Aye, she is of great worth.
She was beautiful and spirited. Equal to him in every way. Ruark did not want her handed to him trussed up like some fabled sacrifice.
But he wantedher.
Now that the shock had worn away, Ruark wondered if he could be dreaming, so perfectly had everything transpired.
Then he wondered why he felt as if he had just stabbed Rose through the heart when she had lost everything, and he had lost nothing at all.
Chapter 15
Rose’s marriage to Ruark was arranged to occur before the sun set on a day that was as gray and damp as her mood.
There was no dearth of qualified persons to perform a wedding ceremony, even on short notice. But somehow, Ruark had a special license. All that Scottish civil law required was mutual agreement between partners followed by consummation.
And witnesses to both.
But English law required the special license. Her father was not present. Two of his representatives were. On the morrow, Ruark’s brother would be delivered to a field just across the river, and Ruark would ride outside the stone walls of this abbey and retrieve him.
No one seemed to consider that nothing would prevent her father from reneging after the exchange. Forty men, even Scotsmen, were no match against three hundred.
Still, she stood with Ruark in the same chapel they had been in earlier as a strip of white linen was wrapped around their hands linking them together. She wore a froth of lace that her maid, Anaya, had turned into a beautiful veil when pinned to her hair and topped with a wreath of pearls. The lace was beautiful and Rose felt beautiful wearing it.
She listened as Ruark said two sets of vows, the litany of Gaelic interspersed with English and Latin. He knew the language and his fluency surprised her for she had so rarely heard a brogue in his voice, and hearing one now reminded her of their differences.
She looked up at his face bathed in the pale amber light of the chapel, his dark lashes framing his eyes. It was the first time since she had entered the chapel, carrying a small bouquet of pale roses, that she had even looked at him. She felt something stir deep within her.
More than the vivid memory of his possession pressed on her mind.
He was not some farm boy or simple layperson who had never ventured beyond the boundaries of his village she was marrying.
She was marrying the laird of clan Kerr, and the earl of Roxburghe. Then a ring was placed on her finger. A delicate band of silver. Its very simplicity drawing her gaze to her hand, for the circlet held more meaning to her than the grandest of jewels. She wondered how Ruark had managed to come up with both a veil and a ring in so short a period.
Then again, she should not have wondered, for Ruark Kerr showed much ingenuity in all that he did. What was a wedding to him when compared to battles he had fought?
Now facing him, she quietly repeated something in Gaelic, something about the spirit and union of souls bound until death.
She felt her senses reeling, heightened by his closeness, the heat of his body, and the clean masculine scent of him. He’d combed his hair into a queue at his nape that swept off the collar of a fine lawn shirt with a lacy jabot. The small earring in his ear so opposing to the scant civilized mien of his attire.
And in that moment, she had eyes only for him.
Aye, I could easily love him, she thought, more afraid of what her own vulnerability would do to her.
She held still as the linen cloth was removed from around their wrists and he was told he could now kiss the bride.
As he lowered his head to kiss her, without realizing, she moved instinctively toward him. The touch of his breath, which carried the sweetest taste of wine, was still warm on her lips as he slowly pulled away.
The ceremony was over and she was now his wife.
Moonlight threw shadows on the floor around where Ruark stood against the wall. God only knew his impatience, as the faint sounds of feasting came from the empty corridor behind him.
“Dammit, McBain. Where are you?” he mumbled.
The last place he wanted to be at this moment was standing outside looking out upon a mist-shrouded courtyard.
Ruark had not expected this night to be filled with joviality, but ale and the promise of Jamie’s release tomorrow did much to lift spirits. It didn’t seem to matter to anyone that Hereford had an army camped across the river. Ruark liked that about the Kerrs. None of them lacked for courage. Their skills, honed by generations of border raiding, made them all at ease with the long odds.
Surprisingly, most of these same staunchly fierce clansmen had accepted the Sassenach Rose as his bride. But as Ruark considered that fact, he suspected their acquiescence to his circumstance had as much to do with the flow of abundant drink as it did with Rose’s willingness to skewer Hereford like a kabob that afternoon. After witnessing that event, many of his men would have lain down their lives for her.
