“I’d forgotten that!” she’d say.
“I never forget,” he’d boast.
The ability made him a quick study, and he’d surpassed her reading skills quickly. Though he always sat attentively while she taught him, even when he didn’t want to. Besides, she picked books that he would be interested in, ones about ships, cannons, and a barrage of historical wars from the Romans all the way through Napoleon. His particular favorite was one on the maritime history of pirates.
“Do ye think I’d make a good pirate someday?” he asked her once around a mouthful of hard cake she’d brought him as a special treat.
“Of course not,” she’d answered patiently. “Pirates are wicked thieves and murderers. Besides, they don’t allow girls on their pirate ships.” She’d turned to him with moist, frightened eyes. “Would you leave me to go pirating?”
He’d pulled her in close. “I’d never leave you, Fairy,” he vowed fiercely.
“Truly?” She’d pulled back, staring up at him with storm-cloud eyes that threatened rain. “Not even to be a pirate?”
“I promise.” He’d taken a bite of cake and smiled at her with full cheeks before turning back to the book. “I might be a highwayman, though. They’re a lot like pirates, but just on land.”
After a short consideration, Farah had nodded. “Yes, I think you would be much better suited to the life of a highwayman,” she agreed.
“Aye, Fairy, ye’ll have to resign yerself to being a highwayman’s wife.”
She’d clapped and sparkled delighted eyes at him. “Sounds like an adventure!” But then her face had sobered as though she’d remembered something particularly distasteful.
“What?” he’d asked anxiously.
“Only that … I think I’m supposed to marry someone else.”
Dougan snarled, shaking her wee shoulders. “Who?”
“Mr. Warrington.” She continued upon seeing the anger and puzzlement in his eyes. “He—he worked with my father and is the one who left me here. He said that when I’m a woman, he’ll come to collect me, and we are to be married.”
A cold desperation stole into his blood. “Ye canna marry anyone else, Fairy. You belong to me. Only me.”
“What do we do?” She fretted.
Dougan thought furiously as they trembled against each other in the arid library, the threat of a future separation driving them together. Suddenly, he was struck by genius.
“Go to bed, Fairy. Tomorrow night, instead of meeting me here in the library, let’s meet in the vestry.”
Dougan had waited for her in the vestry with the only memento of his family he’d ever owned. A scrap of Mackenzie plaid. He’d bathed and scrubbed and yanked the tangles out of his straight black hair before tying it back with a string.
Farah’s unruly curls poked around the heavy doors to the chapel, and when she’d spied him standing next to the altar, only illuminated by a lone candle, the brilliance of her smile had preceded her down the aisle. She wore her simple white nightdress that pleased him to no end, and her bare feet poked out from the long hem with her every step.
He offered his hand to her, and she took it without hesitation. “You look very fine,” she whispered. “What are we doing in here, Dougan?”
“I’m here to marry ye,” he murmured.
“Oh?” She looked around curiously. “With no priest?”
“We doona need priests in the Highlands,” he scoffed gently. “Our weddings are bound by many gods rather than just one. And they come when we ask, not when a priest says.”
“That sounds even better,” she agreed with a fervent nod.
They knelt facing each other in front of the altar, and Dougan wrapped his faded plaid around their joined right hands.
“Just say what I say, Fairy,” he murmured.
“All right.” She looked up at him with those eyes, and Dougan experienced a pang of love so intense and ferocious it felt as though it didn’t belong in this holy room.
He began the incantation he remembered from watching once from behind his mother’s skirts when he was young.
Ye are blood of my blood, and bone of my bone.
I give ye my body, that we two might be one.
I give ye my spirit, ’til our life shall be done.
Farah needed a bit of prompting to remember all the words, but she said them with such fervency that Dougan was touched.
Slipping a ring of a willow herb vine onto her finger, he recited the sacred olde vows with perfect clarity, but translated them into English for her sake.
I make ye my heart
At the rising of the moon.
To love and honor,
Through all our lives.
May we be reborn,
May our souls meet and know.
And love again.
And remember.
She looked lost and mystified for a moment, then announced, “Me, too.”
It was enough. She was his. Sighing with the alleviation of a great weight, Dougan unwrapped their hands, and offered his plaid to her. “Ye keep this with ye, next to yer heart.”
“Oh, Dougan, I have nothing to give to you,” she lamented.
“Ye give me a kiss, Fairy, and then ’tis done.”
She launched herself at him, puckering her wee mouth artlessly against his, and then letting go with a loud smack. “You’re the best husband, Dougan Mackenzie,” she announced. “I don’t know of any other husbands who can make a frog jump so high, or come up with such clever names for the foxes that live under the wall, or skip three stones at a time.”