CHAPTER SEVEN
“ G ood morning, me lady,” Maisie said while carrying an armful of cloth. “How did ye sleep?”
Turning to her, Paige replied. “As best as I could, I suppose.”
“It’ll get better,” Maisie said as she laid the cloth on the bed. “T’is time for ye to have yer bath and dress for the mornin’ feast. The men are comin’ with the water now.”
Paige tightened the thick robe around her body and turned to the window. “Is this really necessary?” she asked dully.
Pulling the door in for the men to lug buckets of water through the room and to the bathing room between hers and Ruben’s room, Maisie nodded. “It is, me lady. Why do ye feel otherwise?”
“It’s…” Paige swallowed thickly. She wrapped arms around her middle and hugged herself tightly.
It was the sole comfort she could have. “It feels like when a farmer would parade his fattened calf in front of a row of butchers and sold it off to the man with the most coin. I’ll feel like a spectacle. ”
While gathering some items around the room, Maisie said. “I’d rather think of it as presentin’ ye to the people as a symbol of hope. The people here have been through a lot?—”
“So have mine!” Paige snapped. Then dropped her tone. The poor maid did not deserve her anger. No, that fury should be saved for the brute, Ruben. Sighing, she said, “I am sorry. That was nae right of me.”
Maisie gave her a flickering smile. “War will do that to a set of people.”
Paige soon found herself sinking into a warm bath of olive oil as Maisie massaged soap into her hair. She rested her head against the towel draped over the edge of the tub.
“Do ye ken what happened to cause the war?” Paige asked. “I have asked and nay one is willin’ to give me anythin’ solid.”
“I wouldnae ken, me lady,” Maisie said as she reached for a pitcher to wash Paige’s hair out. “Such matters are above me station.”
Stumped again, Paige decided to demand answers from Ruben as soon as there was a private moment. She knew she would not get such a chance with the brute while the celebration went on. But as soon as there was a quiet moment, she would get her answers.
She stepped out of the bath and wrapped a towel around her after drying. She chose a simple stark white petticoat and kirtle made of beautiful shade of sapphire blue. Maisie added a belt of finely twisted strips of gold and silver around her waist before pinning the McKinnon sash on.
“One day, ye’ll have a full arisaid made from the clan’s colors,” Maisie said. “I am sure ye will look as beautiful in that dress as ye are in this one.”
I will burn that gown to ash.
“How do ye want yer hair, me lady?” Maisie asked.
“Down,” she said. “It’ll dry better that way.”
Her new maid brushed her hair down but pulled it away from her face with a circlet. A sudden flurry of drums had both their heads daring to the window and Maisie said. “It’s time.”
They entered the Great Hall, three or four times the size of the one back at her home. It had been beautifully, if not quickly, decorated for the feast. Eight long tables spanned from below the dais to nearly the large set of iron doors at the end.
As she entered the room, half the room was filled with lairds and ladies, village people and elders, all of them in their best clothes. The dignitaries wore silks and velvet, while the townspeople wore modest dark clothing.
“Ye’re headed there,” Maisie nodded to the high table. “His lairdship will accompany ye there as a show of the alliance and marriage.”
“Where is he?” Paige asked, looking though the room while avoiding the curious looks trained back to her. “Ravagin’ another village, I gather.”
“Ye presume much, lass,” Ruben said. “And most of it altogether wrong.”
When he stepped into her view, she swallowed tightly. He wore a pleated and belted red and golden tartan. The end of the tartan was brought up and draped across one shoulder and fastened with a large silver brooch studded with four small sapphires and a large sapphire at the center.
His face had been shaved clean, and his ebony hair was down, its natural curl refused to be tamed and curled at his temples and nape. He looked magnificent.
She jerked her head away.
Her hands balled inside at her side, and her cheeks grew uncomfortably warm.
Why did the brute affect her so intensely?
She felt nothing for the degenerate. Even if she found him the attractive—in a rough, uncouth sort of way and she hated herself for it—it was no excuse to feel so… displaced by him.
Despite her inexplicable attraction to the man, she couldn’t deny that he represented the double standards Paige despised.
He was a warmonger; bold and insufferable. While he admitted his part in making her people suffer, through what he had said—and what he had not said— it was as if he were blaming her father and her people for the bloody invasion. The hypocrisy of his actions made bitter gall flood her mouth.
“It was a reasonable assumption,” she said, boldly looking him in the eye. “Ye are a warmonger, after all.”
His mouth pulled across his face in more of a grimace than a smile. As a matter of fact, she had never seen him truly smile. Perhaps he was so evil he was incapable of such simple joy.
Servants were bustling to and fro from the great hall on their varied tasks, some carrying great rounds of cheese, while large barrels of ale and mead were being wheeled into. The sounds of excited chatter and happy laughter could be heard all around.
He held out his arm. “It’s time.”
Begrudgingly, she took his arm, and they mounted the steps to the dais and stood in front of the head table. A servant lad handed him a full goblet of wine that he lifted high. “Hear ye! Hear ye!”
The people, at least fifty, quieted and Ruben announced, “I, Ruben Alexander Miller, present to ye Paige Bradley, the daughter of Laird MacPherson as me newly wedded wife. We have pledged to forge peace for both our clan and theirs.”
This announcement brought great shouts of approval from the stunned guests, and a roar went up at the far end table. Men clad in soldier leathers clapped fiercely and stomped their feet, cheering raucously.
“We are to welcome her,” he added. “All of us in Clan McKinnon are to open our arms and hearts to her as she is now one of us.”
Ruben sobered, “I ken some of ye are victims of the war, or ye ken someone who is. A lot of ye have lost faithers, sons, uncles and brothers. It is very easy to sink into bitterness and anger, but she is one of us now. Raise a hand to her, and be warned that the consequences will be swift.”
A rush of whispers coasted over the room and Ruben made sure to let his announcement sink into the people gathered before speaking again.
“That said, this is a celebration of unity and peace. This morning, we eat and drink to our health and future while putting the grim past behind us. And to that, I take the first drink!”
He tilted the cup to his lips and took a bracing mouthful before he turned and handed the cup to Paige. She wanted to slap it out of his hands or throw the contents into his face, but when his brow ticked up, she took the goblet.
Taking two mouthfuls of the warm, heady, sloe wine, she stifled a shudder and handed the goblet back to him. He led her to the high table when the girl she had seen at the wedding was seated to the right of her. It was just beside where Ruben would sit.
He pulled out a seat right beside her and she sat, her gaze flittering over the poached eggs, Lorne sausage, slivers of roasted fowl and well-seasoned potatoes. She saw cornmeal cakes and buttered toast, a feast for a king.
“I’ll be right back,” Ruben said, resting a hand on her shoulder.
Even though she knew she should eat, the mere fact of where she was—and who she was around—robbed her of her appetite. She did not even want to touch her wine.
“Are ye nae hungry?” the girl—Norah, she assumed—said quietly beside her.
“Nay,” she said.
“Do ye think we will do somethin’ to ye?” Norah asked.
She gave the girl a curious glance and while she felt some sympathy for the girl, the pain of where she was and who she was tethered to dampened her heart. “I ken nothin’ of ye people.”
“Ruben is an honorable man,” Norah said. “He wouldnae bring ye here to renege on his agreement for peace to kill ye.”
“It doesnae matter if I am poisoned or physically killed,” Paige said. “Bein' in this marriage will kill me regardless.”
The young woman gaped, “Daenae say that.”
The clunk of a cane had her turning while Norah got out of her seat. Ruben was leading an older man to the table; he was hunched into Ruben’s side while hobbling with a crutch on the other.
Norah held unto the man while Ruben pulled out a chair; the old man sat and waved Ruben off. “Stop it. I am nae the invalid as ye think I am.”
The older man had dark eyes, like his son, only made darker by the shock of hair, grey-black, long and thick upon his head, and the gray-white beard that covered his chin and jaw and the top of his chest. His kindly, wrinkled face made her think of a priest she once knew; Father Matthew.
How is it that this man sired such a brute?
“Ye must be Paige,” the man said. “MacPherson’s daughter.”
“I am,” she said stiffly. “And ye are?”
Ruben’s lips tightened at her tone. “He is me faither, Niall Miller. Mind yer tone, lass.”
“Is there any water, or milk?” she asked. “I cannae drink wine this early in the mornin’.”
Annoyed, Ruben called a servant girl to him and asked her to fetch both from the kitchen. Trying to at least attempt to show civility he was not, she reached for a buttered roll and nibbled on it while gazing at the doors at the end of the hall.
She turned her attention back to her end of the table to find Ruben watching her. Bristling, she resolutely kept her gaze fastened upon back to the door. Let him stare at her all he wanted— it would do no good. She wanted no part of this.
The doors opened and a man sprinted through the room and up to the dais’ steps. He then bowed his head to Ruben and whispered something, all the while, his eyes kept flickering to Paige.
Ruben, on the other hand, narrowed his eyes and shot them to the door. The messenger finished his report and stepped away, leaving a muscle to jump in Ruben’s jaw.
Finally, he turned to the man and said, “Let her in.”
Her? Who is her?
The footman nodded and headed down the dais then went to the doors. She kept her eyes on the doors, intensely curious about who this lady was.
When the doors opened and a diminutive figure dressed in a brown travelling ensemble entered the room. Beneath the brim of her hat, her mother Daisy’s bright blue eyes flew to the dais.
Paige almost lurched out of her seat to go to her mother but a quelling look from Ruben stopped her. A footman helped her mother up the dais and Ruben pulled out a chair for her.
“Lady MacPherson,” Ruben bowed his head. “Welcome to me home.”
“Thank ye,” her mother pulled her hat away. “I just couldnae sit still at home kennin’ that me daughter was away from me,” Daisy said. She turned to Paige and reached for her hand, “How could I stay away? This is the first time ye’ve been away from me side since ye were born.”
From the corner of her eyes Paige saw Ruben roll his eyes as if to say, of course, why would I expect anythin’ else?
She bristled, but she trained her attention to her mother and the spark of relief that her mother was there with her. At least she had someone to talk with.
“Maither,” she leaned in, “How was the journey?”
“Moderately long,” Daisy said, “But I am happy to be here. Yer lairdship, would ye be so kind to introduce me to yer family, I assume?”
“Lady MacPherson, this is me sister Norah and me father, Niall Miller,” Ruben said, nodding to both separately.
A friendly smile warmed her mother’s face as she greeted the elderly man and the young woman, but Paige could not follow suit. She did not want to be anywhere near Ruben, the man who had rained terror on her people.
“Please,” Ruben said to Daisy and then gestured to the feast. “Help yerself to anythin’ ye want.”
Encouraged by her mother’s presence, Paige added more food to her platter as her mother began to fill her trencher “Was Faither all right with ye comin’ by yerself?”
Her mother bit into her sliver of cold fowl and braised potato. “He was nae very happy about, but since the King made the decree, he hasnae been happy about anythin’ much. I told him I was comin’ to visit ye, despite his objections.”
“Very brave of ye, Lady MacPherson,” Niall said.
“It had to be done,” Daisy said. She then angled her head to Norah. “I assume ye are his younger sister. What do ye like to do, me dear?”
The air suddenly went flat. Unsure of why the air seemed to scape over her skin, Paige frowned. Norah’s head was down, and her body was rigid.
Daisy’s eyes flickered between Paige and Niall, “Did I say somethin’ out of order?”
Ruben leaned in. “It’s only?—”
“I like to paint,” Norah said quietly. “I used to like to go on trips, ridin’ me own horse but I—I cannae do it anymore.” She shoved her plate away, half of the food untouched, “May I be excused, brother?”
Ruben nodded, “Aye, ye can. Get some rest, Norah. I’ll be with ye shortly.”
When the young woman left, her mother looked conflicted, as if she was not sure if she had crossed a boundary she did not know was there. “I… apologize?”
“Nay need,” Ruben said, while his eyes followed Norah out of the room. “It’s a complicated issue but nae one ye need to be sorry about.”
Daisy nodded and turned to the laird., “And what do ye like to do, Laird McKinnon?”
“Swordplay and plannin’ how to damage more people,” Paige muttered darkly as she stabbed an egg with a knife. “What do ye expect of a brute?”
Aghast, her mother admonished her, “Paige!”
“Nay,” Ruben’s eyes were cold and piercing. He swirled his drink while staring at Paige. “It’s better to be a brute than to be as soft and na?ve as ye are.”
She scowled, and he ignored it. “It is in yer best interest to return to yer room and ready yerself for the day. Yer duties as Lady McKinnon start now.”
“Duties?” Paige echoed, stunned. “What duties?”