Her MacKinnon #4
“Oh, yes, I did.” She carefully rotated the brush, pulling free only two and three stands at a time. “Thank you for all the work you’ve done about the house, the garden.”
“Yer most welcome.” After a moment, he asked. “What am I to wear to this eve?”
“Your blue suit.” Her hands stilled. “A.J., please promise me something.”
He craned his neck to look at her. “Aye?”
“Promise me you won’t get drunk tonight.” The whisky and ale would be flowing like water at the wedding reception. And she really did want to enjoy herself.
He reached over his shoulder and took her left hand in his. Running a finger over her wedding band, he said, “Upon my honour, I will not embarrass ye.”
Right.
She’d given him the perfect opportunity to say he’d learned his lesson and wouldn’t drink and he couldn’t say it.
She jerked the brush free and stomped out of the room.
Two hours later, she found him standing before the parluor window looking like a man on the way to the gallows. The suit he’d worn on their wedding day was now too tight at the shoulders and too loose at the waist. The shirt he’d left open to mid-chest. “Come here.”
He did, his eyes raking over her from her hair to her shoes. “Ye look most lovely. Pale green is most becoming on ye.”
“Thank you.” She did feel pretty in the bridesmaid gown she’d made and prayed Bridget felt the same in her wedding gown.
She tried to button his shirt and, failing, pointed towards the bedroom. “Go on. We need to find something else for you to wear.”
She pulled the cream-coloured sweater she’d knitted during their first year of marriage from the wardrobe. “Try this.”
He was out of his jacket and shirt and into the sweater before she could blink. Running his hands over the intricate nubs and cables, he smiled. “’Tis perfect.”
So why had he never worn it?
Inside the kirk, Alex smiled at those who greeted them, assuming A.J. had known them. At the third pew, Maggie stopped and handed him her purse. “Take a seat. I’ll meet you after the ceremony.”
He slid into the pew and nodded to the strangers sitting next to him.
“We heard about the accident,” the grey-haired woman to his left all but shouted, “How are you feeling?”
“Verra well, thank ye. ’Tis a glorious day, aye?”
Her snow-white eyebrows tented over dull blue eyes. “That’s good, dear.”
When she said no more Alex shrugged and turned his attention to his stark surroundings. Had Rome grown so poor or his clansmen so slack that they no longer bothered with artisans and gold leaf? Humph! His chapel, only half this size, had at least been properly adorned.
The piper and fiddler changed tune and the people around him looked over their shoulders. Following suit, his heart swelled.
There she was, his Maggie, a wreath of flowers decorating her glorious curls, a bouquet of white roses in her hands.
Lovely, but not any more so than when she’d come into the bathroom and had flushed to a heart-catching pink.
Aye, she might be angry with him but beneath her breast beat a heart not yet dead to him, and happy he was to learn it.
But next time he might think twice before doing something as rash as purposely tangling a brush in his hair. She’d damn near scalped him wrenching it out.
The music changed and the congregation rose. The bride glowed as she walked down the aisle in a pretty white gown and took her place next to the groom, who stood proud and smiling, flushed with happiness.
Feeling an unaccountable stab of jealousy, he looked at Maggie, wondering if she felt as he did.
He found her eyes glistening with unshed tears.
Without being told, he knew them to be not those of joy, but of loss and longing.
Wanting nothing more than to bolt from the pew and take her into his arms, he forced himself to remain rooted.
He had, after all, promised not to embarrass her.
After the ceremony, they gathered at the Boar’s Head Pub, a place Alex could only recall in unpleasant flashes, but this time music and laughter greeted them.
Maggie took one look at the crowd, most of which already had ale in hand and caught her lower lip betwixt her teeth.
Hoping to distract her from her worry, he leaned down and pointed to the table set up on the opposite wall. “Look at yon cake.”
“Lovely, isn’t it?” Maggie then pointed to another couple. “There’s Marilyn and John.”
Stomach rumbling, he guided her through the throng to the couple. Maggie greeted them as old friends and Alex followed suit, although he didn’t recognize either of them, they apparently having had little impact on A.J.’s turbulent life – likely a good thing.
“We really like what you’ve done about your place,” the man said. “Almost didn’t recognize it as we passed.”
Maggie grinned. “I didn’t either the first time I saw it. And you should see what he’s doing with the garden.”
The conversation turned to cultivation and Alex eyed the lasses setting up a buffet in the adjoining room.
Humph. If he didn’t put something in his stomach soon, he’d be keeling over.
None too soon the bride and groom entered.
During the cheering, a lass appeared at his elbow with a tray of stemmed goblets.
He took two and handed one to Maggie. The man he presumed to be the bride’s father proposed a toast. The moment the bubbly liquid hit his tongue Alex grimaced.
More toasts ensued. When Maggie emptied her glass, he handed her his full one.
“I mean no offense to our host,” he whispered in her ear, “but are ye sure they’re not trying to kill us, lass? ”
“Since when do you turn down champagne?”
He shrugged.
Another serving lass came by, this time with wider goblets filled with more pale wine. “Some chardonnay?” she asked.
Since it looked suspiciously like the last, he shook his head. What he would have appreciated was whisky. What he needed was food.
Finally a third serving lass came by and offered them bits of salmon on bread. He would have kissed her had he promised not to embarrass Maggie.
While Maggie chatted, he stood behind her right shoulder, eating everything the serving lasses had to offer until they disappeared, and the bride and groom, having greeted everyone, began their first dance.
Moved by the way the pair looked at each other, he slipped his arms about Maggie’s waist. She, relaxed, rested her head on his chest as she watched the couple and he couldn’t help but wonder how A.J. could have let something so precious as her fond regard slip through his fingers.
Thank God he’d been able to assert his will on A.J. whenever the ass had taken it into his head to raise his fist to her and had been able to throw the friggin’ idiot off balance.
At least she no longer had that to fear.
He watched as others began dancing. Their steps were far different from those he’d been taught but then no two couples appeared to be doing the same thing. The music changed again and Maggie swayed with the rhythm. Grinning, he leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “May I have this dance?”
She craned her neck to look up at him. “But you don’t dance.”
“Who said?”
She grinned. “You.”
“Then I lied.”
With a hand at the small of her back, he guided her to the centre of the group. Preferring the way some men wrapped their arms about their woman, he followed suit and Maggie slipped her arms about his neck. Looking up at him, she said, “You’re full of surprises these days, Mr MacKinnon.”
“Ye know not the half of it, m’lady.” But hopefully, she’d come to learn more. He’d grown bone weary of her putting her back to him every night. In hopes of rectifying the situation, he whispered, “Yon bride is fair but ye, my love, are lovelier.”
She cocked her head, a small smile playing at the corner of her full lips. “You think so?”
“Aye, I truly do.” He’d thought so from the first moment he caught sight of her. “Do you recall our meeting?”
“Of course. You were showing off for your friends at the Broadford Fair, had just won a teddy bear. You turned around …”
“And our eyes met. My heart stopped, never having seen anything so lovely.” He smiled at the memory. Aye, he’d wanted her with every fibre of his being upon first sight.
Dear God above, he had … not A.J.
“What’s wrong?”
He shook his head. “Naught, but that I’ve royally tupped up what should have – could have been.”
Her eyes grew glassy and she threaded her fingers through the hair at his nape. “Time has a way of mending wounds … if we really care.”
“I do care, Mary Magdalene MacKinnon, more than ye shall ever know.”
He kissed her then, trying to impart all that he felt, the joy of feeling her in his arms and his regret for all the heartache his need had caused her.
Feeling a tap on his arm, he pulled out of the luxurious haze Maggie had induced and found Mickey grinning up at him. “Time to eat, Romeo.”
He looked about and found everyone, including the musicians, had moved into the adjacent room before the buffet. He then looked at Maggie and found her blushing. “Shall we?”
She shook her head. “I’ll eat in a bit. I want to speak with Bridget.”
“As ye lust.”
Mouth watering, he stood in line and studied the awesome sight spread before him.
Some foods he recognized, others were foreign but he would try it all.
And look, lobster! He loaded his plate and returned to their table to find Maggie in animated chatter with a new couple.
He devoured the beef and ham then dug into the lobster, having saved the best for last. He’d only taken two bites out of the succulent tail when Maggie yelped and knocked the fork from his hand.
“You know you can’t eat that! You’re allergic to shellfish. ”
“I am? What means allergic?”