Brother adjusted his boutonniere infinitesimally to the left. “Then just read it off the card.”
I glared at him. “Don’t you have a shred of romance in your soul? I can’t read my wedding vows to Iain! I have to say them! They have to come from the heart!”
Brother shrugged. “Write ‘em on your hand, then.”
I stared at him with an open mouth for a moment, then smacked him on the shoulder.
“That’s an excellent idea! I’ll write them on my hands, and then if I forget any of the words, I can peek down and no one will be the wiser. I knew mere had to be a reason I was cursed with you as a brother!”
“Hey, Kathie, I was joking,” he called out after me as I went to hunt down a black marking pen.
Ten minutes later we were on our way, me main part of my wedding vows filling both palms. Twelve minutes later we realized we hadn’t saved a copy of the map to the site for ourselves.
“Well, this is just typical,” I ranted, being careful not to hold my flowers too hard lest I smudge my cheats. “First Nate lets the dogs in to eat my cake—the cake I personally consulted with the baker over—and then Aunt Amber propositions the hotel manager so that we’ll never be able to stay there again, and now we’re lost in the wilds of Scotland while Iain waits patiently for me to come and marry him. Fine. Just fine.”
“You’d think there would be a sign or something,” Brother muttered, peering at roadside signs. “This is a major castle, right? Something big that all the tourists go to? Where the hell is the sign for it?” I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t a huge castle people could visit, but it was part of a lovely scenic walk around a loch. It took us a while (we had to stop for directions), but we eventually pulled into the visitor center carpark. Suzanne, the wedding coordinator I had worked with to arrange for the site, was near tears. She was new to coordinating, and this was her first time at Loch an Eilein.
“There you are!” she cried, visibly relieved. “Did you bring your wellies?”
“Wellies?” Brother asked.
“I sent you an e-mail reminding you to bring boots,” I pointed out as I sat in the car and stuffed my feet into my wellies. “We have a bit of a walk to get to the cottage.”
“Cottage? What cottage? I thought you were being married at a castle?”
“Don’t you read anything I e-mail you?” Exasperated, I put my hands on my hips and glared. “Honestly, why do I send you things if you’re not going to read them? Didn’t Laura say anything to you about this? The cottage is near the best viewpoint of the castle. That’s where the ceremony is taking place. It’s very pretty.”
He slammed the car door shut and muttered something about being busy at the time. We started off on the twenty-minute walk that would take us around the loch and to the north viewpoint. On the way there, seated on a bench, we spotted Iain’s friend Sandy kitted out in full piper’s regalia with his bagpipe at his side.
“I’m here to pipe you in,” he said with a charming bow.
I couldn’t help it. I started to puddle up. There I was in the middle of the Cairngorm Mountains, walking around a loch on the way to the grounds of a deserted castle, about to marry the man I adored more than anything in the world.
And I was going to be piped in by a red-haired, fully kilted piper. It just doesn‘t get better than this , I thought to myself.
I was wrong.
If you’ve never heard bagpipes echoing off the hills, across a loch, and bouncing off a ruined castle, you’ve missed an experience of a lifetime. There was a spot on shore on Loch an Eilein where you could stand and yell and hear a triple echo; hearing Sandy walk through that area with his pipes wailing was truly a mind-expanding moment.
As we approached ground zero, the most scenic spot on the whole loch, the spot where you could look across to the island to where Loch an Eilein Castle sat, I started shaking. I didn’t know if it was the cold or nerves, but it was probably both. I kicked off my wellies, let Suzanne fuss over my hair and dress for a moment, clutched my flowers carefully, and took Brother’s arm in a grip he later told me left bruises.
I was about to be married, and this time it was forever.
As we rounded the last stand of trees, Sandy wrapped up his tribute, and I blinked back the tears enough to see the group of friends, family, and soon-to-be family waiting for us. Mo, Karen, and Melody popped out in front of me, and led the parade down to where everyone was gathered. I tried to pick out Iain in his handsome new herringbone suit, but he must have been standing behind the group of guys in their kilts.
I couldn’t help but smile at them. There’s just nothing like a man in a kilt to add a touch of class to a wedding. Ewen looked stunning, as usual. Two of Iain’s farmer friends, Niall Walker included, were also in kilts. David and Archie stood together, both wearing the MacLaren colors. And Iain, always so handsome, looked breathtaking in his kilt.
My mind slammed into a full stop. In his kilt ?
I stopped walking, and blinked. Was that really Iain, or were my eyes too weepy to see clearly? The vision in kilted gloriousness stepped forward.
It was Iain! And he was wearing his kilt! For me!
Brother shoved a tissue in my hand. “I knew you were going to do this. I told Iain you’d blubber all over the place if he wore that thing. Come on, he’s waiting.”
I looked up at Brother, tears streaming down my face. “He’s wearing his kilt!
The one he wouldn’t even wear to his own>son’s wedding. He’s wearing it for me.”
Brother’s eyes looked suspiciously damp, but he’s made of sterner stuff than me. “Are you going to stand there and bawl all day, or are you going to marry the man? He’s got to be freezing his ba—He’s got to be freezing in that getup.” It’s a good thing Brother had the forbearance to arm himself with a pocketful of tissues. I went through a good quarter of them just walking up to Iain. He looked so impossibly handsome with his kilt jacket, and his little ruffled shirt, and his sporran, and even the sghian duhb tucked into his sock was handsome.
And he was flanked by his sons and brother, all wearing the same outfit. A lump the size of Arizona filled my throat.
“Are you all right, love?” Iain whispered to me when he took my hand. “You look a bit pale.”
“I’m so happy,” I sniffled and dabbed at the tears. “But I’m going to get you for this, Iain MacLaren, just you wait and see. Making me cry like this in front of everyone!”
He smiled, wiped a tear off my cheek, and turned to face the officiating registrar.
Most of the ceremony was a blur. I remembered seeing an osprey flying over the castle on the island, and I remembered feeling Iain’s warm hand holding mine, but other than that, not a lot of other wedding memories in my mind.
There were two notable exceptions: the first was hearing Iain’s lovely voice rumble around us. I , Iain William now take you, Katherine Anne, to be my wife…
I promise to be a loving, faithful, and loyal husband to you, for as long as we both shall live.
The second exception was when I said my vows. That I doubted I would ever forget.
“Tha mise Katriona Anna[sob, sniffle] a-nis gad ghab-hail-sa Iain Uilleam [bawl, bawl] gu bhith ‘nam cheile pdsda . [My free hand reached out to Brother to exchange soggy for dry tissue] Ann amfianais Dhe’s na tha seo de…um … [There was a long pause when I suddenly realized I didn’t remember the rest of the vows. I dropped my chin to my chest and tipped my free palm back to peek, but it was the wrong hand. I looked up at Iain. He was smiling at me encouragingly. I looked down at where he was holding my hand firmly in his. I wriggled my fingers. He squeezed my hand in return. I tried to pull my hand out of his. He tightened his grip and gave me a quizzical look.] Um… Ann am fianais Dhe‘s na tha seo de…[I gave my hand a big yank, leaned into Iain’s chest so no one could see what I was doing, and read the somewhat smeared words. I leaned back, shoved my hand back into his, and continued.] Ann am fianais Dhe
’s na tha seo defhianaisea
n tha mise a’gealltainn a bhith… bhith … [Momentary lapse in memory]… bhith ‘nam bhean phdsda dhileas [Big sniff and a wee dicht to the nose] ghradhach agus thairis dhuitsa, chofad’s a bhios an … [Slight panic attack as I forgot the last couple of words. Iain held tight to my hand and whispered them to me]… ah… dithis againn bed .” I wiped my eyes throughout so I could enjoy the sight of a stunned Iain. His jaw had dropped when the Tha mise Katriona came out, but he quickly got hold of himself and beamed at me while I stumbled through the rest of it. He never said a word about the cribbed notes on my hands.
It made all of those days of hard work worthwhile just to see the look of surprise and pride on his face when I managed to get the words out in Gaelic. It was truly one of my better moments.
Chapter Twenty
After the wedding our life quickly settled into the same easy pattern as it had months before—I went out with Iain in the mornings, then stayed inside for the afternoons, writing and editing. Life was as close to idyllic as it could get, which should in itself have made me suspicious. Instead, I lived for the moment, and enjoyed every second spent with Iain.
One afternoon a few days after we returned from our honeymoon in Cornwall, Iain dragged me out of the house, announcing that my wedding present had arrived.
“A horse!” I shrieked, and threw myself into his arms as a piebald mare was unloaded from a trailer. “You bought me a horse! Oh, Iain, that’s the nicest present anyone has ever given me! I’ve always wanted a horse!” He kissed me and told me to look again.
“Two horses!” I exclaimed as I stood next to the first horse, stroking her velvety black nose while a second horse was unloaded. “I can’t believe you’re giving me two horses! Why two horses?”
Iain grabbed at the sorrel’s halter as the guy unloading him turned to close up the horse trailer. “This one is Tennyson. The mare is Skittles.” He scratched Tenny behind his ear, adding, “It wouldn’t be right to just give you one horse, love, when the point is for us to go riding together.” I smiled at him over Skittles’s investigative nose as she snuffled my sweater.
“You’re the sweetest man I know, Iain. No wonder I adore you.”
“Aye,” he leered back at me. “I always knew you loved me for my riding ability.”
I made a shocked face at his double entendre that had him snorting with laughter while I looked over his present to me.
“They’re lovely, both of them. Did they travel well?” I asked the delivery man as he closed up the horse trailer.
“Well enough,” he nodded, then turned to Iain and started in on farm talk. I admired the horses until a word of the men’s conversation caught my ear. I turned back to them slowly, a sour feeling in my stomach.
“I’ve heard naught of that,” Iain was saying, shaking his adorable head. “I doubt it’s likely. Not here. My flocks are clean. I’ve not had infection of any sort in ten or so years.”
The horse trailer man frowned, tugged up his pants, and slipped a chain across the latch to the trailer door. “Rumor said you had. I thought you’d be likely to know whether it was true or not. I know you run a clean farm, MacLaren, but not everyone is as careful against disease as they should be.” Disease. Infection. Words that made the blood of any farmer run cold with dread. There were so many nasty infectious diseases beyond the normal everyday illnesses that could decimate a flock. I took a step closer. Iain was frowning now too, looking puzzled but, I was relieved to see, not worried.
“I don’t know who’s put about the rumor that we’ve disease here, but it’s not so. My ewes are all healthy. I’ve seen no sign of any infection.”
“Most likely I heard wrong, then,” the man said as he hoisted himself up into his truck. “Glad to know it’s not true.”
“Where’d you hear such a thing?” Iain asked, one hand on the truck’s door.
The man started up his truck. “One of the new men down at the co-op.” The sour feeling in my stomach turned to fury. Someone was spreading nasty rumors about Iain’s sheep?
“Ah. ‘Tis of no matter, I’ve naught of that to worry over.”
“Glad to hear it,” the man nodded, and put his truck in gear.
“She really takes the cake, doesn’t she?” I fumed, watching the truck round a bend in the drive. “Imagine Bridget putting someone up to spread nasty rumors about you having infected sheep! She must really be mad at you if she’s resorting to that sort of a sick joke.”
Iain tugged on his lower lip for a moment as his eyes scanned the surrounding hills. I watched him, wishing I could punch out Bridget’s lights for worrying him. Disease was no joking matter to a sheep farmer; one infected ewe and the whole flock might have to be destroyed. If the outbreak was bad, it could spell disaster. It was very difficult making a profit if your farm is quarantined and all the sheep destroyed for fear of spreading the infection.
“You’re thinking it’s Bridget behind the rumor, then?” I snorted and stroked Skittles’s silky ears. “Of course it’s Bridget. Who else has it in for you and has a track record of infantile, petty behavior?”
“Mmm. Even if it is her, it’s naught to worry over, love,” Iain finally said, turning a reassuring smile on me. “‘Tis likely to be a mistake, or at worst is as you say—Bridget speaking spitefully against us.”
I put a hand on his arm and gave it a squeeze. “There’s no chance that the guy at the co-op could be right, is there? I mean, you’d know if your sheep were sick, wouldn’t you?”
He pulled me into his arms and kissed my nose. “Aye, love, I’d know if they were sick, and they aren’t, so I’ll have you lose that worried look and show me how grateful you are to have such a thoughtful husband.”
“I would, but there’s a horse nudging at my back, and I’d hate to shock them by ripping off your clothes in front of them.”
Iain laughed and smacked my behind as I turned to lead Skittles off to a pasture. Despite his apparent unconcern, I was a bit worried over Bridget spreading rumors about Iain’s farm. Other than maligning him in a general way, I didn’t see what she stood to gain by it. Iain refused to discuss the matter, telling me about the horses instead. Skittles, he said, was a nicely mannered mare he found on a neighboring farm, while Tenny was picked up at a horse auction, and had, we soon found out, one odd little quirk to his personality—
he believed he was a sheep dog. I promptly gave him to Iain.
I knew there were such things as cutting horses used to manage cattle, but I’d never seen a horse willingly take on the task of herding sheep. Tennyson did, though. When Iain would take the dogs out into the parks, Tenny would trot after Rob and Roy and do his best to help with the lifting. The dogs, however, resented his interference, and Iain lost control of the sheep because he laughed so hard at the sight of a great lumbering horse trying to nose the sheep along, so after a few days of horse vs. sheep, Tenny was banned from the parks when sheep were being moved.
“It’s a shame, too, because he enjoys it so,” I told Iain one afternoon as we watched over the railing at the two horses wandering around their pasture.
“Aye, he’s muckle great fool of a horse,” Iain agreed.
“Look at him now, isn’t that pitiful?” I pointed to where Tenny was standing at the far end of the pasture, watching the sheep in the next field, blowing periodic great breathy sighs of sadness. Skittles ignored him, cropping happily on the grass.
Iain laughed and told me to change while he saddled up the horses. We rode out shortly after that to check the south fences. Even during the winter months, when you’d think there wasn’t a whole lot to do because the sheep were all out grazing for long periods of time, there was still a plethora of tasks needing attention. Maintenance on the fencing was always a prime issue, as was upkeep on the outbuildings and cottages on the farm, day-to-day animal husbandry, and keeping tabs on all of the latest farming regulations, news, and information.
It was a marvelous day for riding—the sun poked out from behind the clouds every so often, g
linting off the silvery splash of the river as we rode south. It was cool enough to remind me that it was spring, but not so cold as to ruin the ride.
Sheep maaed to one another as we rode past them, through the remainder of the heather and gorse that Iain hadn’t yet burned, climbing higher and higher up one of the hills until we reached the boundary of our land.
I watched as two hawks circled each other, spiraling upward and crying their high, sharp cries of fury or passion, which one, I couldn’t tell. The air was so crisp it left a tang on my lips. It was such a nice ride, it was just a shame that it had to be the south fences we were checking. Those were the fences that bordered Kin Aird, and I couldn’t help the dull feeling of dread that roiled around my stomach whenever I thought of Bridget’s fury over the land.
“She’s got her sheep grazing already,” I astutely noted. “Didn’t take her long to get them moved in.”
Iain nodded, his eyes narrowed as watched a shepherd unload a truckload of ewes with the help of two dogs. One of the dogs leaped into the truck, onto the wooly gray backs of the sheep, sending the flock galloping down the wooden planks to freedom.
“Those are Mules,” Iain said, a frown wrinkling his brow.
“Mules?” I looked. All I saw were sheep. “Where’re the mules?”
“They’re a breed of sheep, love. A crossbreed.”
“Oh. Funny name for sheep. Is there a problem with her having Mules?” He watched the shepherd close the truck, whistle up his dogs, and drive off bumping his way down a rutted track toward a long metal gate. “No, no problem, it’s odd, though. Bridget raises Scottish Greyfaces. It doesn’t make sense for her to bring in a small flock of Mules just for Kin Aird. ‘Twould be more of an expense than it’s worth.”
I rolled my eyes and put my heels to Skittles. “Iain, sweetie, has anything Bridget’s done ever made any sense?”
He didn’t rise to my teasing and continued to look puzzled as he nudged Tenny into a walk beside me. “Bridget may be many things, love, but where her farm is concerned, she’s not foolish.”