Amanda Scott (3 page)

Hugo smiled as he said, “Doubtless you are recalling the last such occasion, Lady Adela. But no raiders will interrupt today’s festivities, I promise you.”

Since he controlled Roslin Castle’s security, Adela knew he meant what he said. Politely if automatically returning his smile, she said, “Indeed, I have no such fear.” She could hardly tell him she felt nothing at all, that it was as if she were in a dream, disembodied, watching four unknown figures about to walk to the altar.

The look that crossed Hugo’s face then nearly matched the deepening frown on Sorcha’s. Adela saw his hand squeeze her sister’s shoulder a little harder, as if he sensed without looking that she was about to speak.

For a wonder, Sorcha kept silent.

Hugo said quietly, “You should not wonder if you do not feel a bride’s usual excitement, lass. It can be only natural for you to feel wary now. I’ve seen similar reactions in brave men after one battle, about to face another. I warrant it must be much the same for you now.”

“Pray, sir, do not concern yourself,” she said. “What happened to me cannot possibly match aught that occurs in battle. I suffered no hurt, after all. I do not believe he would ever have harmed me.”

Hugo’s grimace revealed his disagreement, but he did not contradict her. He said, “I think the piper is about to play.”

Macleod had stood quietly beside her, taking no part in the conversation. Now he said, “Aye, lass, and we’re to go first, ye ken, after your maidens. So hold your head high. Ye look well, even if ye’re no wearing blue for good luck.”

Adela took a deep, steadying breath before she said with forced calm, “I pray you, sir, do not tell me blue is a luckier color than yellow-gold, for I don’t want to hear it. Last time I complied with your superstitions. I even agreed not to marry on a Friday that fell on the thirteenth of the month. Only recall what those precautions won me.”

“Aye, sure, but it might ha’ been worse had ye no worn blue. Never ye mind that now,” he added hastily. “That gown becomes ye. It brings out the green flecks in your eyes and makes your hair look like golden honey flowing down your back.”

Adela tried to ignore the thought of sticky honey oozing down her back, reminding herself that he rarely paid compliments and was thus out of practice.

He held out his arm to her, and the fact that her maidens were walking up the narrow aisle between flanking rows of standing guests, nearing the altar, recalled her to her wits. Obediently, she placed her right hand on his forearm and waited.

Sorcha and her younger sister Sidony had served as Adela’s bride-maidens for the first wedding, but she and Sorcha had four attendants this time, three of whom they scarcely knew.

Sidony, blue-eyed and fair, looked beautifully serene as she led the way in, wearing a gown of pale rose. The next two were Sir Hugo’s younger sisters in lavender and pale green. The last was their cousin, another niece of Countess Isabella’s, in a straw-colored gown. All three had arrived only the day before.

Sorcha and Sir Hugo were already legally married, having taken advantage of the ancient Scottish tradition of simply declaring themselves husband and wife. Therefore, they would walk to the altar together. Sorcha had said she couldn’t imagine why they need marry again. But Countess Isabella had declared that she intended to see them properly wed by her own priest, and that had been that.

When the four maidens had taken places on each side of the shallow steps leading to the altar, where Ardelve and Isabella’s chaplain waited, Adela and Macleod walked up the aisle toward them. Sorcha and Sir Hugo followed, all accompanied by the piper’s tune.

Although only a few years younger than Macleod, Ardelve was a handsomer, more dignified-looking man with a trim beard and grizzled dark hair. For the occasion, he wore a high-crowned, white-plumed hat, a black velvet, sable-trimmed robe belted over parti-colored hose, and fashionable pointed-toe shoes.

Standing straight and proud beside Isabella’s chaplain, he watched his bride walk toward him, and when his gaze met hers, he smiled.

Adela replied with the same smile she had summoned up for Hugo but did not look away from Ardelve, grateful to have the excuse to avoid meeting the eye of any on-looker. She lacked the energy to smile and nod, and just wanted to have the ceremony and subsequent feasting behind her.

She reached the halfway point aware only of her hand on Macleod’s arm and of Ardelve’s smiling face before her. Then, an abrupt movement to her right and the clink-clink of something falling to the chapel’s flagstone floor caught her attention.

Turning her head, she looked straight into the jade-green eyes of one of the handsomest men she had ever beheld.

He had finely chiseled features, gleaming chestnut hair that curled slightly at the ends, broad shoulders, a tapered waist, and muscular, well-turned legs. And he displayed the three latter features to advantage in an expertly cut forest-green velvet doublet and smooth yellow silk hose. His cap bore a curling bright yellow feather.

He had begun to bend down, so he had certainly dropped something. But whatever it was lay where it had fallen, because as Adela’s gaze collided with his, he froze. Then, slowly he straightened, his gaze still locked with hers.

His remarkable green eyes began to twinkle. Then, impudently, he winked.

Startled, she wrenched her gaze away and sought Ardelve again, relaxing when she saw him, still smiling calmly. She did not look away again.

The piping stopped when she reached the two shallow steps that led up to kneeling stools awaiting the bridal couples before the altar.

“Who gives this maiden to wed this man?” the priest inquired.

“I do—Macleod o’ Glenelg, her father,” Macleod said clearly.

The priest beckoned to Adela, and releasing her father’s arm, she went up the steps to stand by Ardelve. Sorcha and Hugo followed, taking their places at her left. All four faced the altar.

Isabella’s chaplain stepped in front of them. After a long moment of silence, he said, “I be bound to ask first if there be any amongst ye today who kens any just cause or impediment to a marriage betwixt Baron Ardelve and Lady Adela Macleod. If ye do ken such, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Adela shut her eyes, for it had been at this point in her first attempt to marry Ardelve that the interruption had occurred.

Today, aside from brief shuffling of feet, silence reigned.

Because Sorcha and Sir Hugo were sanctifying an existing union, the priest did not ask the same question about them, and Adela was glad to note that they both seemed blissfully happy.

She had seen them only once since their declaration, because immediately after Hugo had declared them married, they had removed to Hawthornden Castle, a mile down Roslin Glen to the north. Three days later, Adela had accompanied her sister Sidony, their elder sister Isobel, and the countess to pay them a bridal visit. But she had not seen them again until that very morning.

Isobel, now Sir Michael Sinclair’s wife and thus daughter-by-marriage to the countess, stood in the audience with her husband and his mother. There had been no time for their other three sisters to travel to Roslin for the wedding.

When the priest spoke Adela’s name, she wrenched her attention back to the ceremony, responding as he bade, and doing so calmly and clearly. The ceremony was mercifully brief, and although the nuptial mass to follow would last the usual time, she could recite her responses by rote and would not have to think.

When the priest declared them husbands and wives in the sight of God, Ardelve took Adela’s hand in his and did not let go until they took communion.

When the mass came to an end, Adela hoped no one would ask what she had been thinking about or if she had enjoyed her wedding. The entire ceremony and service had registered little more in her mind than mere passage of time.

Isabella did not allow the bridal couples to linger but whisked them off to the great hall to receive their guests and begin the wedding feast. Laughter and music greeted them long before they entered, because the festivities had already begun.

Musicians in the minstrels’ gallery played lively tunes until the bridal party appeared in the doorway. Then Isabella’s chamberlain stepped forward.

“My lords, my ladies, and all within this chamber,” he bellowed. “Pray rise to make welcome Lord and Lady Ardelve, and Sir Hugo and Lady Robison!”

As cheers broke out and the music resumed, Adela noted that two long boards for guests extended from the dais where the high table stood nearly the full length of the lower hall. Space had been cleared on the near side of the hall for the entertainers Isabella had hired to perform during the feast.

As they walked through the clearing to the dais with the others, Ardelve bent his head to Adela’s ear and murmured, “I would speak privately with you, my lady wife, afore we feast. If you will oblige me, Isabella has offered the use of her solar.”

“As you wish, my lord,” she said, hoping she had not done something to vex him already. Remembering her reaction to the green-eyed man, she dismissed that. Ardelve had shown no sign of being a possessive husband or a jealous one.

Crossing the crowded dais, they approached the door in the center of the wall behind it, skirting the high table, which would soon groan under the weight of gold and silver platters and trays of food, and jugs of whisky and wine, not to mention the guests’ goblets and trenchers that were already in place.

A Sinclair gillie thrust the door to the solar open for them.

Nodding to the lad to shut it behind them, Ardelve led Adela away from it, then said without preamble, “One hesitates to speak to a lady about her looks other than to compliment her, my dear. But all this splendor seems to have tired you. If you want to leave, I’ll gladly make our adieux and retire now to our bedchamber.”

“’Tis kind of you to offer, sir, but it would be unkind of us, not to mention most ungrateful, to do such a thing after Countess Isabella has put so much effort forth to honor us.”

“Faugh,” he said. “Isabella does what she does for Isabella or for Roslin. In truth, I am weary myself. But if you are sure you are feeling well …”

“I am, sir,” she said. “I am a little tired but no more than that.”

He looked searchingly at her, then said, “If it is any relief to your mind, you have naught to fear from me on this night or any other. If you want time to adjust to our marriage before taking up all your wifely duties, I will understand. I am in no great hurry, Adela, and would understand your preference for a more peaceful place to get to know your husband. Do you take my meaning, lass?”

“Aye, sir, I do,” she said, aware that she was blushing. “My sister Isobel explained what my duties will be. You are most kind, but I want children, and I have no objection to taking up my wifely duties whenever it shall please you. Moreover, if you do not
want
to stay for the feast, you have only to say so.”

He patted her hand. “I am content,” he said. “My household stands in great need of your woman’s touch, and I have need of that, too. Your thoughtfulness only makes me look forward more eagerly to our years together. You are right, though, to remind me that everyone here worked hard to provide our wedding feast.”

“I, too, am impatient for our return to the peace of the Highlands, sir.”

He smiled again. She thought his smile a particularly charming one and responded this time with her first natural smile of the day. No matter that Sorcha thought she was making a mistake. Sorcha, after all, had married Hugo, a man who always wanted his own way and made no secret about it.

Since Sorcha’s nature was much the same, Adela was certain that sparks often flew between them. With Ardelve, she was certain she would enjoy a more peaceful, more comfortable life.

He touched her shoulder, and then, as she turned toward the door, he moved his hand easily to the small of her back. She was astonished at how reassuring it felt there as they moved to rejoin the boisterous company. They took their places at the high table next to Sorcha and Hugo, the four of them standing behind chairs at the central places of honor facing the lower hall. Looking at the other guests nearby, Adela congratulated herself on her decision to marry Ardelve.

Members of the Sinclair family comprised much of the company on the dais, and thanks to Countess Isabella’s insistence, the seating order was unusual. Instead of the traditional arrangement with all the men at the left end of the table as viewed from the lower hall, and all the women at the right, the countess had declared that the bridal couples should take central place, with all others deferring to them.

Therefore, Isabella stood on Ardelve’s right, with her eldest son, Henry Sinclair, owner of Roslin, on her right.

Henry was also Prince of Orkney, a Norse title inherited through his mother’s family. In Scotland, though, even the heir to the throne—not to mention lesser men of the royal family—were earls and thus took a dim view of anyone else in the country claiming the title of prince. So, in Scotland, Henry was Earl of Orkney.

Beyond Henry stood Macleod with his intended wife, Lady Clendenen, between them and an empty space at Macleod’s right. Her ladyship, reluctantly entering her fiftieth year, was a plump, personable woman with fair, smooth skin, nut-brown hair, and pleasant features pleasantly arranged, who claimed kinship with everyone of importance in Scotland. Her lively brown eyes often twinkled, but to her ladyship’s oft-spoken chagrin, she lacked height. Even Adela, at just a couple of inches above five feet, was inches taller than Lady Clendenen. Standing now beside Henry, who was well over six feet, the plump little woman looked diminutive.

Sorcha stood on Adela’s left with Sir Hugo beyond, then Isobel, Sir Michael Sinclair, and Hugo’s father, Sir Edward Robison, flanked by one of his daughters on Hugo’s side and an empty space at the end. Everyone at the high table faced the other guests, who had all gathered around the two long trestles extending from the dais.

After the countess’s chaplain had spoken the grace-before-meat, the company noisily took seats, the carvers entered to the accompaniment of Prince Henry’s pipers, and gillies began bustling about with jugs of wine, ale, and whisky.