“Aye,” Jamie repeated. Then, after a beat, “I think me stomach is jumping.”
“That is because ye are excited,” Erin said.
“That is because she has eaten sweet biscuits without pause since dawn,” Caitlin corrected.
Jamie looked offended. “Only three.”
“Four,” Erin said.
“Three and a half.”
Iona kissed her brow and rose again before the conversation could become a formal accounting.
The ceremony was held in the smaller hall near the western side of the keep, where the late morning light came soft through narrow windows and laid warm bands across the stone. It was not grand in the way nobles might call grand. No endless row of witnesses. No crush of strangers packed shoulder to shoulder. Only those who mattered. Those who had seen enough of pain to know what peace was worth when it finally arrived.
Frederick stood at the front waiting for her.
Everything else blurred for a moment when she saw him. The room remained. The light remained. The gathered people remained. Yet all of it fell back from him at once. He wore dark wool and clean linen, his shoulders broad beneath it, his expression composed in the way she knew so well by now. But there was something unguarded in his eyes the instant they found her, and it reached her before she had taken more than three steps into the room.
Jamie went first, walking with all the dignity six years could gather into one small body, her hand briefly in Caitlin’s before she slipped free and crossed to stand near Frederick. He looked down at her, and something passed between them, quiet and sure. Iona saw Jamie’s fingers brush once at the bracelet on her wrist before she lifted her chin and faced forward.
Then it was only Iona and the short path between herself and the man she was going to marry.
She did not remember every word spoken after that with perfect order. She remembered warmth. The murmur of the vows. The feel of Frederick’s hands when the binding knot was drawn around theirs. The steadiness in his voice when he answered. The way his thumb moved once, very slightly, against the side of her hand as if to remind her that he was there and had no intention of being anywhere else.
When the ceremony ended, the room softened all at once. People exhaled. Smiled. Shifted. Caitlin dabbed at her eyeswithout shame. Erin muttered something in Gaelic that sounded suspiciously like satisfaction. Jamie looked as though she had been waiting her whole life to clap, but had only just learned it might be allowed.
The feast afterward was louder, warmer, and far more alive than the ceremony itself. Tables had been drawn together and covered in food enough to shame moderation. Roasted meats, fresh bannocks, stewed apples, honeyed cakes, wheels of cheese, bowls of berries, and ale flowing almost as quickly as the laughter. Musicians took up the far end of the hall before the first platters had been fully cleared, and once music entered the room, order surrendered entirely.
Frederick danced with her first.
He was not a man given to display, but he held her with a quiet confidence that made the room seem smaller rather than larger, simpler rather than fuller. Iona had danced before in her life, but never like this. Never with her body so at ease in another’s keeping. Never with the right to lean closer when she wished. Never with the certainty that his hand at her back meant protection as much as possession.
“Ye look pleased with yerself,” she murmured as they turned.
“I am.”
“That is terribly arrogant for a bridegroom.”
“Aye,” he said. “But accurate.”
She smiled, and his mouth shifted as though he had hoped for exactly that.
Later, he danced with Jamie.
That sight alone might have filled the day well enough. Jamie, in one of her new dresses, all movement and delight, trying very hard to remember where her feet belonged and forgetting each time the music pleased her too much. Frederick adjusted for her without making a show of it, guiding, steadying, letting her believe she had done well entirely on her own. She laughed once, bright and unrestrained, and the sound turned half the room toward them.
Across the hall, Erin had somehow been dragged into a dance with Lennox.
Or perhaps she had dragged him. It was difficult to tell.
Lennox looked as though he would have preferred battle. Erin looked delighted by his discomfort.
“Move yer feet, ye great ox,” she told him loudly enough for three nearby tables to hear.
“I am moving them.”
“Poorly.”