Chapter Seven #3
Mattie looked over her shoulder at him, grinning, as she pulled an iron pin out of her carefully coiffed hair. “How old are they?”
“Elsbeth has seen eleven years and Madeleine has seen nine,” he said. “Sometimes, we call Madeleine ‘Maddy,’ so in order not to confuse you with my ridiculous little sister, I hope you do not mind if I only call you Matilda.”
“I do not mind.”
“Good,” he said, watching her unwind the hair from her head in a fascinating moment for him. He’d never watched a woman groom herself before. “Because Mattie is a name for a girl. Matilda is a name for the wife of Cù fola. A great and noble queen.”
She paused in her movements. “Cù fola,” she repeated softly as she translated it. “Blood dog? Blood wolf?”
“Exactly,” he said quietly. “A name the Scots gave me. For fierceness in battle, I suppose.”
She resumed unwinding her hair, but her movements were pensive. “And the name of your castle again?”
“Gleann na Fola.”
“Valley of Blood.”
“Correct.”
She fell silent as she finished unwinding her hair. When it was all unpinned, she began to run a comb through it. “You said that your fortress was brutal and remote,” she said. “I am coming to understand that it must be the truth. Valley of Blood Castle? It sounds like a terrible place.”
Gar had been swept up in watching her comb her hair, the way it glistened in the firelight.
The woman belongs to me, he found himself thinking.
Of all the things he’d thought he would be feeling at this moment, awe wasn’t one of them.
He was positive he’d only feel resentment and bitterness, but that exquisite creature before him had changed his mind.
At least, she had for the moment. He had no idea what he would be feeling in a day or two, but right now, it was awe.
Awe and interest.
“It has its moments of beauty,” he replied belatedly to her comment. “It sits on the banks of a beautiful stream. There is peace in the valley when no one is trying to kill us. And there is an entire city of rabbits nearby. I will trap some and have a cloak made for you.”
She looked at him in horror. “When I was a child, I had rabbits as pets,” she said. “I cannot eat them to this day. Your offer is generous, but I am not sure I could wear a cloak of dead rabbits.”
He snorted. “Not to worry,” he said. “I can have something ugly killed for you so you can wear its hide. How do you feel about ferrets?”
“I had one of those as a pet, too.”
“What haven’t you had as a pet?”
She glanced at him, giggling, because his tone was one of exaggeration. “Pigs,” she said. “Cows. No goats. But plenty of rabbits, ferrets, dogs, and cats.”
He shrugged, sitting down on the bed. “That does not leave me much to work with,” he said. “I can always shave my head and weave you something warm out of my hair.”
Mattie burst into laughter. “A nice scarf, mayhap?”
“Anything you like.”
She continued laughing. “Keep your hair,” she said. “But I appreciate the thought.”
“You are welcome,” he said, grinning because he liked to hear her laugh.
But that also reminded him that this should probably be a serious moment, given what they were about to face together.
Perhaps this moment of levity would be a good segue for what needed to be discussed.
“Now, it seems that we have a duty to attend to this evening.”
She eyed him, momentarily puzzled, but quickly realized what he was saying. “Aye,” she said, turning back to her reflection in the small mirror on the dressing table. “We do.”
“We do.”
She paused. “Does it not seem strange to you that we have only just met, yet we are expected to know each other as a husband and wife?” she said.
“I have always found that a very strange thing about consummation on the night of a wedding. Perfect strangers are expected to know each other intimately.”
He agreed with her. “It does seem strange,” he said. “But men and women have been doing it for centuries. We are not the first and we will not be the last.”
Still combing her hair, she looked at him. “May I be honest with you?”
“I hope you are always honest with me.”
Mattie shook her head. “I did not mean it the way it sounded,” she said. “I simply meant that we have only just truly met one another today and I hope I may always be frank with you. You will not be angry if I speak what is on my mind, will you?”
“Never, as long as it is the truth.”
She sighed and turned back to her comb. “Then I will tell you that I know something of what we are about to do.”
His brow furrowed. “How?” he said, the least bit miffed. “You told me that you have been loyal to the contract.”
She shrugged, almost flippantly. “I had a life before the contract,” she said.
“I was six years of age and a lad my same age kissed me right on the lips. He told me he loved me. Now, I shall not tell you his name, for you may not find him and challenge him, but I will be truthful and tell you that for an entire week, he had my heart.”
Gar fought off a grin. “Is that so?” he said, feigning anger. “Then I must rethink this entire marriage. You did not tell me that you were free with your kisses.”
“You did not ask.”
“And you think this pleases me?”
“I hope it tells you that I’m experienced when it comes to the relations between men and women. I was kissed.”
He burst into soft laughter. “Good,” he said. “Then you can teach me.”
“How to kiss?”
“How to everything.”
She snorted. “Do not be cruel,” she said. “Kissing is, mayhap, the only thing I know about it. I will have to defer to your experience in such matters, though I must say it gives me no joy to think you have had experience.”
“I’ve had no experience at all, at least not with that.”
She stopped combing and looked at him, suspecting what he was telling her but not entirely sure she was right. “I do not understand.”
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at his hands. “I think you do.”
Her suspicions were right. The way he said it, there could be no mistake, and she couldn’t keep the astonishment out of her voice.
“You mean… everything?” she said.
He nodded. “Does that surprise you?”
Mattie set her comb down, the mood suddenly growing quite serious. “Do you mean to tell me that you have never done this before?”
Gar sighed faintly, looking as if he were about to confess something he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to confess.
“I just… never took the opportunity,” he said.
“Believe me—this isn’t a simple thing to admit.
I debated not telling you, but now that we are being honest…
it does not seem right not to tell you. You are my wife, after all.
You should know everything about me. Even… this.”
He seemed uncomfortable and she didn’t want to make it worse by pressing him, but she couldn’t help it. “But why?” she finally said. “You are young and strong and wildly handsome. Surely you… Why not?”
He lifted his big shoulders, as if he didn’t even really know.
“I’ve been fostering since I was six years of age,” he said.
“All I did was work and train, and when I grew older, all I did was perfect my skills as a knight. I was knighted three years before most men because I’d worked so hard at it.
I was, and am, the perfect knight. I’m not saying that there were not women who tried to seduce me, for there have been many, and I’m not saying that I’ve never been kissed by a woman, for I have, but that is as far as anything ever went. ”
Mattie still couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Ever?”
“Ever.”
“And how old are you?”
“About seven or eight years older than you are.”
She shook her head in awe. “I do not mean to make you feel bad, of course, but I find that astonishing,” she said. “You are so… Surely there are women who have thrown themselves at your feet. I know I would have. I think I did.”
He smiled weakly. “There have been a few.”
“They had good taste,” she said. “But you must understand that other than my fostering, and we were very much kept from the men, my experience in seeing the ways between men and women have mostly been with my brother. He has a different woman every week and the soldiers… Well, you know what soldiers do.”
“I do.”
“And you have never wanted to?”
His smile grew, somewhat nervously. “I am not saying that,” he said.
“I have wanted to. But the main reason I have not is this—I told you that I had been faithful to our contract and that has been in place for ten years. That is the truth of it. Prior to that, I was a boy. There were not many opportunities for a lad of thirteen or fourteen years to bed a woman, and at that age, it simply wasn’t on my mind, mostly because my father told me that if I bedded a woman and she became pregnant whilst I was betrothed to you, then he would make sure I could never father a child again. I took it to heart.”
She cocked her head. “So it wasn’t so much restraint or loyalty to the contract as it was fear of your father.”
“That is fair.”
She gazed at him for a moment longer before finally breaking into a grin. “Whatever the reason, I have to say that I am quite surprised,” she said. “But I am also pleased. You saved yourself for me.”
“I did.”
“And I saved myself for you.”
“I am grateful.”
“That means we will be learning this together.”
He nodded. “That is true,” he said. “I hope I do not fail you.”
She stood up. “How could you?” she said. “I know basically what to do, for my mother has told me. So has Agnes, who has, unfortunately, not had the same restraint I have had. She has let men… do things to her. She has done things to them and she has told me about it.”
Gar’s eyebrows lifted at the concerning idea of the promiscuous young woman. “I suppose hearing your friend’s stories are better than knowing nothing and coming into this with terror,” he said. “I think the first thing we need to do, however, is disrobe and get into bed. We can proceed from there.”