Page 17 of Beyond Dreams

“Um, apparently not,” was her reply to this, given on what sounded like a frustrated sigh. “Can you just translate for me?”

His teeth pained him then for how forcefully he clenched them.Bluidy hell. “Do you enter into the union willingly?” He snapped with little tolerance.

His patience was sorely tested when his bride opened her mouth but said nothing initially, as if this simple query needed greater consideration. For the briefest of moments, her pretty face was contorted with a mute wretchedness.

“Well, I...I mean no offense to you,” she said, her voice small and her gaze beseeching, “but I’m only going along with this to get away from this place and these people and because Sidheag said I’d have a better chance of returning to—”

“Yea or nae,” Duncan growled at her, uninterested in her reasons, which meant very little to him. He withered her with his glare. Or, that had been his intention.

“Fine,” she snipped at him, a flash of anger in her brown eyes. “Yea.”

The yea was universal so that the cleric was able to understand. He nodded eagerly and asked next of Duncan if he would take unto himself Ceri MacHeth as his bride and mate, as her defender and protector and sure resort, to honor and sustain her all the days of his life.

“I will,” he answered, mistakenly in English, though the cleric seemed to comprehend this as well and quickly concluded the right.

When the man closed the psalter, Duncan nodded at his wife, telling her the rite was complete.

“That’s it? But he didn’t ask me anything but if I came here willingly,” she protested, her brow knit with some confusion.

Duncan wasn’t sure he understood her concern. “You gave your oath you were here of your own volition,” he argued. “All other answers are presumed to follow as fitting with that accord. You would nae have come if you did nae wish to be wed.”

“I guess so,” she said, but was clearly still confused, or his answer sat unwell with her.

Again, not his concern, save that he knew a moment’s gratitude that his wife could so easily be made to see reason. God willing, she would remain as amenable.

“I assume you have trunks packed,” he said to her.

“I...I don’t know,” Ceri answered. She looked to her aunt, the old crone who clearly hadn’t bothered to don her finest for the wedding. “Do I have stuff packed?”

“Sure and ye do, lass,” answered the old woman.

“But is itmystuff?” Ceri persisted. “Or more clothes like this?” She asked, plucking at the skirt of her gown, which summoned Duncan’s appreciative gaze once more to her garb and the body it barely concealed. “I don’t want to be dressed like this, like some....floozy everyday while I’m here. And I want the things I traveled with, Sidheag, my bag and,” she paused and leaned closer, whispering, “and my purse and my phone.”

Duncan decided right then that English, though likely learned at the nunnery years ago, was still not perfected by his bride. She spoke it confidently but so much of it didn’t make sense that he supposed she didn’t grasp the language quite as well as she herself believed.

And then she appeared mortally wounded by the hag’s response, receiving the news abouther stuff—“Gone, lass. All burned, and more the better”—with a strangled cry and a hiss of, “You had no right, Sidheag. That’s not fair, wasn’t yours to—”

“Cease,” advised the crone harshly. “’Twas nae my doing, but it is done.”

As was the crone, Duncan was unaffected by the quivering lip of his bride.

Having no reason to dally, he inclined his head at Graeme to ready the men and directed Ceri into the company of the two women in his party, introducing them succinctly. “My stepmother and her daughter, Doirin and Moire. You will ride with them in the carriage.” He eyed Doirin, knowing that she spoke English well, but switching to Gaelic to advise her, “’Tis a slow ride home. Dinna make it unpleasant for her.” That was about as far as he would go to see to his wife’s well-being currently. Both Doirin and Moire would not be long at Thallane; he didn’t believe his stepmother could manage so much discontent either inside the closed vehicle now or in a few short weeks while she still resided at Thallane, nothing that should cause him concern presently.

***

Holly didn’t supposeshe needed to waste time on any farewells to her fake brothers, but she did want to say goodbye to Sidheag, though she wouldn’t go so far as to thank her for everything she’d done. Certainly not.

Still, her anxiety was growing by leaps and bounds. At least Sidheag was known to her, and now she was going off by herself to anotherunknown. “I don’t suppose there’s any way that you can come with me,” she said to the old woman.

“Rather like bringing your grandmother on your honeymoon, innit?” was Sidheag’s response.

Holly paled again, revived only by her next thought. “It’s not like it’s a real wedding or marriage.”

“He believes it to be so,” Sidheag reminded her.

Holly was prompted to recall the problems with trauma right then, that she’d only thought about herself and her predicament, hadn’t fully considered all the parties involved and their take on the disaster. “Good Lord, he does, doesn’t he?” She swallowed a gulp of expanding dread. And now she begged, “Please come with me.”

Sidheag shook her head. “The hard part is done,” she said next. “Now you need only wait until the opportunity presents itself.”

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