Bold (The Handfasting)(15)

“And you chose to take me from mine. So be it, if there’s any guilt in that, then feel free to feel it.” She snipped.

His frown deepened, though he failed to respond. With a tilt of her chin she swirled away, her entourage of relations a wake of women behind her.

“Tomorrow.” Talorc shouted when she was halfway up the stairs.

Maggie stopped, looked down at the man she would handfast in the morning. “Tomorrow,” she promised with a grim determination, so at odds with the enthusiasm he obviously felt.

Tomorrow she would be promised to a man, bold in his battles, both on the battlefield and off. Life would never be easy. If she thought getting her own way was difficult with her brothers and a bear of a father, winning concessions with this man would be all the harder. Hadn’t tonight proved that?



* * * * * * * * * *



Maggie scrambled to hide as the earth quaked and shook about her.

“Maggie . . . Maggie, wake darling, ‘tis time.”

Groggy with sleep she stirred, opened her eyes. A circle of candles surrounded her bed, lighting the dark of the night. Kinswomen, her mother included. Why?

“Oh Maggie,” Muireall swooned upon the bed. “Are you not thrilled? Are you not the luckiest lass in the whole of the Highlands?”

Still muddled, Maggie rubbed her eyes.

“Oh aye,” Leitis smiled, “if Nigel had courted me like that, I don’t know what would have happened.”

“I do!” Sibeal brought on a chorus of laughter that the older women tried to hush in deference to Maggie’s innocence. Quick as the flicker of a candle, Maggie understood why her kinswomen were here, why they spoke the way they did.

Come daylight she would be riding away from this place, her home. “What’s the time? Is it anywhere near to morning?”

“You’ve an hour at most.” Fiona sat beside her daughter, shooing the other women off.

They had all worked late into the night, deciding what Maggie could take with her, what would need sending, what would be saved for her children. They had teased and sighed and ooh’d over Maggie’s fate. Only Maggie didn’t take to the fussing. She remained practical; it was the only way to get through what she needed to get through.

It was bad enough that she would have to marry a warrior who came with the near promise of widowhood. God forbid she be left as hungry for male company as Muireall. And with a warrior, a great huge beast of a man, well . . . she would have to be just as strong in spirit. If not, he’d trounce her in every manner of will-- just as he’d done last night when she was fighting for life as she knew it.

The worst of it was that he didn’t know her, and when he did come to see who she really was, when all the grand stories proved to be no more than a blown up grain of truth, would he want her? Or, would he turn to all those other women who swooned at the mere thought of him?

Could she ever hope to hold a man such as Talorc the Bold?

As if to spite Maggie’s thoughts, her mother took her hand, “He’s a splendid man.” Then she brushed the hair from Maggie’s forehead, a gesture of comfort that had Maggie pulling back. How many times in the past had her mother done just such a thing to ease an illness, a pain or to soothe the frustrations of the young? But those gestures would be too far away to be of any comfort when Maggie faced the confusion and fear of a new home.

“She’ll be the envy of every woman?” Caitlin cawed, unaware of the sudden wariness between mother and daughter.

“Oh, aye,” Siobhan responded, “he makes me quiver.”

“How I wish I could be you on the bedding night.” Someone else said and they all sighed and nodded.

The words poured around Maggie, too many to take in, too forceful to ignore. Confused, shaken, she lifted her head to knowing smiles. They jostled each other with elbows, raised eyebrows, their comments, now whispered, growing more suggestive by the moment and suddenly Maggie found a new emotion, a new fear, to completely overwhelm all the others she’d ever felt since meeting this man.

If they were all so eager, why hadn’t they asked to be sacrificed? Why hadn’t they saved her, possibly the only woman who didn’t want to be in this place?

Fiona must have sensed what was happening, for she wrapped a protective arm around her daughter's shoulders, quieting the others.

“Don’t go frightening her, now.” Fiona warned, but the protective care had come too late. Maggie yanked free of her mother's hold.

“You knew what he was up to, didna’ you?” She snapped and saw her mother's guilty start. So that was the way of it. “Last night, before we even sat to dine, you knew. You led me into that, without a word of care.”

Throwing off the covers, she scrambled out of the far side of the bed and yelled. “How could ya’ do that? How could you let him put me in that corner, where there was no turning back no matter how I felt?”

“Oh Maggie, I didna’ think . . .”

“You should think! I’m your only daughter and now I’ve no home here. Why do I wait to be bathed and dressed? Why don’t I just go down there and take his hands and make my promises and leave? For you’ve sent me away from the only home I’ve ever wanted to know. To a place where who knows what waits?”

Although she paused, to gather breath, to settle the rising hysteria, the others were too stunned to break her momentum.

“Do ya’ think he lived there with no woman in his bed?” She asked. “Do you think I’ll have my own around me when they carry his body back, all bloodied and broken after a battle? Do you think I’ll be pleased with a man not of my own choosin’?”

“Aye!” Angrily, Fiona broke through the shock of her daughter’s attack with a succinct nod, “I do!” She shouted back, rounding on Maggie. “For the first time I’m grateful for your brothers’ interference. For 'tis true, no man dared court their sister. But your brothers would not dare to interfere with the Bold. Nor would I have allowed it, as I did in the past.”

She took her daughter by the shoulders. “He’s perfect for you Maggie, even if you’re too fool to know it.”

They stood, both rigid, linked by Fiona’s hands on Maggie’s shoulders when suddenly Maggie flung herself into her mother’s arms. “Oh mama, I’m so frightened!” And finally the tears came as mother and daughter clung to each other, each full of their own sorrows for the parting.

Fiona would lose her daughter, to fret and worry with no way of knowing how her own little lass fared. And Maggie, to face marriage to a stranger, to confront the unknown, without her mother’s wisdom and care.

“Oh, lass, you’ll be fine, you will.” Fiona cradled her daughter’s head upon her shoulder. “I’d not let this happen if I thought it would be any different. And you remember now, if you just can’t see it in you, to give yourself to him, then come home. For this will be your home, forever, for always, even if you are married with a dozen children, you are always wanted here.”

Maggie pulled away, swiped at the tears, unaware of the quiet bustle about her as the others prepared a bath, warmed towels, sorted out the best of her plaids with discreet peeks at the two women.

“Mama?” Maggie asked, now needing to know the whole of it. “What is it you mean by giving myself? Talorc said the same thing, that if I give myself then we are truly wed, but if we Handfast . . . mama? Why do you look that way? What am I saying that you . . .”

“No,” Fiona rushed, “no don’t be thinking anything, I was just surprised. A mother doesn’t imagine it’s possible to raise a daughter, with so many older brothers, in a place as busy as our home . . . well . . . where people are so careless with what they say,” Fiona put her arm around Maggie, guided her away from the others, toward the window-- still inky black with night, “It’s just that a mother does not expect her daughter to be quite so innocent of thought.”

"You didna’ look so much surprised as . . .”

“But I was surprised.” Fiona broke in.

“You’re also thinking to use your words to your advantage, or is it to his advantage?” Maggie startled herself by realizing. “I’m thinking you’ve his interest in mind over my own.”

“Never.” Fiona snapped, “Never.” She repeated more calmly. “Though ‘tis true, I often wonder if you know what’s best for you.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” Maggie badgered.

“About giving yourself?”

“Aye, you ken that’s what I’m wanting to know.”

“Well,” Fiona lifted her chin, “you’ve heard the women talk about the wedding night?”

“Aye, I know all about that. That’s when he takes me to wife.”

“You know what takes place?”