Page 17 of Pride of Duty
The seamstress stared up and took a number of pins from her mouth. “What a fine family of men you’re marrying into. Such kindly gentlemen.”
Willa flushed. Did the two women suspect the turmoil swirling through her brain?
“Are the two of ye childhood friends?” the innkeeper’s wife asked.
Willa’s mouth dropped open. There was no way to explain her predicament in a rational way. The two women had seen the male attire she’d been wearing when she arrived at the inn.
After a few moments in thought, she spun a tale. “Yes, our families have known each other since I was a babe. The decision to marry was sudden because Dr. MacCloud’s ship is leaving soon for a posting off Africa. I,” she paused for a stuttering instant. “My father recently died, and I was staying with friends on a nearby farm. I had no time to change before…”
“Before what?” The seamstress’s eyes were wide in thrall to the romantic story.
Willa forced a smile. “Why, before the man I’m to marry showed up to bring me here.”
“Tis wonderful to be swept away by such a fine, tall man. Have ye always loved each other?” The innkeeper’s wife was clearly taken with Willa’s half-truths, not to mention the Highland wit and charm the MacCloud men seemed to spread everywhere they went.
The two women fitted the dress perfectly to Willa’s slender figure and lovingly pulled her now-dry, lavender-scented curls into a careful twist and pulled a few tendrils to fall loose below her ears.
“No one will notice you’ve bobbed your hair now.” The innkeeper’s wife twisted the last tendril with a hot iron and then stepped back to assess the effect. “He’ll be glad he came for ye before his ship sailed.” She turned Willa by the shoulders and headed her toward the staircase down to the waiting Scots.
Dr. Cullen MacCloud. The name felt bitter in her mouth, but for the rest of her life, she would be Willa MacCloud.
Once she rounded the staircase and saw the two men waiting anxiously below, she straightened her back and resolved never to let Dr. MacCloud know how terrified and unhappy she was in this moment. She would do her best, but she did not love the man standing before her.
“You are beautiful, Willa Morton,” he said, and produced a small, velvet box from within his jacket. Mr. MacKenzie was in full Highland dress, but Cullen wore his dark blue Royal Navy uniform. She was taken aback by the two Scotsmen whose presence seemed to fill the room.
When she opened the tiny box, the ring inside was a smoky quartz cabochon, surrounded by tiny diamonds and rubies. Her eyes flew to Cullen’s. “Why?”
“It’s a betrothal ring, my mother’s.” Cullen slid the ring onto a finger on her left hand, and then grew quiet. He clasped his hand over hers for a few silent moments before saying, “It matches your eyes.”
She blinked in confusion. Willa fought against feeling anything for this man.
A quick, sneak look at the other two women confirmed her suspicions. These soon-to-be kinsmen would sweep any woman off her feet. Unfortunately, all that male pulchritude was wasted on Willa. She wanted nothing to do with someone who forced his way into her carefully built life to make her conform to his version of what she ought to be.
The next few hours swam by as if she were wandering through a thick fog. She dutifully responded to the questions asked by the vicar, and back at The Dolphin, ate a small slice of cake and drank a glass of watered wine in response to a toast by Fergus MacKenzie. His toast was in Gaelic, but Cullen explained it was simply an ancient wish for long life and happiness.
When the time finally came to retire, she struggled to keep her eyes open, remembering barely twenty-four hours before, she’d helped bring a huge, gangling colt into the world.
Chapter Eight
Cullen helpedher loosen the long line of tiny buttons down the back of her wedding gown before she went behind a screen in the corner of their room to change into the cotton nightdress the seamstress had provided along with the wedding dress. The woman for whom the nightwear had originally been ordered was apparently much shorter than Willa. The deep bottom ruffle swung well above her ankles. She hid her feet with their long, slender toes in the satin slippers she’d worn to her fated sentence to become the wife of the man now waiting on the other side of the curtain. The man she was sure expected to make her his wife in fact.
“Please extinguish the candles.” She crossed her fingers in the hope he would allow her to get through what happened next in blessed darkness. He remained silent, but all the candles went dark.
She came from behind the screen and felt her way across the chamber to the bed where she quickly slid beneath the sheet. She lay silently on her back, waiting. Although she positioned herself as close to the edge of the bed as possible without flinging herself onto the floor, when she moved her left arm, she encountered a soft mass. After a few tentative prods, she determined the mass was definitely not the hard-muscled man breathing next to her.
He’d piled not only spare pillows, but anything soft he could find, from chair cushions to spare clothing, along the space between them. Willa stared up into the dark, perplexed. Was this some strange sexual ritual Scotsmen used to seduce unsuspecting women?
As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw her new husband sitting up on the other side of the hastily assembled “wall.”
Cullen leaned forward, his heat magnifying the scent of linen sheets and lavender. “Willa MacCloud, I’ve taken an oath to love and cherish no other but ye until one of us is dead, but I’ll be damned if I’ll force an unwilling woman to lie with me.”
Willa trembled beneath her tightly fastened nightdress. She drew up her feet on her side of the “wall” and leaned her forehead against her knees. “Why not? I’m prepared to do my duty…” Her voice faltered.
“I’ll not be a ‘duty’ to any woman. Ye’ll have to come to me on yer own.”
“How will I know whether I’m ready or not?” She hated the squeak in her voice.
Cullen slammed back down and pounded his pillow a few times. “Ye’ll know if ye want me or not. But until then, stay on yer own side of the bed.”