Page 15 of Captured By the Highland Devil
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Good morning, me lady,” Maisie said while carrying an armful of cloth. “How did ye sleep?”
Turning to her, Paige replied. “As best as I could, I suppose.”
“It’ll get better,” Maisie said as she laid the cloth on the bed. “T’is time for ye to have yer bath and dress for the mornin’ feast. The men are comin’ with the water now.”
Paige tightened the thick robe around her body and turned to the window. “Is this really necessary?” she asked dully.
Pulling the door in for the men to lug buckets of water through the room and to the bathing room between hers and Ruben’s room, Maisie nodded. “It is, me lady. Why do ye feel otherwise?”
“It’s…” Paige swallowed thickly. She wrapped arms around her middle and hugged herself tightly. It was the sole comfort she could have. “It feels like when a farmer would parade hisfattened calf in front of a row of butchers and sold it off to the man with the most coin. I’ll feel like a spectacle.”
While gathering some items around the room, Maisie said. “I’d rather think of it as presentin’ ye to the people as a symbol of hope. The people here have been through a lot?—”
“So have mine!” Paige snapped. Then dropped her tone. The poor maid did not deserve her anger. No, that fury should be saved for the brute, Ruben. Sighing, she said, “I am sorry. That was nae right of me.”
Maisie gave her a flickering smile. “War will do that to a set of people.”
Paige soon found herself sinking into a warm bath of olive oil as Maisie massaged soap into her hair. She rested her head against the towel draped over the edge of the tub.
“Do ye ken what happened to cause the war?” Paige asked. “I have asked and nay one is willin’ to give me anythin’ solid.”
“I wouldnae ken, me lady,” Maisie said as she reached for a pitcher to wash Paige’s hair out. “Such matters are above me station.”
Stumped again, Paige decided to demand answers from Ruben as soon as there was a private moment. She knew she would not get such a chance with the brute while the celebration wenton. But as soon as there was a quiet moment, she would get her answers.
She stepped out of the bath and wrapped a towel around her after drying. She chose a simple stark white petticoat and kirtle made of beautiful shade of sapphire blue. Maisie added a belt of finely twisted strips of gold and silver around her waist before pinning the McKinnon sash on.
“One day, ye’ll have a full arisaid made from the clan’s colors,” Maisie said. “I am sure ye will look as beautiful in that dress as ye are in this one.”
I will burn that gown to ash.
“How do ye want yer hair, me lady?” Maisie asked.
“Down,” she said. “It’ll dry better that way.”
Her new maid brushed her hair down but pulled it away from her face with a circlet. A sudden flurry of drums had both their heads daring to the window and Maisie said. “It’s time.”
They entered the Great Hall, three or four times the size of the one back at her home. It had been beautifully, if not quickly, decorated for the feast. Eight long tables spanned from below the dais to nearly the large set of iron doors at the end.
As she entered the room, half the room was filled with lairds and ladies, village people and elders, all of them in their best clothes.The dignitaries wore silks and velvet, while the townspeople wore modest dark clothing.
“Ye’re headed there,” Maisie nodded to the high table. “His lairdship will accompany ye there as a show of the alliance and marriage.”
“Where is he?” Paige asked, looking though the room while avoiding the curious looks trained back to her. “Ravagin’ another village, I gather.”
“Ye presume much, lass,” Ruben said. “And most of it altogether wrong.”
When he stepped into her view, she swallowed tightly. He wore a pleated and belted red and golden tartan. The end of the tartan was brought up and draped across one shoulder and fastened with a large silver brooch studded with four small sapphires and a large sapphire at the center.
His face had been shaved clean, and his ebony hair was down, its natural curl refused to be tamed and curled at his temples and nape. He looked magnificent.
She jerked her head away.
Her hands balled inside at her side, and her cheeks grew uncomfortably warm. Why did the brute affect her so intensely? She felt nothing for the degenerate. Even if she found him theattractive—in a rough, uncouth sort of way and she hated herself for it—it was no excuse to feel so… displaced by him.
Despite her inexplicable attraction to the man, she couldn’t deny that he represented the double standards Paige despised.
