Chapter Five
ON THE MORNING of my wedding day, I awoke to the gushing excitement of my sisters and my attendants.
For them, the day promised fun, festive possibilities and a brighter future for the entirety of our clan.
For me, however, it offered a wholly different view.
I pulled the furs over my head to block out the light and relentless activity.
But my attempts to hide were quickly thwarted and I was fawned over, undressed and helped into my bath, which had been brought into the room and filled with perfumed, steaming water. “You’ve lost weight, Stella,” commented Ann. “You’re not eating enough.”
It was true. My stomach had been too uneasy for food, almost from the moment my father had presented me with the news of my impending marriage.
And I was naturally somewhat slimmer than my sisters, although still curvy enough to fill out the fashionable wedding dress I would wear, designed and prepared for me by none other than Kade’s sister, Ailie Mackenzie.
The dress had been fitted the previous day, and the waist had needed only minor adjustments.
After much deliberation, it had been decided that I would wear my hair down for the wedding ceremony, as my many attendants found its dark waving tendrils with their golden tips pleasing against the off-white of the velvet dress.
“You shouldn’t lose too much weight, Stella,” Maisie scolded me. “Men don’t like their women too thin.”
The very subject of men in general—and one man in particular—was enough to start my stomach fluttering again.
Whatever preferences Kade Mackenzie held for the size and shape of a woman’s body were shady, disquieting details that sent my heart racing.
I stood up, dripping onto the floor as I made a move to step out of my bath.
“I can’t do it. I cannot marry him. I don’t love him, and I don’t want to share his marriage bed. ”
Hands were on me, stroking my hair and easing me back into the warm water.
“’Tis not about love, sister,” said Clementine, soothing in tone but hardly in subject.
“’Tis about duty, honor, protection. You’ll be lady of the clan one day soon, remember.
Your comfort, your bidding, your every wish will be ours to provide you.
Your child will be heir of Glenlochie. You’ll have a new status to be proud of, and one which you’re bound to fulfill with grace, as kind and gentle as you are.
” After a moment, Clementine added, somewhat grimly, “You can’t run from your duty, Stella.
” And I felt for her then, I truly did. It should have been her, the eldest, to bear the heir: a thought that plagued her, I could see it written on her face.
It should not have been me, the second child.
Rather than fulfilling all the promise of her status as firstborn, she would see out her childbearing years in the self-imposed isolation of a nunnery, nursing her own heartbreak and defeat.
And in the light of this truth that was clearly painful for her, I took her comment to heart.
Nay, I could not run from my duty, a duty she coveted, yearned for, cried for and one that had passed her by.
And Maisie, too. For all their faults, they were my sisters and I wanted to keep them safe and protected.
For my family, I wanted to do right. My clan was depending on me, and I would not fail them, no matter what reservations I had about my soon-to-be husband.
“There are other duties you’ll need to carry out, too, Stella,” said Maisie. “Wifely duties that a husband will expect.”
I had heard some of these wifely duties discussed by my sisters, first when Clementine had been preparing for marriage—twice—and then when Maisie had been expecting a proposal from Wilkie Mackenzie.
But I had studiously avoided thinking too closely about what such duties might entail.
My sisters, however, liked details. “Firstly,” began Maisie, “a husband expects his wife to undress him.”
My soft groan was acknowledged with patting hands, but we all knew there was little they could do to help me aside from informing me and doing their best to pick up the pieces after the fact.
“He might not demand that of you on the first night,” Clementine offered.
“How would one even go about undressing Kade Mackenzie without getting speared?” asked Agnes.
“Aye, sounds dangerous,” agreed Ann. “Getting past all those blades might present a challenge.”
“Some husbands, I’ve heard,” continued Maisie, “like their wives to feed them. It makes them feel powerful, I would imagine.” Her comment trailed off wistfully, and I had no doubt in that moment that she had planned to serve her own husband—lost to her forevermore—in these ways and any other she could imagine.
“And then, of course,” added Clementine, “the marriage bed presents its own...duties.”
“The marriage bed is a minor detail to be endured,” offered Ann, perhaps noticing my stricken expression. But her words offered no solace; she knew less about what to expect than even I did.
“You don’t have to remain faithful,” said Maisie quietly. This comment was met with a moment of awkward silence. Maisie didn’t have to mention his name for the reference to be brutally clear. “He’ll likely be allowed to return to Glenlochie once you’re officially married.”
“Just wait until your husband strays before you do,” advised Agnes. “Ainsley Munro told me that her cousin’s husband annulled their marriage when he found out about his wife’s affair, and he was legally allowed to. But if he’d strayed first, then there are no legal grounds for an annulment.”
“Is that true?” asked Clementine, intrigued.
“Aye, she told me, too,” Maisie confirmed. “And it’s true that most men do stray. At least that’s what I’ve heard. And I’d wager Kade Mackenzie will be no different, especially if the rumors of his...vigor are true.”
“Well, hopefully Kade will stray,” Ann added softly. “He can seek his dark pleasures elsewhere. Then Stella can get what she wants.”
Their chatter continued somewhere outside my scope and I let my head slip under the bathwater to further distance myself.
In just a few short hours I would be wed to and irrevocably bound to a man I had met but a handful of times, whose unholy vibrancy haunted me from afar.
At this moment what I felt was fear, but I could acknowledge a curiosity, too, or what might have been better described as a survivalist instinct.
I wanted to begin to emotionally prepare myself for what lay ahead.
I couldn’t help letting my mind tread in disturbing directions.
Tonight. The marriage bed. With Kade Mackenzie.
Would he be kind? Or brutish? Would he be cold and disinterested, or possessive and demanding?
Would he hurt me? Maisie and Bonnie had spoken to me about the very adventurous marriagelike activities they’d both indulged in with men they desired to wed.
For Bonnie, the future looked bright. I worried for Maisie, having given herself like that, so fully, to a man who was now someone else’s husband; I worried that it would indeed have an impact on her chances for marriage to another man.
She regretted nothing, though, she insisted.
Those private moments with Wilkie Mackenzie, she’d said, were some of the most pleasurable and treasured of her life.
I wondered if my experiences would be at all pleasurable.
Despite Agnes’s gossip, or perhaps because of it, I thought that possibility unlikely.
Aye, Kade affected me in unusual ways. The rippling, primal awareness that seemed to infuse me whenever he was near: it was a reaction I had attributed to fear, but there was a warmth to my lingering panic that was quite removed from trepidation, which I might have described as wary curiosity.
His grip on my shoulders had been so sure, so strong yet in no way painful.
His rasped surprise that was laced with the slightest trace of vulnerability. Stella.
Nevertheless, I was too accustomed to violence to expect anything less of him, and this type of impending violence would be more personal and more damaging than anything I had so far experienced: this I knew.
If I hadn’t been pulled up to have my hair washed and attended to, I might have stayed in my underwater haven, to slip away and never know.
As it was, I was so lost in my silent, fevered reservations that before I even knew what was happening, I was bathed, dried, dressed, primped, polished and perfumed to within an inch of my life, and ready to attend my own wedding.
* * *
IF I HAD been in a better state to appreciate such things, I might have registered through the haze of my distraction that the day was sunny and warm, that the mood was festive, that Kinloch’s small chapel was an exquisite, reverential space with its white walls and shards of colored light.
I floated through the proceedings as though watching them from a protective distance.
My gown was beautiful; that much I could appreciate.
Its crushed velvet fabric was white yet tinged with pale shades of pink.
The fitted bodice was inlaid with white silk ribbons, intricately woven in a seashell pattern.
The long skirt fell elegantly to the floor, and the hem was gathered with shiny white pieces of shell.
I wore a lace veil that offered me a welcome barrier against the events of the day, for now.