?”
There was a pause. “That depends on who is asking.”
Caitlin sighed as though this told her everything she needed to know.
Iona glanced toward Jamie. “Come here, mo chridhe.”
Jamie crossed the room at once, the green grass bracelet Frederick had made for her the day before still looped proudly around her wrist. She held it up every so often to make certain it remained visible, as if the knot itself were a secret only she and he knew how to read.
Iona crouched before her daughter and smoothed a hand gently over her hair. “Are ye ready?”
Jamie nodded with unusual solemnity. “Aye.”
“Truly.”
“Aye,” Jamie repeated. Then, after a beat, “I think me stomach is jumping.”
“That is because ye are excited,” Erin said.
“That is because she has eaten sweet biscuits without pause since dawn,” Caitlin corrected.
Jamie looked offended. “Only three.”
“Four,” Erin said.
“Three and a half.”
Iona kissed her brow and rose again before the conversation could become a formal accounting.
The ceremony was held in the smaller hall near the western side of the keep, where the late morning light came soft through narrow windows and laid warm bands across the stone.
It was not grand in the way nobles might call grand.
No endless row of witnesses. No crush of strangers packed shoulder to shoulder.
Only those who mattered. Those who had seen enough of pain to know what peace was worth when it finally arrived.
Frederick stood at the front waiting for her.
Everything else blurred for a moment when she saw him.
The room remained. The light remained. The gathered people remained.
Yet all of it fell back from him at once.
He wore dark wool and clean linen, his shoulders broad beneath it, his expression composed in the way she knew so well by now.
But there was something unguarded in his eyes the instant they found her, and it reached her before she had taken more than three steps into the room.
Jamie went first, walking with all the dignity six years could gather into one small body, her hand briefly in Caitlin’s before she slipped free and crossed to stand near Frederick.
He looked down at her, and something passed between them, quiet and sure.
Iona saw Jamie’s fingers brush once at the bracelet on her wrist before she lifted her chin and faced forward.
Then it was only Iona and the short path between herself and the man she was going to marry.
She did not remember every word spoken after that with perfect order.
She remembered warmth. The murmur of the vows.
The feel of Frederick’s hands when the binding knot was drawn around theirs.
The steadiness in his voice when he answered.
The way his thumb moved once, very slightly, against the side of her hand as if to remind her that he was there and had no intention of being anywhere else.
When the ceremony ended, the room softened all at once.
People exhaled. Smiled. Shifted. Caitlin dabbed at her eyes without shame.
Erin muttered something in Gaelic that sounded suspiciously like satisfaction.
Jamie looked as though she had been waiting her whole life to clap, but had only just learned it might be allowed.
The feast afterward was louder, warmer, and far more alive than the ceremony itself.
Tables had been drawn together and covered in food enough to shame moderation.
Roasted meats, fresh bannocks, stewed apples, honeyed cakes, wheels of cheese, bowls of berries, and ale flowing almost as quickly as the laughter.
Musicians took up the far end of the hall before the first platters had been fully cleared, and once music entered the room, order surrendered entirely.
Frederick danced with her first.
He was not a man given to display, but he held her with a quiet confidence that made the room seem smaller rather than larger, simpler rather than fuller.
Iona had danced before in her life, but never like this.
Never with her body so at ease in another’s keeping.
Never with the right to lean closer when she wished.
Never with the certainty that his hand at her back meant protection as much as possession.
“Ye look pleased with yerself,” she murmured as they turned.
“I am.”
“That is terribly arrogant for a bridegroom.”
“Aye,” he said. “But accurate.”
She smiled, and his mouth shifted as though he had hoped for exactly that.
Later, he danced with Jamie.
That sight alone might have filled the day well enough.
Jamie, in one of her new dresses, all movement and delight, trying very hard to remember where her feet belonged and forgetting each time the music pleased her too much.
Frederick adjusted for her without making a show of it, guiding, steadying, letting her believe she had done well entirely on her own.
She laughed once, bright and unrestrained, and the sound turned half the room toward them.
Across the hall, Erin had somehow been dragged into a dance with Lennox.
Or perhaps she had dragged him. It was difficult to tell.
Lennox looked as though he would have preferred battle. Erin looked delighted by his discomfort.
“Move yer feet, ye great ox,” she told him loudly enough for three nearby tables to hear.
“I am moving them.”
“Poorly.”
“That is because ye keep steering me into furniture.”
“Aye,” Erin said. “To see whether ye have reflexes.”
The hall erupted in laughter when Lennox nearly collided with a bench and saved himself only by catching Erin far more closely than he had likely intended. She cackled. He turned the color of strong cider.
Caitlin, meanwhile, had abandoned all hope of sitting still. Jamie had only just learned the burden of skirts, and she had not accepted it with much grace. Every few minutes, Caitlin seemed obliged to rush after her granddaughter with some fresh correction.
“Jamie, nae sit like that.”
A little later: “Lass, ye mustnae raise yer skirts so high.”
And later still, in a tone of deep maternal outrage: “If ye climb onto that bench in a dress, I shall personally tie ye to the chair.”
Jamie accepted these instructions with the patience of a saint for approximately two breaths each before forgetting them entirely.
At some point during the evening, while the room glowed warm with lamplight and noise and too many smiling faces, Iona became aware of something she had not expected.
She looked around.
There were faces she knew well now and faces she did not.
Men from the clan. Women from the village.
Servants who had been kind. Warriors who nodded respectfully when she passed.
Shadows in the corners where the light did not quite reach.
Eyes on her here and there because she was the bride and because tonight they all had reason to watch.
Once, that would have been enough to set every nerve alight.