“Mother, please,” Robina groaned. “The dress is not creased, the seams are straight, there is no lint on it, and no marks of any kind. Please give me peace. I am nervous enough as it is!”
Her mother shook her head. She seemed to have become more confident as she reached middle age, and she was still a beautiful woman, even though the first threads of gray were starting to show in her lovely auburn hair. She was slightly shorter than Robina, but they had the same sharp features and the same dimpled smile.
“My dear daughter,” Donna replied, as she bent down to straighten an imaginary crease on Robina’s hemline, “it is a mother’s duty, on the most important and glorious day of her daughter’s life, to make sure that she is perfect. Not just lovely, but perfectly poised and perfectly polished, and if you are not, it is a bad reflection on me. Wait till you have a daughter of your own and you will understand. Now where is your bouquet?”
Robina cast her eyes heavenward. If her bouquet had been lost it would be just another disaster on a day that promised to be full of them.
First of all, it had rained for two solid hours that morning; not merely light showers that came and went, leaving the land clean and refreshed. No, it had come in great heavy sheets that soaked into the soil and left a sea of mud behind it. As well as that, it lingered in puddles on the stone-flagged floor of the courtyard, so that the ladies’ dresses would be soaked up to the ankles in dirty water by the time they reached the chapel.
The local merchant who delivered the French wine had run out of supplies of the choicest varieties, and the rest of the stock was of vastly inferior quality. This meant that Robina’s wedding would be remembered not for its wonderful food, beautiful decor, or the loveliness of the bride, but for the stinginess of the Laird, who only bought the cheapest wine. People tended to remember the worst.
She was dressing at Alexander’s home. Castle Glengour was a beautiful white building set amid the rolling hills north of Perth on the banks of the river Tay. It was unlike any other in the area, since it had a narrow circular tower with a conical roof at each corner of its square-shaped structure, and was the tallest structure for miles around. However, despite its fairytale appearance, it was a strong defensive fortress that could withstand a prolonged siege if necessary.
Robina looked out the window, asking herself if this was what she really wanted to do. There was still time for her to pull out; a marriage conducted under duress would be null and void, and she would be free to marry someone else. She sighed; she was so confused.
Somehow in her girlish fantasies she had always seen herself marrying for love, but now she felt as though she had been auctioned to the highest bidder. She dreaded the night when she and her new husband would be alone, and she would be at Alexander’s mercy.
Men always came to the marriage bed with some experience, but women were expected to be chaste and pure, which begged the question: who did men lie with? This question had troubled her for years, and although she had asked her husband-to-be, she had received no satisfactory answer, only shock and indignation.
All of these things were running through her mind as she waited for her father to come and lead her to the chapel. She turned to her mother for some words of encouragement.
“Mother,” she said timidly, “may I ask you something?”
“Anything, my dear,” Donna replied, smiling and taking her daughter’s hand.
“Tonight—in the marriage bed—will it hurt?” Robina asked. Her eyes had begun to fill with tears, which ran down her cheeks and spotted the silk of her dress. “I am so afraid.” She looked confident when she first met Alex, but he was a huge man. She was terrified of what he could do to her if he was not gentle.
Donna sighed. This was the question she had been dreading. She had left the teaching of the facts of life to Robina’s ladies’ maid, since she herself was too embarrassed to do it. Now, looking down at their joined hands, her cheeks flaming, she said, “I will not lie to you, darling. It does hurt, but just for a moment, and after a while you will love your Alexander more than you could ever imagine. That is why it is called ‘making love.’”
Robina was not calm after that but she would do her best. After all, every woman had to go through it. “Thank you, Mother.” Robina kissed her mother’s cheek. She would miss her. Only now she could see that. “Did you love Father when you first met?”
“Not at first,” Donna admitted, “but after a while I grew to love him.”
“And you still do?”
Donna smiled at her daughter. “More than ever.”
Robina went to look out the window again. “I hope our guests do not drown,” she remarked. “All this rain must be a bad omen.”
“No,” Donna said soothingly. “There is no such thing as a bad omen, and after the wedding feast they will not care what the weather is like anyway. They will all be too full of whisky!”
Robina laughed, then remembered the wine. She groaned. “Oh, no! The wine! They will think we are too niggardly to buy the good stuff.”
“Ah! I have good news!” Donna cried, beaming. “Your father sourced some excellent wine for us, so the Laird has given the other wine to the villagers to celebrate with you. There will be masses of food left from the wedding too, so Alexander has donated that, and added some of his own too so they can all eat.”
Robina’s eyes widened in surprise. “My goodness!” she cried. “I had no idea he was so generous!”
Donna came up behind her and put an arm around her daughter’s slender waist.
“I would not have let you marry him if he were not,” she said tenderly. “His wealth is a bonus, but your happiness comes first.”
Her mother looked at her in an apologetic way “We thought Lockie was an honest man. I am terribly sorry with how things turned out.”
Robina doubted things would be better with Alex, or that her happiness was a priority. But she was determined to show Alex from day one how she wanted to be treated.
Just then her father came in. He stopped short and his eyes widened in amazement as he looked at his daughter. He was a tall, spare man with prematurely white hair, hazel eyes that were always ready to smile, and a gentle nature.
His wife was definitely the more forceful of the two of them, although Bearnard could stand up against her very capably when the need arose. Those occasions were so rare that Donna always gave way. It took something very serious to arouse the sleeping dragon in Bearnard’s soul, but Robina loved them both equally.
