Chapter Four #3
“That’s absolutely beautiful,” Angela said, showing that despite her best intentions, she was female, and had a feminine appreciation for such things.
Lisle smiled across at her. “My thanks. I designed it myself.”
“You did?”
“Aye. And if you like I’ll help design one when you—” Lisle’s voice stopped as a pained, shuttered expression shut down her stepdaughter’s animation of a moment before.
“Forgive me,” she said, after clearing her throat.
“I wasn’t thinking. You won’t want anything to do with me once this is over.
I understand. I do. Please let everyone know. Will you do that for me?”
Angela looked across at her, and for a moment, Lisle could have sworn she saw the glimmer of unshed tears in her eyes, before she blinked them into nonexistence again.
That was a good sign. This wasn’t killing off every bit of her capacity for love.
Lisle didn’t want that to happen. Someday, the girl facing her was going to wed some upstanding, righteous Scotsman, if there was still one of marriageable age alive, and she was going to bring future MacHughs into being, and the last thing Lisle wanted was to know Angela wasn’t a loving mother because of something her second, and final, stepmother might have or have not done.
She buttoned the petticoat into place, although it didn’t fit on her waist like it used to, and would probably rotate about, and then she reached for the gown.
Angela was there before she was, reverently taking the dress from the wooden hook it had been hanging from, and sliding her fingers over the creasing that hanging in such a position for so long had made in the shoulders, in order to take the worst of it out.
Lisle watched her and then lifted her eyes to meet Angela’s.
There were definitely tears in the depths, and it took the most severe effort of Lisle’s life to suck the answering moisture in her own eyes back in.
It was better to be numb and nonemotional, and listen to Angela trying to be assertive.
The smile she gave was shaky, as was the girl’s answering one.
“Let’s get this over with. Fair?” Lisle asked.
The girl nodded, and lifted the dress to get it over Lisle’s head.
It was a good thing they hadn’t undone her bun and brushed out her hair yet, for the dress would have ruined every bit of it with how it clung to and scratched everything it touched.
Lisle lifted her lip into a slight smile as she remembered that part of it.
Such embroidery and seed pearl enhancement came with a price.
Inner threads that itched and caught on strands of hair and on the lace centerpiece of the chemise, regardless of the satin she’d lined the inside with.
Then she was standing, facing the window as the sun moved into a position heralding dusk.
She’d slept the entire day away? It didn’t seem possible, but it was just as well.
She didn’t want the others trying to be hard-shelled and stiff-backed, and she didn’t dare put her numbness through much more testing.
Angela’s fingers gained competence as she started at the waistline, sliding the hundreds of little loops Lisle had sewn onto the pearls that would hold them, until she ended at the top of Lisle’s neck.
Then her fingers were unwrapping the bun and unbraiding the hair.
Lisle let her. The girl was taller, making it simpler, and she guessed this was Angela’s way of asking apology for her curtness earlier.
Lisle knew her hair was going to be like a wave-rippled section of the loch, and wasn’t surprised to find it was so, even to where the ends grazed her hip. There wasn’t a veil. They’d used it up as bandaging when Angus had first reached home…after Culloden. That was all right.
“You look beautiful, Lisle.” The girl breathed the words. “It’s a shame…” Her voice dribbled off.
“That it’s to be wasted on Monteith as my groom?” Lisle supplied.
The girl nodded.
“I had a good look the other day. It’s not too onerous. He’s a right comely man, if one gets past what…he is.”
“That’s na’ going to be easy. He’s immense. I’ve heard tales. He’s evil. He’s frightening.”
Lisle frowned. “I ken as much,” she whispered.
“I doona’ envy you,” Angela said softly.
“I’ll just have to keep my mind on his handsomeness, and not on what it hides.” She took a deep breath. “He does have that, you know.”
“I know. I saw him.”
“Yes.” There were those shivers again. The ones she’d die before admitting to.
Lisle frowned. They didn’t stop. They got stronger.
She gulped. “He’s tall, he’s manly, and he’s gorgeous.
Why, if this was taking place under other circumstances…
” She almost got it out before her voice failed, and she just let it trail off.
To do anything else would crack her composure open.
That, she wasn’t going to allow. She was not going to let anyone know what Monteith was doing to her.
That would be the worst indignity of a whole heap of the same ever since she’d met him.
Angela put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed slightly. Then it was gone, as she stepped back and tilted her head to one side, as if surveying their handiwork, and not like she’d just put almost more weight atop her stepmother’s shoulders than she could support and still go through with it.
“Doona’ move. I’ve got an idea,” Angela said.
“For what?” Lisle asked.
“A circlet about your head. We can fashion one from the creeping azalea that Mary brought back from the cliffs just this morn, although I’ve told her over and over not to go there. I’ll be right back.”
Lisle looked levelly across at Angela and nodded solemnly. She didn’t trust her voice.