No sooner did they arrive than two attendants—attired as the others with a cloth badge bearing the earl’s heraldic symbol—stepped out of the shadows of the chapel where they’d been standing sentry and proceeded to open the heavy, iron-banded doors. Although it was customary for wedding vows to be exchanged at the chapel doors, due to the foul weather, the vows were to take place inside the sanctuary.
Long moments passed as Laoghaire stared at the entryway, her throat tightening with an emotion that was foreign to her: unadulterated fear. So great was her fear that she was completely immobilized, her limbs seized by a strange paralysis.
Feeling Diarmid gently nudge her forward, Laoghaire commanded her legs to move. As she forced herself to step across the threshold, she felt very much like a condemned woman being led to the gallows.
Once she crossed the threshold, Diarmid reached over and wordlessly removed her cloak. After the ermine-lined garment was lifted from her shoulders, Laoghaire nervously smoothed a hand over her kirtle. Her sister-in-law Yvette had spent weeks making the beautiful gown, which was intricately embroidered with costly gold thread. Laoghaire had never worn so splendid a garment. Yet given that her life was about to change dramatically—and not for the better she suspected—sackcloth and ashes might have been more appropriate attire.
Without thinking, she put a hand to the golden torc that she wore around her neck. Despite being dressed in the Lowland fashion, she’d deliberately adorned herself with the torc, so that Angus and his Anglo-Norman retainers would know that she had no intention of abandoning her Celtic heritage. The torc had been in her family for generations and had been worn by her mother on her wedding day. Since her mother died when Laoghaire was but three years of age, she could only wonder what she would think of her only daughter becoming a countess, a member of the Lowland nobility.
Again, Diarmid urged her forward, Laoghaire permitting him to escort her to the altar. A priest, wearing a black robe and chasuble, awaited her arrival. Standing before him, with his back turned to Laoghaire, was the Earl of Angus. Like the priest, he was garbed entirely in black. No one else was present, save for an unfamiliar man and woman who were seated on one of the plain wooden benches that lined either side of the aisle.
Laoghaire had taken only a few steps when she was suddenly overcome with a burst of queasiness, no doubt attributable to the fact that she’d been unable to eat earlier in the day due to her nervousness. Terrified that she might lose the contents of her stomach—and make a complete spectacle of herself—she kept her head bent as she continued to walk toward the altar, her gaze directed at the stone floor.
Not only was she nauseated, her sense of dread was now so great that she could not bring herself to even look at the groom. The thought of being intimately touched by a man old enough to be her grandfather—who no doubt had the thickly veined and spotted hands of a graybeard—was absolutely repugnant.
He is aged. He cannot live forever.Silently she repeated the affirmation, over and over, as though it were a protective incantation.
When she finally reached the altar, Diarmid stepped aside, leaving her to stand beside the earl. Keeping her gaze assiduously fixed upon the altar, Laoghaire gasped softly when Angus suddenly took hold of her right hand. Her head still bent, she cast a sidelong glance at their conjoined hands. Startled by the fact that the earl’s hand was surprisingly virile-looking for so aged a man—the large bronzed hand appearing strong enough to wield a heavy sword—she raised her head and peered at her betrothed.
Thunderstruck to see Sir Galen de Ogilvy standing beside her, Laoghaire forcefully yanked her hand free.
“What is this black-hearted knave doing here?” she demanded to know, nearly choking on the fury that instantly roiled within her.
“I am here to wed you,” the knight had the audacity to reply. “And once that happens, I shall be your lord and master.”
“And if you ever again dare to call me a knave, I will beat you soundly,” Galen threatened in a lowered voice. “And none will gainsay the punishment as it will be my right as your husband.”
A right that I will take great delight in exercising,Galen thought while he stared at the gloriously beautiful Highland maid. Garbed in a vivid shade of indigo blue—one that precisely matched the color of her eyes—Laoghaire MacKinnon put him in mind of an ancient pagan queen. Not only were her flaming red locks unbound, she wore all manner of strange, heathenish gold jewelry, including an ornate headband, a torc that bore the carved head of a snarling wolf on each end, and a golden cuff on both of her wrists.
“What manner of foul duplicity is this? I am to wed the Earl of Angus!” Laoghaire exclaimed in an imperious tone of voice. “Not this . . . thisknight.”
Although she curbed her tongue at the last, the wench somehow managed to make the word “knight” sound like a vile curse.
Turning her head to and fro, Laoghaire peered at the nearly empty sanctuary. “So where is yer uncle? Why does the man not show himself?”
“Given his multitude of sins, I suspect he’s dining with the devil as we speak,” Galen informed her, unable to keep the mockery out of his voice. In truth, his uncle had always been a hard taskmaster, and there had been no love lost between them.
“Do ye mean to say that yer uncle is dead?”
Galen sniggered softly. “For one born in the Highlands, you have a quick and facile mind. Yea, he died two weeks ago in his sleep.”
Her beauty marred with a look of pure outrage, Laoghaire turned to her cousin. “Were ye aware of this?”
“I had been informed,” Diarmid confirmed with a nod. “’Tis what I was earlier trying to tell ye. But ye didna give me the chance.”
Craning her head in Galen’s direction, Laoghaire’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why did ye make no mention of this when we earlier conversed in the bailey?”
“I made the attempt, lady. However, you were so intent on spewing your venom at me that I was unable to make the announcement.”
“So this is my fault, is it?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Wanting to get the ceremony over and done with, Galen gestured to the priest, Father Giroldus, and said, “Get on with it. I am a busy man.”
Laoghaire’s brow crinkled. “How can there be a wedding if the earl is dead?”
“While my uncle is dead, the Earl of Angus is very much alive as the title passed to me upon his death,” Galen informed her, fast losing patience with her pointless squabbling.
Folding her arms over her chest, the Highland wench stubbornly shook her head. “I refuse to marry ye!”
