Chapter Four #2
Lisle sighed softly. It was time to prove that she knew what love was.
She knew it, very well. There was a part of her that wanted to demand the gold back, turn her back on the lot of them, march right back to the Dugall clan stronghold, and make what was left of them take her in.
With thirty thousand in gold, she’d be most welcome, until they found out why she had it, that is.
She sent a silent prayer for strength and courage, and for unlimited guile to hide all of it. That way, not one of them would know what it was costing her, because that’s what love was.
Lisle knew very well what love was, because she’d spent six years praying about it and asking about it, and then she’d spent the last year showing it, with every part of her trousseau she parted with, and every drop of sweat she’d shed over every bit of labor to try and keep this family from ruin.
She was actually grateful that she had the chance to finish, and do it so completely.
“Is there a bucket of water for my use?” she asked, grateful God was granting her prayer as her voice didn’t even have a suspicion of the warble she’d expected it to have.
“Over yonder. It was warmed hours earlier. It is nae more, though.”
“I shouldn’t have slept so long,” Lisle replied.
“Nae, you shouldn’t have.”
Her body really did have the strength. She was willing it there, and it worked, since moving her own legs toward the side so she could stand did show a bit of an ache, but it was small compared to the one in her heart. That pain was growing heavier with every beat of it.
“Will you grant me privacy?”
“Will you be needing it?” Angela replied, not once looking up.
“I think it would be best. I’ve nae idea how long I’ll be, and I’ve a very long walk ahead of me at the end of it.” And I’ve bruising, and torn palms from slivers, broken blisters on my heels, and such, and I need to keep it all hidden, she finished in her thoughts.
“There’s a black, unmarked carriage at the end of the drive. Just outside our property. Waiting.”
“There is?” Lisle’s voice cracked, despite the control she was exercising to keep it at bay.
Angela didn’t seem to notice. Lisle watched as she nodded, her head bobbing along with the way her needles moved. “Been there all day. None of us had the inclination to ask what it’s there for.”
Lisle sighed. “You dinna’ need to. It’s him.”
“That’s what we suspicioned. Must you dawdle so?”
Angela wasn’t going to like looking at herself very much when she was older.
Lisle looked at the lines of concentration stretching across her forehead, and how she was squinting slightly, bringing creases to both sides of her eyes.
The girl was prematurely aging. Lisle only hoped it wasn’t partly due to her failure at nurturing, protecting, and being a mother to her.
Her shoulders set, making her wince slightly.
It was ridiculous. She’d walked before. She’d lived with sliver-filled palms for days now.
She’d never had the weight of censure and banishment accompanying it before, though.
Well and good, then. She couldn’t change her future.
All she could do was make certain those she loved didn’t know what she was paying in order to save them.
The Black Monteith had also promised a dowry to the stepdaughters.
He needn’t know they didn’t consider themselves that anymore.
He could hear the truth of it, along with everyone else.
He could hear it from their own lips, which everyone would—as long as it was later, after he paid.
He was going to pay a dowry, and put it in trust for every one of them.
She’d make certain of it. She still held out hope for the other girls, but sensed that Angela, for one, was going to need her dowry.
She shrugged, moved to the edge of the mattress, put her feet on the floor, sun-warmed by the uncurtained window, and grimaced slightly at how much she ached, before forcing her legs to support her.
They may have warmed the bucket of water, but it was hours earlier.
It was tepid now. Lisle shivered as she touched her fingertips to it, and then told herself she was being ridiculous.
Just yestermorn, before she found out what her future was, she’d bathed by swimming in the loch, luxuriating in the smell and touch of lavender soap, and kicking through water that was ice cold. She hadn’t a hint of a shiver then.
“I wish you’d leave me to this,” Lisle said, pulling the tie undone at the neckline of the one nightgown she’d claimed and owned and worn and washed, until the satin was so threadbare it no longer shone.
“You’ll need help with the donning of it,” Angela replied to her knitting.
Lisle’s heart sank, and her eyes flew to where her wedding dress had hung after they’d bartered the armoire away. They were wedding her off now? Without any more time to assimilate?
“’Tis your own fault, too.”
“It is?” Lisle asked.
“Yours were the fingers applying all the seed pearl buttons and beading, weren’t they?”
“Aye,” she replied.
“There’s nae way to fasten it about oneself without an assist.”
Lisle didn’t think through how Angela’s hands on her back, while she fastened the dress, were going to feel.
She closed her eyes and sent another prayer heavenward, this time asking for the blessing of numbness.
The MacHughs were right. She wasn’t going to go to Monteith unwed, and she wasn’t going to be allowed to stay from it.
She might as well get it over with. The carriage wasn’t going to leave without her, the MacHughs weren’t going to go back to being the MacHughs she knew, and the man she was going to have to wed wasn’t going to disappear if she stalled.
It was only going to loom larger, and the MacHughs would be the ones paying.
They’d start hating what they were doing, they wouldn’t have anyone to turn that emotion onto except her, and if she wasn’t available, they might turn it on themselves.
Lisle wasn’t going to allow that. She was going to dress in her wedding finery, and she was going to act like she wanted to do it. She hoped God was listening to that part of her plan, too.
She pulled the nightgown off her and bent to wring out the cloth they’d given her in order to sponge off. She wasn’t going to worry over her hair. It had been in a bun since yesterday, and beneath that, it was in two braids. That should be sufficient once she had it undone and combed through.
She wrapped the dry cloth about her before walking to the gown, lifting the satin skirt and finding the chemise, real stockings of silk, and petticoats that she’d kept hidden beneath the long, seed-pearl embroidered skirt and train.
She heard Angela’s reaction as the needles stopped their incessant clicking noise, and a smile appeared on Lisle’s lips.
Lisle slid the chemise over her head, sliding her hands along the satin-feel of it, and frowning a bit at how it clung to her breasts, but fell from everywhere else.
She’d sewn it exactly to her own proportions, but a year of toil had slimmed her.
There was no explanation for the increase in her bosom, however.
It was enough that the gossamer weave of tatted lace at the center of the bodice was stretched wide, holding her in place, and creating a valley of shadow where she’d never noticed it before.
She wasn’t going to be able to wear the stockings if she couldn’t stop the broken blisters from weeping.
She went over to the white linen sheet, pulled a corner from the bottom of the mattress, where it wouldn’t easily be seen, and ripped at the sewing that wasn’t ever supposed to come undone.
She had to resort to picking at it before the hem gave, but she had her strips of linen.
She didn’t look up to see what reaction Angela had, and she couldn’t hear if there was one over the sound of ripping material.
The linens had come from her hope chest, they belonged to her, and if she wanted to use strips of them for bandaging, it was for her to decide, not any of them.
She sat to wrap her heels, tying little bows above her ankles, before she could pull the stockings on.
She only winced once as she connected with the bruise on her right buttock from falling on it the other night, when she’d helped rescue the MacHugh war chest. The memory of that time warmed her, calming her incessant shivering for a few moments.
That box had a place of honor in the center of the family, and they all had to admit that without her, it would have been lost.
The stockings were sheer to the point she could spot flesh beneath them.
They were also too large, and weren’t going to stay up without garters.
That was also odd, but she didn’t bother with the reason.
Her legs looked more slender than before.
It wasn’t surprising. Everyone looked like they were slowly starving, and getting thinner was the first sign of it.
Well, that was changing, and it was Lisle that was making it happen.
The shivering restarted. She stood and went to fetch the light blue garters that she’d sewn into the petticoat, so they’d not get lost. She tied them both on, ignoring Angela’s watchful eye, since there wasn’t one click of any knitting needle happening, and then she stood to put the petticoat on.
If Angela thought the dress overworked and laborious, she wasn’t going to have a description for the petticoat.
Lisle had used every bit of skill to embroider small blue butterflies all over the garment, using the stitches to add thickness by quilting a layer of stiffened lace to the underside of it.
The extravagance was even more stunning nearly four years after she’d designed and started creating it, and especially after the time they’d just gone through.