Chapter 20 #2
“Ye told me a fire, ye did not tell me it was close enough to leave a mark on ye.” Katherine’s hand pressed flat to her own chest. “They nearly burned ye before ye’ve even married the man!
This is precisely why women should never trust beasts at a stranger’s gathering.
I’ve said it for years, and no one ever listens. ”
“It was the furnace shed, Katherine. There was no gathering.”
“A furnace shed full of fire is a stranger’s gathering of the worst sort, is it nae? The principle stands regardless.”
Elspeth laughed at that, properly, the first time in days the sound had come without her having to reach for it.
Katherine took the laugh as permission to seize her by the wrist and haul her indoors, calling instructions over her shoulder to two servants already staggering under the weight of trunks.
“Bring them up. All of them. I’ll nae have Lady Elspeth married in whatever she happens to have hanging in her wardrobe already. I’ve seen it; it’s tragic.”
“There’s nothing wrong with what I have.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it, the way there’s nothing wrong with porridge.”
Katherine had the first trunk open before they’d even reached the bedchamber properly, gowns coming out faster than the maid trailing behind her could catch and fold them.
“This one.” A green, held up, assessed, tossed onto the growing pile atop the bed.
“Nay, too hopeful. This one.” A grey, held next to it.
“Better. Tragic. The sort of color a woman wears when her Laird’s gone and nearly gotten himself killed in a fire two days before their handfasting and she must simply endure it with dignity. ”
“Magnus is fine.”
“He’s fine now. Every Highland romance I’ve ever read has exactly one scene where the hero rides off into danger the night before the wedding, and the heroine’s left to manage in an appropriately tragic gown while she waits.”
“He isnae riding anywhere.”
“Nae yet.” Katherine held up the grey gown against her own reflection, considering. “But it costs nothing to be prepared. I’ve heard from three separate servants already that he carried burning beams out with his bare hands. That’s nae a man inclined to sit still.”
Elspeth opened her mouth to argue the point and found, again, that she didn’t have the words, which Katherine accepted as victory and returned to the trunk with renewed enthusiasm.
Liam appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, a third chest balanced against one hip.
“Where does this one go?”
“Anywhere, love. I’ve lost track.”
He set it down with visible relief and straightened, one hand pressed briefly to the small of his back.
“I stopped asking questions somewhere around the second trunk,” he said to no one in particular, though his eyes found Elspeth’s. “Ye have me sympathies. And Magnus has them doubly.”
“He’s mentioned as much. Several times, in fact, and always in the tone of a man composing his own eulogy.”
“Aye, he would.” Liam’s mouth twitched. “We stoic types tend to recognize our own.”
It was then that a smaller figure edged out from behind his legs, where she’d apparently been standing the whole while, overlooked in the chaos of trunks and gowns and Katherine’s running commentary.
Little Agnes had grown taller since Elspeth had last seen her—or simply straightened, chin level, hands folded properly in front of her skirts, the way a girl stood when she’d been practicing.
She dropped into a curtsey, slow and precise, the exact shape Katherine’s would have taken.
“Me Lady,” Agnes greeted gravely. “Congratulations on yer upcoming nuptials.”
Elspeth knelt. “Oh, Agnes.” She held her arms open. “Come here.”
Agnes held herself stiffly for exactly two seconds—Elspeth counted them, mostly out of fondness—before her composure broke, small arms coming up around her neck with a fierceness that had nothing formal left in it at all.
“I told Da I wanted to come,” Agnes said, voice muffled against her shoulder. “I told him if I didnae get to see the goat again, I’d cry the whole journey, and he said that wasnae a proper reason for a young lady to travel, and I said I didnae care one bit.”
“And here ye are.”
“Here I am.” Agnes pulled back just far enough to study her properly, solemn again. “Is she still fond of chewing things she oughtnae?”
“Considerably more fond of it than when ye last met her.”
Agnes nodded once, satisfied, as though this confirmed something important she’d suspected all along.
Elspeth had to look away and rise back to her feet, because there was something about a child gone serious over the welfare of a goat that threatened to undo her rather more than the moment strictly warranted.
Katherine, watching the whole exchange from beside the trunk with a gown draped over one arm, pressed the back of her hand to her brow with theatrical precision.
“I cannae bear it,” she announced to the room at large. “A child and a goat. I shall weep.”
“Ye’re nae actually weeping.”
“I am considering it. Give me a moment to properly commit to the bit.”
Duncan chose precisely that moment to appear in the doorway, took one look at the room—Katherine draped over a trunk in mock anguish, Agnes holding fast to two fistfuls of Elspeth’s skirts, gowns scattered across every surface not currently occupied by a person—and gripped both sides of the doorframe like a man bracing against a strong wind.
“Ben Cruachan,” he announced, “has become unbearable. Sentiment everywhere I turn. I cannae walk ten feet without tripping over an embrace.”
“Ye’re welcome to join it, Duncan. There’s plenty to go round.”
“I would rather muck out every stall in the stables.” He was already retreating even as he said it.
“Liam, come. Ye’re wanted for something considerably less damp than this room’s about to get, and I’d rather show a man fences and cattle than stand here another moment, watching grown women weep over ribbon. ”
Liam offered Elspeth a brief, sympathetic nod and followed him out without argument.
Elspeth heard Magnus’s voice pick up faintly somewhere past the door, already trading some low remark with Duncan she couldn’t quite catch.
“Now.” Katherine straightened, all business again, reaching for the next trunk before the men’s footsteps had even faded down the corridor. “We have a great deal to do before the handfasting, and I refuse to let ye be married in anything less than the gown ye deserve, so ye may as well settle in.”
Agnes climbed up onto the bed without waiting to be asked and tucked her legs beneath her skirts, settling in.
Elspeth looked between them—Katherine already elbow-deep in fabric again, Agnes watching with grave, unblinking attention, the door standing open to the yard beyond—and found herself, for the first time in what felt like a very long while, simply glad of the noise of it.