And so it was left to the laird to give young Arabella away in marriage.
For Heather’s sake, he felt already as an older brother to the lass. For Davy’s sake, he would never utter another word against the girl. Not even when she danced as often with Malcolm as with the groom, and with as much fondness.
“You have my congratulations,” the laird told Davy, slapping him on the back. “You seem a very happy groom.”
With a sunny smile and a kiss to the top of his bride’s head, the red-headed, freckled warrior said, “Oh, aye. T’was worth the frostbite on every one of my fingers on the night I stole away from the castle under cover of dark, and worth all the shivering, laying flat in a skiff that might’ve been seen by the enemy at any moment, nearly drowning in the loch when some enormous fish bumped the boat!”
Arabella laughed. “T’was likely a seal, not a fish!”
“T’was a fish,” Davy insisted, grinning ear to ear.
The laird would never be able to properly thank Davy for his heroics. And likely no other warrior in his command could have lived on winter berries and bugs, without even a horse or blanket, until he found MacLennan lands.
“You have my gratitude, Davy,” John said, earnestly. “And my blessing.” Raising a glass, the laird proposed a toast. “To wedded bliss.”
Davy drank. Arabella drank. And Malcolm also drank, as if he were a second groom. As curious as that was, the laird promised himself never to inquire more about it. If the three of them were happy, he would not question it.
For he had his own unorthodox arrangement. But his contentment with this arrangement came upon its first new challenge when, after they’d all sat down at the high table to dine, Lady Fiona looked askance at her chair, so near to Heather’s.
“Isn’t it time you took a wife of your own, laird?” his aunt Fiona asked.
John had been waiting for this moment. He only hoped that it wouldn’t come so soon. And that it would not happen in front of the woman he loved. Nevertheless, he was prepared for it. “I will have Heather or no wife at all.”
His aunt’s dragon features sharpened and she put her hands on the table, readying to bare her claws. She gauged him, as if preparing for war. Then, with a tilt of her head, she asked, “What’s stopping you then?”
“From what?”
His aunt’s smile went flat. “From taking Heather as your bride.”
John glanced at Heather, whose beautiful, sensual, mouth had fallen slightly agape. Then at the rest of the people at the table, who had gone suddenly, and completely silent. “You know perfectly well what’s stopping me,” the laird snapped. “I won’t take her for my wife only to have a thousand harpies clawing at her back, gossiping about her past.”
“They wouldn’t dare,” Lady Fiona said. “I am the chief harpie in this castle and if I say she has a blameless past, who is to contradict me?”
John stared at his aunt, wondering what she could possibly be up to.
She was a wily woman. Ambitious too. Though the laird was sure Ian was innocent of any conspiracy against him, he had never been as sure about Fiona. It often struck him as strange that a maidservant should take on a plot of treason by herself…
The laird put down his wine, which had gone entirely sour in his mouth. He didn’t want to argue during a wedding. He didn’t want to spoil their happy time. But his aunt had stirred up this hornet’s nest. “Heather is an unmarried woman big with child.”
“Don’t be vulgar,” Lady Fiona said, with a tap of her fan. “Our pretty Heather is merely pleasingly plump. Now that the siege is over, we’re all happy to eat our fill. You cannot blame her for indulging in a few extra pastries. That’s the only reason her belly is swollen.”
It was a blatant lie. There was a bastard child in Heather’s belly. Everyone knew it. John scowled. “I suppose you will say that you’ve never heard rumor of why I brought Heather here to the castle in the first place.”
With an exaggerated bat of her lashes, Lady Fiona replied, “She had information about the Donalds hiding at her father’s farm. A good thing, too, or we wouldn’t have had advanced warning of the siege. I’m quite certain that my nephew, the Macrae, wouldn’t have dishonored himself by bringing such a sweet crofter’s girl to his chambers and stripping her in front of his men just to shame her father.”
That’s exactly what he had done, and so he fell silent.
Lady Fiona turned in her chair. “Let’s ask our groom. Davy of Clan Macrae, have you ever seen the laird’s lady in any improper way?”
Davy crimsoned from the tips of his freckled ears to his toes, studiously avoiding the eyes of his new wife, who quite possibly did not know that he’d seen her older sister in a state of undress. It took him only a moment to consider his options before he glanced at the laird and uttered the lie. “Never. Pure as the driven snow, is the laird’s lady.”
John’s heart began to thump at the show of loyalty. But it was too easy…
“What about our best swordsmen?” Lady Fiona asked, turning to Malcolm. “Have you ever seen the laird’s lady in any improper state?”
Malcolm sat stonily, staring into his wine as he considered his answer. Then someone—likely Arabella—seemed to have kicked him under the table, because he gave a jolt, and sat straighter.
“Never,” was Malcolm’s answer.