Angela put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed slightly. Then it was gone, as she stepped back and tilted her head to one side, as if surveying their handiwork, and not like she’d just put almost more weight atop her stepmother’s shoulders than she could support and still go through with it.
“Doona’ move. I’ve got an idea,” Angela said.
“For what?” Lisle asked.
“A circlet about your head. We can fashion one from the creeping azalea that Mary brought back from the cliffs just this morn, although I’ve told her over and over not to go there. I’ll be right back.”
Lisle looked levelly across at Angela and nodded solemnly. She didn’t trust her voice.
Chapter Five
The carriage was for her, and it was empty. The interior was just as luxurious, new, and bare as the one she’d ridden in when she visited him, perhaps more so. Lisle sat on one of the tanned, leather-covered, padded seats and looked about her. She wondered how many of the carriages he owned, and if they were all reeking of newness and wealth, and wasteful expense.
She shook her head. She was going to have to teach that man the value of his gold, before he spent all of it and made the Monteith clan look even more foolish than they were already perceived to be.
The coach halted with an unprofessional movement, making her rock like the hanging lantern at the far side. The door opened. It was Aunt Fanny, Aunt Mattie, and the ghostly Aunt Grace, who looked even more insubstantial in the lamplight and faded day.
“We’ve something for you, lass,” Aunt Mattie said, after clearing her throat. “Something auld.”
“And God be with you,” Aunt Fanny whispered, stepping forward to hand her a small packet. Lisle was almost too surprised to reach down for it.
Then, they were gone, fading back into the shadows alongside the road. Lisle unwrapped her present with trembling hands to reveal a very old, chipped brooch, containing a bit of crystal at the center. She trembled with the sob, but had it under control before the coach rocked to another stop.
The coachmen were silent, but they had been that way since the first time she’d journeyed to Monteith and had a groomsman open the door for her and assist her in. This time, it was Angus MacHugh, looking sheepish, and with red-rimmed eyes that only two reasons could cause. One was too much drink; the other she didn’t want to know.
“Here, Lisle lass,” he said in his gruff voice, and shoved a bundle at the flooring before disappearing into the night faster than the aunts had. She didn’t have to look to see what it contained; the movement of the coach starting up made the bundle shift, and any remaining air in the bladders sighed out with a moan. Her hand wasn’t just trembling, it was difficult to control as she lifted the edge of the old MacHugh tartan that wrapped the bundle.
He’d given her his pipes.
Lisle sat, holding them to her breast, and letting the plaide soak up tears the MacHugh clan had just caused.
“Damn them all, anyway!” she whispered, her arms pushing further moans from the bags with the pressure she held them to her. They should have just let her go. It would have been easier.
If smitten really were a condition with emotion and meaning attached to it, he was very afraid he had it. Langston stood at the altar and watched as she walked toward him, enhancing the organ music and the reverence of the place with the slow, gliding way she was moving. She had a bundle of something wrapped in the MacHugh sett and held to her, with as much pride as a bouquet of flowers. Her head was high, making the auburn color reflect all of the candles he’d ordered and personally supervised the placement of, and there wasn’t any part of her that wasn’t ethereal, stunning, and absolutely breathtaking.
He nearly thumped himself in the chest to start up his breathing again, but settled with clearing his throat and swallowing around a strange lump that wasn’t moving anywhere.
She was very pale, mirroring the ecru shade of her gown, even to the lack of coloring of her lips. Langston swallowed again and licked his own lips, wishing he’d had Etheridge tie the mass of white satin at his throat a bit looser, since it scratched his skin with the movement and made it all somehow worse.
She reached his side and glanced up at him, startling him with the vivid contrast of those sky-blue eyes to her pallor. Then, she dropped her gaze, while a light bloom of color touched the tops of her cheeks. That was interesting, he told himself. It could be a sign that all wasn’t lost, and that the bit of something he’d seen flicker through her eyes yesterday was actually what it had appeared to be at the time—interest.
If he interested her as a man, despite everything she thought of him, there might actually be a rhyme and reason to why he was forcing the woman he was losing sleep over into doing something she deemed so patently horrible. Her lashes were dark brown, the length easily seen against her pallor. She didn’t look up to him again; not when he reached for, and received, her cold, trembling hand in his; not when he answered his vows, with a voice he had to clear his throat to find; not even when she whispered her own troth.
If he wasn’t already intrigued, he would have been then, when her chin trembled, a tear slid from the corner of one eye, and she still managed to whisper the words that were saving her family. He was so aware of her, and the strange emotion she was making him suffer, that it almost made him forget that she probably hated him.
She didn’t look like she was at that emotion at the moment. She probably wasn’t at anything other than shock. The one glimpse she’d given him showed him that. It was the same, unfathomable look she’d had when she’d first read what he wanted from her, right after her gasp of reaction. She’d dropped the missive, put her hands to her cheeks to cover them, and then spun and stomped right out of his house, without one backward glance. He didn’t even know if she’d read through what he was offering.
All of which meant less than dust to him next to how she seemed to be shying away from the moment he was waiting for, and Langston was more than a little annoyed to find he was trembling at the thought. Me? Shaking? He realized it in disbelief before putting all his effort into stopping the tremor of his own hand holding hers before she felt it.
She didn’t want to kiss him. She didn’t want to be near enough to him to touch him. Her cold hand gave him that indication as it just lay within his grasp, holding a chill to it, when he wanted to send nothing but warmth. She was going to have to kiss him, though.
The thought that he had to force it gave him little satisfaction, but the desire to feel those lips against his made it something worth risking. He was losing sleep over it, he was being plagued ceaselessly with it, he was finding it difficult to concentrate. There was only one thing to do about it. See if the reality matched the dream. He could hardly wait for the end of the ceremony, sealing her to him, and making her his for this lifetime…his wife, his partner, his mate.
They were pronounced man and wife and Langston turned his head slowly, savoring the time it would take, and holding his breath at what he’d find. He wasn’t disappointed, although she was looking up at him with the look that went straight through him again, just like that first time. He could have been anyone, as long as it was anyone else. His eyes narrowed as he knew that’s what she was wishing for.
She had a bit of rose to her cheeks that she couldn’t disguise, and a touch of the same to her lips. She also had more tears hovering at her lashes, but not going anywhere from there.
He turned fully to face her, and she did the same motion. Langston was a large man. He always had been, although