Read Online Amanda Scott - [Border Trilogy 2] by Border Wedding - Free Book Online Page B

here.”
    Relieved at having won a point that, under the circumstances, he had feared he might not win, Wat drew a welcome breath, sipped more ale, and waited to see if Murray would try to stir more debate. He did not, and their conversation continued desultorily until the friar hurried in.
    The skirts of his dark, hooded gown fluttered behind him, revealing the white cassock beneath as he crossed the hall to the dais. He had the tanned, lean look of most mendicant friars. His face was clean-shaven, his tonsured dark hair speckled with gray. His blue eyes revealed both intelligence and shrewdness.
    “Forgive me, my lord,” he said to Murray as he approached. “I took time for my prayers, but we should talk about this wedding before it takes place.”
    “I’ve nae more to say about it,” Murray said. “But ye’re in good time to witness us signing yon wedding settlements. This be Wat Scott, eldest son o’ the Laird o’ Buccleuch. Ye’ve heard o’ the laird, aye?”
    “I have, indeed,” the friar said, looking narrowly at Wat. “You are
Sir
Walter, are you not? I ask because I inscribed you so in that bond you are to sign.”
    “I am,” Wat said.
    “Take up that quill, lad, and put your name where ye must,” Murray said.
    “One moment, Sir Iagan, if you will permit me one more question,” the friar said. “I must be easier in my mind about this.” To Wat, he said, “One trusts you are doing this of your own free will, Sir Walter. Will you tell me if that is so?”
    Exchanging a look with Murray, and feeling trapped by his own integrity, Wat said curtly, “That is so.”
    “Take a mug of ale, brother, and rest yourself whilst ye may,” Murray said cheerfully. “My lady wife and daughters will join us soon. As ye see, the servants have already begun setting up trestles for our midday meal.”
    “The wedding feast, aye,” the friar said, nodding with a friendly smile to the gillie offering to fill a mug with ale for him.
    “A fine feast indeed,” Murray said with a mocking look at Wat.
    Silence fell then, broken moments later when Wat’s men entered the hall.
    “Where do you want them to sit, sir?” he asked Murray.
    “My lads will show them,” his host said. “Ye’ll sit here by me when the time comes. But first, we must get you safely wedded and bedded, must we no?”
    The friar looked about to speak again, perhaps to protest the haste of the ceremony, Wat thought hopefully. His hopes were not high, however, because marriages performed by traveling clergy were often hasty.
    True priests were hard to find at any distance from their religious houses. Even with abbeys, priories, and friaries in the region, priests were rarely handy without notice. Friars, being travelers by duty, and rarely residing in their religious houses, often filled the priestly void in outlying areas. That Murray had one staying at Elishaw now was, in Wat’s opinion, naught but curst bad luck, but Scottish law provided more than one way to bypass a proper kirk wedding, so he doubted that even the lack of a priest would have stopped the man.
    Watching his men guided to a table in the lower hall, he noted that Murray men-at-arms stood by, watching them, as if fearing mischief. But there would be none. His lads were quiet, even somber, clearly troubled by all that had passed since setting out to reclaim his beasts the evening before.
    At last, the sound came for which he had only half-consciously been waiting, the hush of ladies’ skirts and the soft padding of their slippers on the stone stairway. Turning toward the sound, he saw Lady Murray enter the hall first.
    Every servant stopped what he or she was doing as her ladyship passed on her way to the dais. Gillies and other menservants bowed, maidservants curtsied, and the men-at-arms stood stiff and straight. For all the notice she took of them, they might all have been pieces of furniture.
    Behind her, side by side, came her two elder daughters. The younger lass who