The Bonny Bride Page 16

  As he strode toward the woman with his hand outstretched, she shrank back. A haunted look flickered in her green eyes, but Harris barely took note of it. His gaze fell to her ivory cheeks, where the fine veil of her dark hair had drawn back.

  A low moan escaped his lips.

  Two angry, jagged scars marred an otherwise beautiful face. They distorted the symmetry of her features, as though the porcelain head of a fashion baby had been smashed, then glued back together by inexpert hands.

  It was the first time Harris had seen another scarred countenance, except in his shaving mirror. Something deep within him grieved for this woman. Did the wounds hurt her still? They looked like they must. Part of him grieved, too, for what those around her had lost. Surely hers had once been a face that eyes lingered upon with delight.

  “Aye, I’m Morag.” The passing mist of anguish in her gaze froze into a curtain of icy hauteur that Harris recognized all too well. “Get off to the Menzies place, stranger, and keep an eye on that dolt of a Murdock.”

  A rustle in the underbrush behind him made Harris glance away. When he looked back, Morag McGregor had disappeared as completely as if she’d never been there.

  The brush rustled again, and this time when Harris looked, he saw a tall, rawboned woman striding toward him.

  “Ye’ve met Morag, I see,” she said, shaking her head dolefully. “What an awful thing, but ye know what the Good Book says about pride going before a fall.”

  Harris wasn’t sure how to reply. Fortunately, the woman didn’t seem disposed for a two-way conversation.

  “I ken ye must be that Chisholm man who’s come for the wedding. All the way from Richibucto on foot? I never heard of anything so daft! Ye must be on yer way to Menzies’s, are ye? So am I—I’ll just go along with ye.”

  Still half-lost in his contemplation of Morag McGregor, Harris fell into step beside the woman. Her hectoring chatter washed over him, little of it denting his consciousness as he thought about his curious encounter with Morag.

  Pity. How he’d despised it in his youth. At the merest suggestion of pity in someone’s eyes or voice, he had reacted exactly like Morag McGregor, wrapping himself in his protective armor of cold scorn. Now he had experienced it from the other side, and it was not what he’d expected. There were far worse things, he decided, than gentle pity.

  Beside him, the loquacious woman continued to talk. Now and again he nodded his head in response. She’d introduced herself, but he’d only been half listening and couldn’t recall the name. Somebody MacSomebody.

  “They all thought it so queer—a Chisholm from the south, but I recollect being in service in Glasgow with a Chisholm woman, and she was no Highlander. A bonny wee thing, God rest her soul. Now what was her name? Bettina? Brenda? No. Oh, my memory ain’t what it used to be.”

  By this time they had reached the Menzieses’ homestead. From the sharp scent that hung in the still air, Harris guessed Isabel McGregor had been right about the men sampling Ewan Menzies’s brew. After the week he’d spent, Harris was rather inclined to fortify himself with a wee nip, too.

  He turned to his companion. “It’s been a pleasure to meet ye…ma’am. Now, if ye’d be so kind as to point out Isabel McGregor’s husband-to-be. There’s a message she wanted me to deliver to him.”

  “Belinda!” cried the woman.

  Harris glanced around to see whom she might be addressing. There looked to be no other women around.

  “I beg yer pardon, ma’am?”

  “Belinda Chisholm,” the woman repeated, with a note of triumph in her voice. “She came from someplace in Galloway, I recollect.”

  Harris’s legs turned to jelly beneath him. Spying a flat, sawed-off tree stump nearby, he lurched the few steps to it and sat down heavily.

  “Dalbeattie?” The word squeezed its way out of his badly constricted throat. “Did she come from Dalbeattie?”

  “Aye, now that ye mention it, I ken she did. But I can’t be full sure. This was every day of twenty years ago, mind. Why? Ye don’t mean to say she was some relation of yers? Ain’t it a small world, though?”

  He nodded. “My mother’s name was Belinda.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jenny’s stomach throbbed with hunger by the time the women finally called a halt to their labors and began to deck themselves out for the wedding and the ceilidh to follow. Watching them emerge from the house in their modest finery, she wished she had something better to put on. The dress she’d worn to trek through the wilderness looked as if it had been worn to trek through the wilderness.

  There was her own wedding gown, of course, which had come through their harrowing journey as though charmed. But she could not break faith with Roderick by wearing it, not when he and their wedding were so near at hand.

  A skirl of bagpipes made Jenny start guiltily, remembering the previous night.

  In a swaggering march, the bridegrooms emerged from the forest to claim their ladies. A fine-looking company they were on this late August afternoon, in their full-sleeved white sarks and their bold tartans. The other men of the settlement followed in similar array, but Jenny had eyes for only one.

  Bringing up the rear of the procession with an air of self-conscious pride, strode Harris, attired in a handsome plaid of forest-green and black. The whiskers he hadn’t been able to shave in over a week had grown into an attractive close-trimmed beard that hid his scars entirely. Why had he never thought of growing one before?

  As she watched him, Jenny felt her innards doing a nervous little dance. There was something different about him. She sensed it with a powerful certainty. It was more than the roguishly attractive beard and the becoming Highland garb. For the first time in all the years she’d known him, Harris looked comfortable and confident in his own skin.

  With mounting annoyance, Jenny realized that hers were not the only feminine eyes sizing up Harris. Every unattached lass in the settlement appeared to be watching him with the intensity of hungry she-wolves stalking a majestic stag. Even the slender, dark-haired creature who lurked in the eaves of the woods, with a shawl wrapped around her head.

  Worse yet, Jenny sensed that Harris was aware of their attention—even flattered by it.

  In the best interests of all concerned, Jenny knew she should push Harris straight into the arms of one of these admiring Highland lasses. Instead, some dark, possessive force reared to life within her, ignoring the weak protestations of reason.

  While everyone’s attention was diverted elsewhere, she slipped into the McGregor’s house and pried open the bundle containing her wedding gown.

  Harris glanced around. Where had Jenny got to?

  Could she have changed her mind after all and gone off to Chatham on her own? An even less appealing thought—what if her decision to stay for the wedding had been a ruse to get him out of the way so she could finish their journey unescorted?

  Part of him almost hoped so. Another part mourned her desertion. After what he had learned this afternoon, there was so much he longed to tell her.

  A movement nearby drew his eye. A pair of lassies a bit younger than Jenny blushed brightly and looked away, but not before Harris realized they’d been pointing and talking about him. No doubt he looked a fool in this Highland getup—him, who’d never set a foot farther north than Edinburgh.

  Out the corner of his eye, he could see Morag McGregor skulking in the distance. Perhaps she was watching him, too. It struck Harris that she might understand the import of what he wanted to tell Jenny. If only he could break past her icy reserve.

  Just then, the minister called everyone to worship. A fresh-faced lad, newly minted from the seminary, his ringing voice filled the small clearing. Five couples stepped forward. Two of the brides passed their babies off to older women. One infant began to squall in protest. The company laughed.

  “Marriage,” intoned the preacher, “was instituted by God…” Was the lad old enough to understand the full implication of what he was saying about love, help
and comfort?

  Harris flinched. Would he ever find a woman willing to be all that to him? He could imagine only one, and she was gone.

  “Dost thou, Murdock Menzies, take Isabel McGregor to be thy lawful wedded wife?” the minister asked. “To live together under God’s holy ordinance?”

  His gaze fixed on the happy couple with jealous intensity, Harris heard a muted rustle beside him and a faint gasp from somewhere in the crowd. Grudging a sidelong glance, he froze in awestruck contemplation of Jenny.

  So she hadn’t deserted him after all. The realization pulsed through Harris. Though he endeavoured to stem a dizzying tide of happiness, it swamped him just the same. As it had that day on the Kirkcudbright quayside, her beauty overwhelmed him.

  Though wrinkled and creased almost beyond repair, the gown she wore was like no other Harris had ever seen. The wide sash hugged her waist, emphasizing the provocative curve of her bosom and sweep of her hips. The heather-gray luster of the silk matched her eyes to perfection.

  Scarcely aware of what he was doing, Harris shifted back and to the side, until Jenny’s arm pressed against his. He expected her to recoil from this contact, but she didn’t. Together they stood, as close as any of the bridal couples, the timeless liturgy of the marriage service twining around them.

  “And forsaking all others keep ye only unto her, as long as ye both shall live.”

  While Murdock Menzies mumbled his response, Harris’s heart cried within him, I do. As God’s my witness, I do.

  He stole another glance at Jenny, eager to horde up every memory of her for the lonely years that stretched ahead. Their eyes met and held, and it seemed to Harris that the whole world dissolved around them into a shimmering mist.

  The vows of marriage reached him in a faint echo, as though whispered privately by the very voice of God.

  “To have and to hold…” Plain words, but in the context of Jenny, the sweetest in the language.

  “From this day forth, for better for worse. For richer for poorer…”

  A deep shudder racked Jenny and her eyes widened as if she had beheld a frightening sight. Wrenching both her arm and her gaze away from Harris, she put a few inches’ distance between them. The emotional gulf felt like a thousand miles.

  Would he ever learn to buttress his heart against her? Harris wondered bitterly.

  One of the village lasses caught his eye, smiling with timid…admiration? Harris spread his own mouth into an answering expression, and stepped toward the girl.

  Time to administer the physic.

  For better for worse. For richer for poorer.

  The terrible reality of those vows struck Jenny like a Highlander’s claymore. Marriage was not some romantic summer idyll. It was toil and worry and making ends meet. Those grim realities took a deadly toll on fragile sentiments like love and desire. Jenny knew she was not strong enough to sustain a loving marriage under such conditions.

  And yet…

  This strange attachment she’d conceived for Harris had a stubborn tenacity of its own, compelling her to do the most contrary things. Like the foolish gesture of donning her wedding dress. She must look a fright, all wrinkled with a water stain at the hem and another under the arm, the feminine curves of her figure wantonly on display.

  For a delicious moment, though, when Harris had first glanced at her, she had tasted his admiration. It made her heart skip giddily in her bosom and all her senses cry out to sate themselves on him. She yearned to lose herself in the warm light of his eyes and to breathe his essence. To run her hands through his hair and acquaint her lips with every nuance of his expressive face. To fill her ears with the rich timbre of his voice and taste his kisses to their most mysterious depths.

  He had come to exert a potent influence upon her, which frightened Jenny to the core. Like the harmless-looking sandbars at the mouth of a river, Harris Chisholm stood to wreck her painstakingly constructed marriage plans within sight of her safe harbor. And her own wayward passion was the gale that swept her vessel into danger.

  “What God hath joined,” declared the minister, “let not man put asunder.”

  The two infants were returned to the arms of their newlywed parents for baptism, and several other youngsters were brought forward for the sacrament. When all had been properly anointed and prayed over, the women swung into action, laying out a feast on the improvised tables.

  The smells of the food brought Jenny’s hunger gnawing back to life. The savory aroma of roast fowl, the subtle nutty scent of freshly baked oatcakes, the briny fragrance of boiled lobsters. As she heaped her plate with a mixture of traditional Scots and native New Brunswick delicacies, Jenny did her best to ignore the bevy of lasses flocking to Harris.

  And to ignore the sharp talons of jealousy that raked her heart.

  A long trestle table and benches had been cobbled together for the wedding feast. With only a passing qualm that the rough-hewn seat might snag a hole in her dress, Jenny wedged herself in between big Alec McGregor and wee Granny McPhee. Harris secured a seat on the opposite side of the table, four body-widths up. Jenny could not help but notice that the last of those bodies was the giggly girl who had called Harris a hero. Another young woman, plump and rather pretty, claimed a place on his left side. The pair lost no time in competing for his attention with questions and compliments.

  Their merry banter drifted down the table to Jenny, spoiling her appetite completely. Evidently the charm lessons she’d given Harris aboard the St. Bride had found soil as fertile as had the reading lessons he’d given her. He was driving her to distraction by flirting with other women, and she had taught him how to go about it!

  With the offices of the Church now decently administered, no one made any objection to Ewan Menzies dispensing his brew. Hoping it might numb her heart the way it had numbed her bilious stomach on the St. Bride, Jenny bolted a deep draft of the raw liquor. She pulled a sour face as it scorched its way down her throat. Glancing up, she found Harris gazing upon her with a droll grin. His look seemed to say, At least ye didn’t spit it up this time. The memory of that awful storm on their first night out from Scotland stretched between them like an invisible bond.

  Flashing him an indignant glare, she tried to concentrate on worrying down more of the Menzies brew and making conversation with her neighbors. But her rebellious eyes—they would steal a glance in Harris’s direction at every opportunity. And her ears would strain to catch the spritely conversation that bubbled between him and his admirers. Even her thoughts, if unguarded, would lapse into fond memories of her time with Harris.

  At last, as the late summer shadows began to lengthen and the company had sated themselves with food and drink, the musicians took up their fiddles and began to play. The tunes rang wild and lively at first, calling dancers to venture with flying steps. Jenny found a spot under a spreading maple tree where she could watch the performances in fascination, without fear of being dragged into one. As the night wore on and Ewan Menzies’s whisky flowed, the music gradually mellowed.

  From somewhere a woman’s voice rose in song. Jenny assumed the lyrics must be in Gaelic, for she could not understand the hauntingly beautiful ballad. From quite nearby, a hummed echo of the melody sounded. Jenny glanced around only to discover that Harris had stolen up behind her.

  “Gave yer followers the slip, did ye?” She tried to disguise her eagerness with tart humor. “I was afraid they were going to pull-haul ye in twain, like the wishbone of a Christmas goose. How does it feel to be the object of so much feminine attention?”

  “It makes a pleasant change.”

  The whisky’s lazy warmth seeped through Jenny. Rather than numbing her conflicting and confusing feelings for Harris, it lulled all her carefully constructed defenses to sleep.

  “Every unwed lass in the village old enough to put her hair up is smitten with ye. To them, ye’re as much a hero as…Rob Roy or Ivanhoe.”

  “Get away with ye. Ye’ve filled their heads with stories, is all.”
>
  “Not stories, Harris, just the truth. And for what it’s worth, I reckon ye are a hero.”

  “I beg yer pardon?”

  “Ye heard me well enough.” Jenny fixed her attention on the singer and the fiddlers, not trusting herself to look at him. “So don’t go fishing for more compliments—it’s not gentlemanly.” She seized upon the first remark she could think of to change the subject. “Do ye know what this song’s about?”

  “Aye, a bit. It’s about a princess, and a knight who journeys from far away to ask for her hand.”

  “Then why does it sound so sad?”

  “Because the princess refuses him.”

  “I see.”

  They stood in silence as the last poignant strain died away.

  “There’s something I have to tell ye,” murmured Harris as the fiddles began to croon once more. “Ye were right about my mother. It wasn’t on account of me that she left—at least not in the way I always thought.”

  His words caught her off guard. Though Jenny would scarcely have admitted it, even to herself, she’d hoped Harris would advise her against going on to Chatham in the morning.

  “How did you find all this out? Here, of all places.”

  “There’s a woman in the village, I can’t recall her name just now. Before she married and came to New Brunswick, she was in service for a tobacco baron in Glasgow and…”

  The whole story gushed out of him. How his mother had also been a servant in the house, having fled her family in Dalbeattie. Later, when she became ill, she’d confided the reason for her desertion. Feeling responsible for the fire that scarred her son, Belinda Chisholm hadn’t been able to live with her guilt. She had saved every penny of her wages, and when she died of a bilious fever, the money was sent south for her son’s education.

  “I always wondered how Pa could afford to send me to school in Edinburgh,” concluded Harris. “If only he’d told me the truth about where the money came from. I ken he was just too bitter about her going, even after all those years.”