Chapter 27 #2
The name, given without title, might once have startled her. Now, it steadied her.
“I dinnae ken what tae dae with it,” Isobel continued, and hated the helplessness of the confession even as it escaped her.
“When he looks at me kindly, I am undone. When he daesnae look at me, I am offended. When he touches me, I feel…” She stopped, mortified by the very direction of her honesty.
“I feel too much. And I cannae tell whether I am foolish, or merely late in discovering that I have a heart.”
Sorcha gave a little laugh, but it was a tender one. “There is naething wrong with falling fer yer own husband.”
Isobel looked at her through the mirror. “Even when he became me husband by force of every circumstance but me own choosing?”
“Especially then, if ye chose him afterward.” Sorcha set a careful hand upon Isobel’s shoulder. “That is the part that matters. The beginning was cruel. But what has grown since then belongs tae ye both.”
Isobel’s throat tightened.
“And,” Sorcha added, with a return of mischief at the corner of her mouth, “it daesnae seem tae me that the feeling is wandering about the castle alone.”
Isobel turned. “What dae ye mean?”
“I mean that Laird Ruaridh MacLean has looked at ye these past days as if every man in the room had become an inconvenience merely by being present.”
“That isnae love.”
“Nay,” Sorcha agreed readily. “It is a man fighting very hard nae tae be obvious.”
Despite herself, Isobel smiled. The expression trembled, uncertain whether it wished to become laughter or tears.
Belowstairs, another burst of activity rose and faded. A door opened and men’s voices sounded clearer for a moment before distance swallowed them. Isobel’s hands chilled.
Sorcha noticed, of course. “Now what thought has taken hold?”
“The guests.”
“Ah.” Sorcha reached for a small comb upon the dressing table. “Them.”
“I ken they are his friends.”
“Aye.”
“That daesnae mean they shall be pleased tae meet me.”
Sorcha began to arrange the loose pieces of Isobel’s hair, her fingers gentle at the temples. “They are coming fer a feast, nae an execution.”
Isobel tried to share the humor and failed.
“The clan was cold when I came here. Some still are, though less so now. I cannot blame them entirely. I bear the wrong name fer these walls, and a name can enter a room before a woman has said a single word. What if his friends are nae different? What if they look at me and see only a MacDonald sitting where a MacLean wife ought tae sit?”
Sorcha’s face appeared over her shoulder in the mirror, all earnestness now. “Then they will be fools fer the length of a first impression and wiser by the end of supper.”
“Supper may nae be long enough.”
“With ye? It will be plenty.”
Isobel gave her a look.
“I mean it,” Sorcha nodded. “They are kind people. Nae weak, mind ye. None of the laird’s friends could afford tae be that. But good. They have stood beside him through enough darkness that they ken better than most what cruelty looks like. They willnae mistake ye fer it.”
Isobel wanted very much to believe her. Wanting it made belief more dangerous.
Sorcha moved to the bed and lifted the clan brooch Isobel had set there earlier.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The metal gleamed in the firelight, familiar and fraught, its weight holding more than ornament ever ought.
Once, wearing it had been defiance, then remembrance.
Now Isobel was no longer certain what it was.
Proof, perhaps, that a woman could carry one name into another house and not be divided in two.
Sorcha brought it to her. “Will ye wear it taenight?”
Isobel looked down at the brooch, then toward the door beyond which Ruaridh’s world waited.
“Aye,” she confirmed softly. “But nae as a challenge.”
Sorcha pinned it with care. “As what, then?”
Isobel thought of Ruaridh’s hand covering hers in the dark, of his voice lowered near her ear, of the terrible tenderness of being known by the very man she had once sworn to hate.
“As meself,” she said.
Sorcha’s smile was quiet and very pleased. “That will dae.”
A knock sounded then, firm but not hurried. Isobel’s heart gave one traitorous leap. Sorcha went to the door and opened it only a little. A servant spoke beyond, too low for Isobel to catch every word, though the meaning required no announcement.
Sorcha closed the door and turned back.
“Well?” Isobel asked, though she already knew.
“They have come.”
For one breath, fear rose again, swift and cold. Then Isobel looked once more into the looking glass. The woman there was pale, perhaps, but not weak and her heart, foolish and newly disobedient, continued to beat.
Sorcha came to her side and gave her hand a squeeze. “Come, me lady. Let them meet ye.”
Isobel drew in the warm air of the chamber, scented with peat smoke and lavender from the linen chest. Then she released it slowly.
“Aye,” she said.
And because it was no small thing to walk toward the people who might reject her, nor a small thing to hope they would not, Isobel lifted her chin, gathered her skirts, and went to meet her husband’s friends.