Page 47 of The Merciless Laird
Matilda looked at them. Claricia with Thor's handprint still on her sleeve. Isolda with someone else's baby in her lap. Ada flat on the bed, participating with her eyes closed.
She looked back at the glass.
"Can I ask ye something," she said.
"Aye," Claricia said.
Matilda kept her eyes on her own reflection.
"The kiss," she said. "At the ceremony. Is it…?"
Her hands were flat on her knees and she looked at them. "I've had a man's hands on me before. Not the way ye think. But it went far enough that me body remembers it whether I ask it tae or nae."
She said it plainly, the way she'd learned to say difficult things. No softness around the edges. "I freeze sometimes. When I'm nae expecting it. And I dinnae want tae freeze in front of the entire clan."
The room was quiet.
"Daes he ken?" Claricia said.
"Enough." She paused. "He's been careful since the beginning. He waited before he touched me on the horse. He," she stopped, " notices things."
"Then tell him," Claricia said. "Before. So he kens what tae watch fer."
"And if ye freeze," Isolda said, from the window, "he'll stop. Ragnar would've stopped. Any of them would've stopped."
"I ken that," Matilda said. Then, quieter: "I think I ken that."
She looked back at the glass. Her reflection looked back at her. Green dress, silver pins, hands in her lap.
"The thing is," she said, and then stopped, because the thing was harder to say than the rest of it.
She tried again. "The thing is I dinnae think I only feel afraid." Her ears had gone warm. "When I think about it. About him. I think there's something else in there as well and I," she pressed her lips together. "I've never felt that before. The something else. And I dinnae ken what tae dae with it."
Claricia looked at her in the glass for a long moment. Then she picked up the comb.
"Ye dinnae have tae dae anything with it," she said. "Just let it be there."
Matilda looked at them. Thor's handprint. The sleeping baby. Ada's closed eyes.
"Ye stayed," she said quietly. "All of ye."
"Aye," Claricia said simply. "We stayed."
From below, the bell rang once.
"Right," Sigrid said, from the doorway. "It's time."
"And the kiss," Claricia said, already moving toward the door. "Dinnae think about it beforehand. It'll only make ye worse."
"I wasnae thinking about it," Matilda said.
"Ye are now," Isolda said pleasantly, and followed her out.
The Great Hall had been decorated.
Not lavishly. This wasn't that kind of wedding, there hadn't been time and Ivar wasn't that kind of man. But the trestles had been cleared to the sides, the floor swept clean, the fire built high enough to throw warmth across the full width of the room.
Greenery had been cut and laid along the windowsills, dark pine and late autumn berries.
