Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next day Mistress Greer arrived in the hall with an armful of fabric swatches and a face like a woman preparing for battle, dropping the whole bundle onto the long table with a thump that sent two bolts of cloth sliding to the floor.
"Right," Greer said, before Grisselle had even taken her seat. "We have a great deal to see to and precious little time to see to it in, so we'll start now and argue about the rest as we go."
"Isobel mentioned fabric." Grisselle picked up a swatch of deep green wool, turning it toward the window light. "I didn't realize it meant quite this much fabric."
"It never means less than this much fabric me Lady.
Ye're marrying a Laird, nae eloping with a tinker.
" Greer began sorting the swatches into piles with brisk, practiced hands.
"The whole glen will be watching, and half of them hoping for something to gossip about after. We'll nae give them the satisfaction."
"Has a date even been set?" Grisselle asked, already suspecting the answer.
"Nae officially. But preparations daenae wait on officially, me Lady. They wait on nothing at all, in me experience." Greer held up a bolt of cream linen, considered it, and set it aside. "The moment that man opens his mouth and gives us a day, I intend to already have half the work done."
The door banged open before Grisselle could answer, and Isobel swept in without waiting to be invited, dropping into the seat beside her as though she'd been summoned personally.
"I heard fabric," Isobel announced. "I am nae missing fabric."
"Ye werenae invited," Greer said, without looking up.
"I invited meself. It's more efficient." Isobel reached across the table and plucked up a swatch of deep russet wool, holding it against Grisselle's hair. "Oh, that's good. That's very good. Greer, look at that against her coloring."
"I have eyes, Isobel. I already saw it."
"Well, I wanted to see it too." Isobel set the swatch down, satisfied, and reached for the next one. "What's this, then? The clan colors?"
"Herston plaid, aye. Ye'll want it somewhere in the dress, even if it's only the sash. The clan expects it."
"I don't know the first thing about what the clan expects," Grisselle admitted.
"Then it's fortunate ye have the two of us," Isobel said cheerfully. "First rule, never let old Fergus MacKay anywhere near the whisky before the vows are said. Second wedding I've been to where he got into it early, and he wept through the entire ceremony and then proposed to the officiant."
"He did not."
"He absolutely did. The poor man had to explain, in front of God and half the parish, that he was already married." Isobel grinned at the memory. "Fergus doesnae remember any of it, which is possibly for the best."
Greer made a small, disapproving noise that wasn't quite a denial. "The man's harmless. Just keep the good whisky locked until after the vows, same as always, and he'll behave himself well enough."
"What about food?" Grisselle asked, partly to steer the conversation somewhere she might actually be useful, partly because she was curious. "What does the clan expect there?"
"Venison, for certain," Greer said. "And plenty of it. A wedding with thin meat is a wedding folk talk about for the wrong reasons. We'll want the whole hog as well, and bannocks enough to feed twice the guests we're expecting, because half of them will bring cousins nobody invited."
"That seems needlessly complicated."
"It's Highland hospitality, Grisselle. Complicated is the whole point." Isobel reached for an oatcake from the tray Greer had apparently brought along for exactly this purpose, taking a bite before continuing. "Also, absolutely no fish. Nae one course, nae even a garnish."
Grisselle blinked. "Why not?"
"Bad luck," Greer said, entirely serious. "A Herston bride served fish at her own wedding three generations back, and the groom drowned inside the year."
"That seems like an enormous coincidence to build an entire rule around."
"Aye, well, ye're welcome to test it," Greer said, "though I'd advise against it, given who ye're marrying."
Grisselle set down the swatch she'd been holding. "Point taken. No fish."
"Now." Isobel dusted the crumbs from her fingers and reached for a fresh sheet of paper, apparently having appointed herself the keeper of the guest list. "We'll need the MacKays, obviously, and the Frasers from the glen, and Father Iain, and…
" she paused, pen hovering, "do we invite the MacCarrons? "
The table went briefly quiet.
"That's a question for yer brother," Greer said carefully.
"Me brother willnae answer it. He'll grunt at me and walk away, same as he does with every question that requires him to think about something other than the sea."
"Then leave it for now," Greer said. "There's time yet to sort out who we're feuding with this season."
"We're always feuding with the MacCarrons. It's practically a hobby at this point." Isobel wrote something down regardless, though Grisselle couldn't see what. "Right. Flowers, then. Grisselle, what do ye want?"
"I hadn't thought that far."
"Well, think now. It's yer wedding."
Grisselle considered it, turning a swatch of pale blue linen over in her hands. "Something simple. I don't need an armful of hothouse roses shipped in from England to feel married."
"Good," Greer said, with evident relief. "Because ye'd be waiting until spring for hothouse roses, and I doubt the Laird has that kind of patience once he's finally set a date."
"Heather, then," Isobel said. "It's in bloom now, it's everywhere for free, and it looks better in a Highland hall than anything ye could import at twice the cost."
"Heather it is." Grisselle found she meant it. "My grandfather used to say a bride carrying heather was carrying the whole hillside with her."
"Yer grandfather sounds like he'd have gotten along well with half this castle," Greer said, and something in her voice went a shade warmer than before.
"What about the Laird's colors?" Isobel asked, tapping her pen against the paper. "He'll want the Herston plaid somewhere on him, at least, even if he pretends he doesnae care."
"Does he care?"
"He cares about everything and admits to none of it. Ask him what he wants and he'll say 'whatever's simplest,' and then scowl for a week if it's the wrong shade of anything." Isobel grinned. "Get Greer to choose. She's the only one who's ever gotten it right."
"Rowan berries in the hall," Greer said, without hesitation. "He asked for it at his sister's christening, twenty-odd years back, and never said why. I've never forgotten it."
Grisselle's hand went still on the swatch of pale blue linen, thumb tracing the same inch of fabric twice before she noticed she'd stopped talking.
"He'd have argued with Senga about oatcakes within the hour," she said finally, and Isobel laughed loud enough that Greer had to shush her, though she was smiling too as she did it.
"Aye, that sounds about right," Greer said. "He's never once let a kitchen keep its own opinion in peace."
They went on like that for the better part of the afternoon.
Arguing over whether the tables should run the length of the hall or across it, whether the pipers should play before the vows or only after, whether Grisselle's dress ought to have sleeves at all given how cold the chapel got in the mornings.
Isobel produced increasingly improbable second-hand wedding disasters from clans three valleys over, each one somehow worse than the last.
"Tell her the goat one," Isobel said to Greer, already grinning in anticipation.
"I'll nae tell it. Ye'll tell it wrong and make it funnier than it was, and then I'll have to correct ye, and we'll be here till supper."
"Then ye tell it properly, and I'll sit quietly."
Greer gave her a look and set down her needle regardless. "This was the MacInnes wedding, three summers past. The bride's own mother had raised a goat from a kid, kept it in the kitchen garden, spoiled it something rotten. Fed it scraps from her own hand every morning."
"Naming it 'Bonnie,'" Isobel put in. "Which should have been the first warning."
"I said I'd tell it, Isobel."
"Sorry. Continue."
"The morning of the wedding, a girl left the garden gate open no more than a minute, fetching flowers for her hair, and Bonnie took the opportunity as only a goat can.
Walked herself straight into the chapel, up the center aisle, bold as any Laird, right as the priest was asking if anyone present objected to the union. "
Grisselle had gone still, bread forgotten halfway to her mouth. "It didn't."
"It did. Stood there chewing on the corner of the bride's own veil, looking the priest dead in the eye the whole while, like it had every right to an opinion on the matter."
"What did the priest do?"
"Fainted," Isobel said, delighted. "Dead away. Cracked his head on the stone step and had to be revived with whisky meant for the toast."
"He did nae faint," Greer said. "He merely sat down rather suddenly."
"He fainted."
"He sat down, Isobel, with considerable haste, which is a different thing entirely from fainting, and I'll thank ye to tell it accurately if ye insist on interrupting me every second sentence."
"Fine. He sat down. Suddenly. In a manner indistinguishable from fainting.
" Isobel turned back to Grisselle, entirely unrepentant.
"The groom had to finish reading the vows himself, off the priest's own book, while two grown men wrestled a goat out of a chapel by its horns and the bride stood there laughing so hard she couldnae say her own name when it came time to say it. "
"That part, at least, is true," Greer allowed. "I heard it from three separate sources who couldnae possibly have coordinated the lie between them, so I'm inclined to believe the goat, at least, actually happened."
"The goat absolutely happened," Isobel said. "I have opinions about the fainting."
"Ye werenae there, Isobel."
"Neither were ye."
"I have better sources."