Chapter 4
He did not move from the doorway.
Chloe stopped a few feet away, refusing to close the last of the distance herself. “Ye’re the one I am to marry, then.”
“Aye.” His eyes went the length of her, once, unhurried. “Ye were expectin’ someone else?”
“I was expectin’ a letter. A name, at least. Ye’ve had months.”
“I daenae write letters.”
“Then we’re both disappointed.”
Something moved at the corner of his mouth, gone before she could decide if it had been there at all. Behind her, her father said, “Chloe.”
Laird O’Brien’s gaze went past her shoulder to him, then came back.
“We’ll speak after the ceremony,” he said.
He stepped back from the door, clearing the width of it for her, the first breathing space anyone had given her all week.
She went in ahead of him. She did not thank him for it.
The kirk was small inside and candlelit. The warmth hit her first, turning her stomach. She pressed her hand against her father’s arm, not out of willingness but because she needed something solid to hold on to.
A priest stood at the front with his hands folded, maintaining a practiced and neutral expression. Two witnesses she did not recognize stood off to the side. At the altar, with his back turned to her, was her husband-to-be.
Please, God, stop this. Please, daenae let me marry like this.
He turned as she reached the altar. She knew that face already, in pieces — a voice cutting out of a shadowed doorway, eyes that had gone the length of her once, unhurried.
But this was different. Full-lit by candles, front-on, with a priest waiting between them instead of a kirk door, he was harder to hold steady against.
Scars ran along the left side of his jaw and down his neck. Old ones, silver against his skin in the candlelight. She had planned not to look at all, but now she could not take her eyes off him.
This stranger was tall, really tall, and broader than her father with dark hair. He was dressed plainly for a man about to be married.
Then their eyes locked.
They were pale and still, watching her come toward him the way you watched weather moving in across open ground, just steady. Taking her in without offering anything back.
She could not look away. Some part of her refused to be the first one to look at the floor. She would not make it to the altar without her knees giving way. Her father had said he was feared. Standing here with those eyes on her, she understood it as something more than reputation.
Her father brought her to a stop in front of him, and the priest began speaking.
“We are gathered in the sight of God,” the old man said, his voice steady and unhurried, worn smooth by years of saying these same words in rooms very like this one. “To join this man and this woman in the bonds of holy matrimony. A covenant nae entered into lightly, nor abandoned without cost.”
There was a sound like rushing water in her ears. She felt like she might faint. She refused to faint. She locked her knees, breathed through her nose, focused on the distance, and took another breath.
“Edward Mason.” The priest’s eyes moved to him.
“Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health, and forsakin’ all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live? ”
“Aye.” One word. Flat and certain.
She was only vaguely aware of the candles, the smell of tallow, and cold stone.
“And thou, Chloe.” The priest turned to her. “Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to love him, comfort him, honor and obey him, in sickness and in health, and forsakin’ all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”
The word “obey” sat in her chest like a stone dropping into still water.
She suddenly and sharply became aware of the man beside her—the steadiness of him.
“Aye,” she said quietly.
Then her father took her hand and placed it into the man’s.
She flinched. She could not help it. A small movement, barely noticeable, but she felt it ripple through her entire body.
His eyes flicked to her, surprise shining in them before he quickly masked his feelings.
His hand was large, warm, and he grasped hers with a steady, impersonal grip—like holding something that was now his and needed nothing more.
She felt a slight squeeze from him, but before she could interpret it, her father leaned in close to the man’s ear.
“The debt is fully settled,” he stated.
The man said nothing. A sound came from deep in his chest, barely a grunt, the smallest acknowledgment possible. His eyes stayed fixed on the priest.
Chloe felt the heat climb up from her chest to her face.
The debt is fully settled.
She meant nothing to him. A debt. A number on a page that had been bothering her father long enough that he had gone to the trouble of finding her and handing her over to clear it.
She stood in the candlelight with her hand inside a stranger’s, her stomach still churning. But her spine stayed straight, and her jaw clenched. She watched the priest’s moving mouth and felt the humiliation ripple through her and spread outward until it reached her fingertips.
She looked at the man beside her. At his profile, the line of his jaw, the scar running down it. He was looking straight ahead. Still. Utterly unmoved. As though she were not standing beside him at all. As though none of this cost him a single thing.
I am nae even a person to him. Only a debt repaid.
She did not understand how someone could remain so aloof, standing in a kirk like he had been carved out of the highlands themselves.
She did not understand how her entire life could be decided in a room this small, with candles this ordinary, and no one had once thought to ask her a single word about any of it.
The priest was still talking.
The cord was white linen, simple, wound around their joined hands by the priest with the careful deliberateness of a man who had done this many times and still treated it as something that mattered. Chloe watched it loop, cross, and settle against her skin.
This is real now.
Something about the cord made this moment land differently. Made it land in her body in a way the road and the gates and the kirk had not. This was happening.
I cannae escape this. This is me life now.
The priest spoke the old words. The candles burned. Outside, the wind had picked up, and she could hear it moving against the stone walls of the kirk, low and steady, the only sound beside the priest’s voice that felt real.
She focused on it. The wind. The way it moved against the old stone.
She needed something outside herself to hold onto, or she was going to fall apart in front of all of them.
She did not know what came after this room.
She had not let herself think past it all week because thinking beyond that meant imagining a life she had no shape for yet.
A castle she had not seen. A man she did not know.
A name that was not hers yet, but would be by the time she walked back out that door.
Then the priest finished.
He unwound the cord slowly, stepped back, and folded it over his hands, and it was finished.
Ten years with Jenny. A mother she was only now beginning to understand she had never fully known.
A father who had traded her to settle a debt.
All of it had led to this small room, these ordinary candles, and a man whose name she had only learned an hour earlier.
Her husband shifted his weight and leaned down toward her, close enough that she felt the warmth of him before she heard his voice. She went very still. Every muscle in her body pulled tight at once. It came low and quiet, meant for no one but her.
“Ye’re tremblin’, little wife.” A pause. “Daenae fash. I will nae hurt ye.”
She turned her head to look at him. Her heart was very loud.
He was closer than she expected. Those pale eyes were looking down at her.
“Unless ye want me to.”
The air left her lungs entirely. She felt the heat climb from her chest to her throat, then crawl over her face.
She had no time to hide it, so she lifted her chin.
“I daenae,” she said quietly. “Me Laird.” The title came out exactly as she intended. Respectful enough that he could not fault her for it, and nothing more. “And I daenae want ye to touch me either, though I understand that may nae be entirely up to me, as I now have a duty to ye as yer wife.”
She turned back to the front of the kirk before the heat in her face could betray her entirely.
From the side of her eye, she saw something shift in his expression. The corner of his mouth pulled back just slightly, a ghost of something that in another man and another moment she might have called a smile.
“Daenae be afraid then, lass.” His voice dropped further, quieter, closer. “I will take me time learnin’ how ye like to be touched.”
Her face went hot.
She turned back to face the front of the kirk before he could see the full extent of it, spine straight, chin level, hands folded in front of her with a composure she did not feel deep down.
Behind her, she heard her father speak to the priest. Next to her, she sensed her husband watching her.
A shiver moved through her before she could stop it, visible enough that the man beside her caught it. He did not look at her directly. His eyes stayed forward.
“Are ye cold?” he asked, low enough that only she could hear.
She considered lying. “The kirk is drafty.”
“Aye.” A pause. “Most of them are.”
She glanced sideways at him. “Is that meant to be a comfort?”
“It’s meant to be a fact.”
She almost said something sharp back. She stopped herself, surprised to find that the impulse was there at all.
Her father stepped forward then, extending his hand to Edward. “A fine thing,” he said. “Done cleanly.”
Laird O’Brien looked at the offered hand for a moment before taking it. His grip was brief. “Aye,” he said. Nothing more.
Her father turned to Chloe with the same expression, as though he expected some acknowledgment of the occasion. She gave him none.
The man beside her shifted his weight and leaned down toward her, close enough that she felt the warmth of him before she heard his voice. She went very still. Every muscle in her body pulled tight at once. It came low and quiet, meant for no one but her.
"One of the guards will see ye to yer rooms." His voice had gone flatter now, businesslike, though his eyes held on her face a beat longer than the words needed. "I have matters to finish here first."
She nodded, not trusting herself to say anything back, and turned before he could see whatever crossed her face at being handed off yet again, this time to a stranger she hadn't even been given a name for.
Edward watched her go.
He did not move from where he stood. The priest was saying something to his man about the paperwork, and the witnesses were collecting their cloaks.
The candles were burning down, and none of it required anything from him.
He was good at standing still in rooms that were finishing around him. He had had enough practice at it.
He had not expected his bride to look at him the way she had.
He had expected fear. Most people showed at least some of it. The scars helped, or the silence, or simply his presence in a room. She looked at the scars then looked away, then looked back into his eyes, and she never looked at the floor.
Foolish. Or brave.
He did not know what to do with that.
The priest finished his business. Edward’s man handed him a document that was already signed on his end. He took it without looking.
She has freckles across her nose.
The observation arrived unbidden, and he dismissed it immediately.
It was irrelevant. None of it mattered. He had asked for a wife because the clan needed stability, and the bairn needed a mother.
Those were practical needs with practical solutions.
He had drafted a contract to settle a debt.
He had signed it. He had stood in a kirk and said the words.
That was what he had agreed to, and he was a man who kept to his word.
His hand was still warm where she had pressed her fingers against his palm. It had been a small, ordinary thing he had not expected to notice.
Her eyes are brown.
He cleared his throat.
Enough!
He placed the document on the altar and walked out into the darkness without looking back.
The air outside was cold and pure. He took a deep breath and let it settle in.
The arrangement was complete. The contract was fulfilled.
What he felt while standing in that kirk was simply surprise, the kind any man might feel when something turned out differently than expected.
It will pass.
He would make sure of it.