"It'll be witnessed," Ivar said. "Without complication."
Henry held his gaze for a moment, the look of a man assessing whether he was being told what he wanted to hear or what was actually true. He appeared to decide, provisionally, on the latter.
"Good." He reached for the ale someone had placed in front of him. "Then we'll be done here quickly and the Pact can be closed."
Ivar held her gaze for a moment. Just long enough to mean something.
She looked back at him with those watchful hazel eyes and said nothing and gave nothing away.
The hall resumed around them, but suddenly, tomorrow became real.
CHAPTER TEN
"Ye're shakin'."
"I'm cold," Matilda said.
Claricia looked at her in the glass with one raised eyebrow and said nothing, which was more effective than saying something.
"Aye," she said. "That's one word fer it."
"It's the correct word," Matilda insisted, though the tremor in her hands had nothing to do with the drafty stones of Mull. She looked at her reflection, at the green wool, and the silver pins, and felt like a stranger in her own skin.
Her mind kept drifting to the ceremony, to the inevitable moment when Ivar would have to touch her as his wife. Her body, usually a fortress of iron-willed composure, was remembering things she had spent eight years trying to forget.
The weight of a man's grip. The feeling of a cage closing. She was terrified that when Ivar reached for her, she would not see the man who lit candles, but the shadows of the man who had come before."
"Matilda."
"I'm fine."
Claricia set down the comb.
"Ye're allowed tae be frightened," she said. "I was terrified. Ada was terrified. Isolda was terrified too."
"Aye," Isolda said, from the window seat, where she was feeding Astrid a piece of bread while Ada slept on the bed behind her.
"I'm nae frightened," Matilda said. "I just," She stopped. Looked at herself in the glass.
The dress was green, the same green as yesterday, because it was the best one Sigrid had found.
Her hair was up properly. Claricia's doing.
She looked, she thought, like a woman about to be married.
Shewasabout to be married.
Me God, I cannae believe this.
"How long did it take?" she said. "Before it felt real. Before it felt like yer life and nae someone else's."
Claricia was quiet for a moment. "A week, maybe. Maybe less." She paused. "It helped that Erik was," She stopped. "Well. Erik was Erik. Which was terrible and then wasnae."
"Magnus was worse," Ada said, without opening her eyes.
"Ye're supposed tae be asleep," Isolda said.
"I was asleep. I heard terrible and woke up." Ada turned over. "Magnus was considerably worse than terrible in the beginnin'. And then he somehow became the most important man in me life."