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Tosia’s wedding kirtle was a gown fit for a queen, at least in Tosia’s estimation. Accustomed to rough woolen dresses and misshapen leather shoes, the pale sky-blue gown with draping sleeves and thistles embroidered in green and lavender, fit like something from a dream. Tosia felt much like a fae creature from one of her mother’s stories.
The thought of her mother tugged at her heart, and tears filled her eyes. She touched a fingertip to the corner of her eyes, trying to stop the weeping she feared would ensue. A daughter should have her mother by her side at her wedding, and here she was, alone.
Well, not exactly alone. Brigid had helped her dress, and once the gown was laced up the back and sleek brown slippers adorned her feet, Brigid sat Tosia on a stool to brush out her hair and tie it back. Her lush sunset locks were knotted, and Brigid had to work her fingers through her hair to pull them out.
Once she was satisfied with the narrow queues that she’d braided back from Tosia’s temples, Brigid then tied them off with ribbons and threads that matched her gown. When Tosia thought she was done, Brigid laid a strong hand on her shoulder, keeping her seated.
“Your groom has sent ye a wee, sentimental gift. Here.”
Brigid thrust a floral crown before Tosia’s eyes, and Tosia gasped.
“I’ve already received far too many gifts. I dinna know where the King found such a fine gown, but he gifted me with it for this day. And these slippers.” Tosia lifted the soft woolen skirt to expose a dainty toe. “I canna accept anything more.”
Brigid clicked her tongue. “From your groom-to-be, ye can. Let’s put in your hair. It matches your gown like ‘twas made for it.”
She spoke the truth. The crown bore slender young fern leaves, sprigs of summer heather, and round heads of purple thistle. Tosia imagined she was fae when Brigid tucked it into her hair.
“There!” Brigid exclaimed. “Now dry your eyes and let’s see if the king is ready to walk ye to the stairs of the kirk.”
So she hadn’t missed the tears Tosia tried to hide. The maid was too sharp by half.
“The king will walk me?” Tosia asked, realizing what the maid had said.
Brigid took Tosia’s hands to help her rise and smiled widely.
“Och, ye are without a guardian and are to wed the king’s second in command. Ye think ye are worthy of anything less?”
Tosia’s stomach fell to her feet. The idea of the king at her wedding made her head swirl. But to have him walk her to meet her groom? She feared she’s faint again.
And the prospect of standing in front of the priest with the Black Douglas himself? If she managed to keep her feet, it would be a miracle.
Though the beastly man had done a fine job of trying to reach out to her, assuage her fears and let her know he was a man, not a demon in disguise, it was a different matter altogether to be marrying the man with the dark reputation.
And then to find her bed with him? Tosia swooned and gripped Brigid’s arm. Better to not faint on her wedding day. The Black Douglas didn’t want a feeble-hearted lass at his side. He needed a strong wife.
Tavish had assured her she could be just that. He’d reminded her of that the day before when he found her in the gardens. She’d believed that her brother would be the one to give her to James, but he wasn’t of an age, only a squire to the great man himself.
“Are ye ready, lass?” Brigid asked, excitement making her voice rise to a glass-shattering pitch.
“Aye,” Tosia squeaked out, lying.
No matter what vows he made or what his men said about him, she would never be ready to wed the monster. She only prayed that she might grow accustomed to him, and that he’d forget about her soon enough.
Tavish waited below in the hall with King Robert, scrubbed clean for the event. They stood amid the light that dappled through the unshuttered windows, on woven rushes that had been freshly replaced. He smiled up at her as she descended the steps.
When was the last time she had seen Tavish so clean? From his tunic to his tartan to his shoes, he looked more a man than a boy, and Tosia’s heart hammered in her chest at the sight. Though he was growing into a man far too quickly for her, he’d always be her younger brother. Her heart trembled at the man he was becoming, and the joy that she’d be able to experience that growth with him.
She patted his cheek, and he dipped his head with a dimpled smile. There’s the lad I know, she thought as a touch brushed her elbow. She turned to find the king held out his arm to her.
The king himself was a remarkable sight. Clad in black from shoulder to toe, he commanded any space in which he stood. His burnished-brown hair, still damp and glistening in the pale sunlight, was brushed back from his face, framing his cheeks and jaw before touching the collar of his black tunic. He often wore black — unlike other royalty she’d heard rumored to wear bright colors – light blues and purples. The Bruce was a king of his people, and in Tosia’s opinion, he certainly dressed the part.
Had she ever believed to meet the great man? Nay, not in this lifetime. Yet here she was, her arm threaded through his as he led her to his second in command so that she might wed him. Could the world work any more strangely? God’s plans surely were more than her mind could begin to comprehend.
The two men walked on either side of her, ushering her to the formidable stone chapel on the far side of the outer bailey, where the Black Douglas, her future husband, awaited her on the gray steps.
When she reached the pathway to the chapel, she forced herself to lift her eyes and gazed upon the man who would be tied to her for the rest of her life.
More shocking than the soft cheeks of her brother or the refined figure of Robert the Bruce was the bushy, wild-looking Black Douglas, or rather, the lack of him.
He didn’t look like the Black Douglas she’d seen over the past sennight. Gone was the roughly clipped beard and sweeping black waves that reached his neck. Someone had taken a razor to his cheeks, all the way up his scalp on the sides. What remained of his hair was slicked back, a shining black helm in the patchy sunlight. With his face and head shaved, his body seemed larger, more immense under his freshly laundered dark blue and green Douglas plaid. He looked as regal as the king himself.
But it was his face that caught her attention. With his jaw shaved, she could see him, the real James Douglas, not the infamous Black Douglas. ‘Twas like she was marrying someone different, not the beast of the Scots. His jaw was as formidable as the rest of his, angular, with a cleft in his chin.
As she gathered herself to recall she was standing with this man on the steps of the chapel, she wondered if he had dimples when he smiled.
Then he spoke to her, and she blinked several times, trying to focus on the event at hand.
“Pardon?” she whispered. Was she missing her own wedding?
His lips curled suggestively to one side. “Are ye ready?” he asked.
She couldn’t stop herself. Tosia lifted her hand to stroke the smooth planes of his jaw that distracted her completely. The curl in his lips twitched, and Tosia snatched her hand back, shocked at her bold move.
James raised a jet eyebrow at her and grasped her hands, and Tosia dropped her gaze.
“Aye. I’m ready,” she answered.
He leaned in close as the priest lifted his hands to begin the ceremony. “Calm, lassie. I dinna bite.”
She started and pulled back, but he held tight to her hands, keeping her close.
“No’ unless ye ask me to,” he finished.
Tosia’s frantic eyes gawked at him, and that curled smile returned.
The rest of the day was a blur to James, as his eyes remained riveted on the woman at his side who glowed brighter than the sunset — amber and gold and bronze, the richest treasure. He ignored the king’s gloating, matchmaker smile, instead savoring the vision of the woman he now called wife.
Tosia was nervous, ‘twas obvious to anyone who cast their eyes upon her. Unlike James, she kept her gaze lowered at the meal in the main hall and her hands twined in her skirts. But James was enchanted, his gaze following a luxuriant coppery lock of hair that spilled from her queue at her crown, over her milky shoulder to settle on the delicate curve of her breast.
She had touched him earlier. Why was she so uneasy now? Was it the excitement of their wedding, or did she fret about entering his bedchamber? As he let the rest of the hall fall away to concentrate only on this lovely creature, he presumed it was both.
Wasn’t she in the same predicament as he? Forced into a marriage at the behest of the king? The difference between them was James had experience in the bed, could send her away at will, and bend her to his dictates. She had no recourse. She wasn’t only at the mercy of the king; she was at the mercy of James as well.
That thought caused the hard wall he’d built around his heart to start to crumble. Even when the English had commandeered his castle, he at least had the option to burn it to the ground. This poor, downcast lassie had no such recourse. That wall in his chest crumbled more.
He had vowed to protect her, and he’d meant it. But how could she know that? In the past fortnight, she’d only known loss and upheaval and rumors of the monster she’d just wed.
No wonder she sat bowed, seeming to fold in on herself.
In that moment, he made another vow that she’d only know peace with him. That he would bring her as much joy as his twisted existence could muster. That he wouldn’t send her away, rather than ensure the bright light he saw in her glowed as brilliantly as possible. He had to convince her he wasn’t the monster from the tales she’d heard if they were to be a married couple.
James reached for her hand, and she flinched away.
Och, poor lass.
“Tosia,” he asked in the most tender voice his throat could form, “I dinna mean ye harm. Please have a measure of faith in me.”
While the rest of the hall found their amusements in their drink and feast, James and Tosia’s mutton and apple compote grew cold, and their mead cups remained untouched. For the two of them, nothing else in the hall existed. Tosia’s eyes shifted to his like a frightened doe. James leaned closer to her and plucked her hand from its hiding place in her skirts.
“Dinna fret. I’d like to hold your hand, if ‘tis acceptable?”
Her lips were sealed, but she didn’t fight against him. Repeating her movement from earlier, he placed her hand against his smoothly shaven cheek. It was cool to his touch, and he held her palm against his skin, sharing his warmth with her.
He expected her to yank her hand back as though she’d been burned, but she didn’t.
Did her curiosity outweigh her apprehension? James preferred to think so.
She lifted her furtive hazel eyes to his deep gray-green ones, holding his gaze as she held his face. Their shared look intoxicated him, putting the whiskey in their cups to shame. A flare of hunger inflamed in his chest as their gaze drew out.
“I dinna want ye to fear me,” he said in a ragged tone, then slipped her hand over his lips to kiss the soft skin of her palm. She stiffened, yet kept her face turned to his. “I made ye a vow, and ‘Tis one I intend to keep. I am nothing if no’ a man of my word.”
She nodded, more smooth locks sliding over the swells of her burgeoning breasts that peeked above her rounded neckline and panted as she breathed. He had to force his eyes to her piqued face. Undressing her with his lustful gaze wouldn’t alleviate her fears at all.
“I know that of ye. Your men, the king, my own brother, have vouched for your fidelity.”
That lock of hair was too much, and he entwined it around his finger that brushed against the fair skin of her chest. Her breathing heightened; she was still nervous, yet she didn’t move, and her tenacity under his touch inflamed him even more.
“Then why do ye yet fear me?”
She blinked at his question. “I yet fear the unknown.”
James nodded at her answer. “Aye, I can imagine our marriage bed might be a fretful prospect, but I —”
Tosia shook her head, tearing the lock of hair from his fingertip.
“No’ just the bed. I mean, aye, I have the concerns that any maid would, but ye, milord, ye are the unknown.”
She dropped her gaze, her bravado exhausted in that one statement. She tried to withdraw her hand, but James didn’t let her. This connection, at once powerful and tenuous, he didn’t want broken.
“Then I would have ye know me. We’ve spoken little, but that does no’ do much against the tales ye’ve heard that have crisscrossed Scotland. Most are accurate as I’ve told ye, but what do ye want to know of me that aren’t of those tales? What of me, directly?”
A bit of a gambit — what if she asked a question that only frightened her more?
She swallowed and flicked her face to him, then back to her lap.
“Ye were in France?” she asked in a hesitant voice. He nodded. “How long?”
“Several years.”
“And ye speak French?”
“Oui, un petit peux,” he answered.
“Ye are truly well-educated. ’Tis a difficult language to learn?”
James shook his head. “It can be learned easily enough.” He leaned into her. “Would ye like me to teach ye some words?”
Her shoulders relaxed, and she peeked her eyes up at him. “Aye. ‘Twould be nice.”
“Anything else?”
“Do ye miss your family?” she asked.
The depth of the question caught him by surprise. He sucked on his lower lip as an old familiar pain, tender as an ancient bruise, ached deep in his chest. She’d lost family, as he had. A shared loss, another connection to her.
“Aye,” he choked out. “I was young when I left for France and wasn’t here when they died. ‘Tis a lonely thing for a son no’ to bury his parents.”
“I buried my mam,” she responded, then lifted her clear face to regard him fully. “It does no’ lessen the weight.”
“Ye speak a harsh truth,” he said, then moved so his lips were nearly brushing her cheek. “I would help ye bear that weight. For your loss and in all things.”
She turned her head slightly, so their lips were a breath from each other. “Why? Ye likely know less of me than I do of ye.”
His shuddering breath blew wisps of her hair. “Again, ye speak the truth. But ye are now my wife, and I owe ye a duty. When I vowed my body, my life, I meant it in all things. ‘Tis something else ye now know about me.”
Her shaky breath was warm on his skin, and her cheek brushed against his. He yet held her hand and again slipped her fingertips to his mouth, kissing each fingertip as her breathing grew more rapid.
“I would have ye know more of me,” he told her in a husky voice, his lips caressing hers but not quite kissing her. More like brushing her in a gentle touch, a promise of something more. Then he stood suddenly and turned to the Bruce.
“My apologies, my king, but I can wait no longer. I would retire with my new bride?” He bowed slightly and the Bruce smiled with drink-induced crazed joy.
“I’ll no’ suffer ye to wait any longer. Take a platter when ye leave. I doubt we will see ye again this eve, and ye will need nourishment for this night.”
Then the Bruce, the Sinclair who sat next to him, and several other men roared at the king’s bawdy suggestion. James glared at the men, then took Tosia’s arm in his and lifted the closest wooden platter with the other.
He led Tosia from the hall and up the stairs toward his chambers.
