Page 108 of Hollow Court
Fiona’s lips pursed like she was either satisfied or amused by my answer.
I decided to opt for the former, since the latter would have made it harder to refrain from accidentally spilling my hot tea in her lap.
“But surely you have some preferences,” Lady Gracie spoke up next, not unkindly. “Even if you married at one of the other castles, things you would want.”
Gracie MacBay was perfectly nice.
She was also, I had gathered, somewhat of a…former favorite of Davin’s. In fact, I suspected that if I hadn’t come along and he had needed to marry, he would have chosen her. Perhaps he still would, when our arrangement was over.
All of which made it difficult for me to want to talk to her…or look at her.
Especially when every time I did, I wondered if that was what he really wanted; petite and brunette and easy-going and a thousand things I would never be.
The table had fallen silent, though, waiting on my answer. Jocelyn’s eyes were on me, and I didn’t want to force her to intervene.
“There is one thing,” I began. “In Socair, women wear dresses the color of their clan, or the clan they’re marrying into. Since I would technically be staying in Ram,”—if my uncle hasn’t had a chance to unclan me yet—“mine would be red.”
A few of the ladies looked intrigued, others scandalized.
“Like your ring,” Gracie commented.
I nodded.
“And Laird Davin?” Fiona chimed in again. “Is there anything he wants? He doesn’t strike me as the type to stand back and let someone else plan his entire wedding.”
Like everything she said, her words were a challenge, wrapped in a polite query. And though I bristled at it, she wasn’t wrong. He would undoubtedly have opinions.
“Well, if I know Davin,” I started out with a self-deprecating smile.
The ladies laughed like it was a joke, because of course they didn’t realize how well Ididn’tknow him.
Then again, perhaps I did, because suddenly it wasn’t so very difficult to imagine the kind of wedding he might want. Loathe though I might be to consider it, I soon found myself describing everything I thought he would love.
“He wants the ceremony to happen at night, just to be difficult,” I said, and a few giggles sounded in response. “But mostly because he wants to see the stars.”
I could picture it then, his face at the end of a moonlit aisle. Candles floating on the lake as a tribute to Mac. The guests in black and white, a contrast to my crimson gown and the matching accents in his ensemble. The soft hum of a lyre playing in the background while we danced until sunrise.
I laid it all out for them, the wedding we would never actually have. By the time I was finished, a rare stab of tears pricked at the backs of my eyes.
When I finished speaking, I noticed Fiona’s smugness had, if not vanished, at least abated. Gracie was smiling softly while Jocelyn looked almost…sad, before donning her usual court mask.
But Gwyn…Gwyn was looking at me like she had never seen me before.
* * *
The next fewweeks were a blur of moving from estate to estate for one function after the next.
I spent the events doing what I had promised Davin I would—accidentally letting information slip, so he could track where it went. It was more exhausting than I could have imagined, especially with the threats that hung over all of our heads.
And that was before factoring in the show we had to put on.
It was so much worse now that I remembered how it felt to have his lips against mine. Now that I recalled with startling clarity the way it felt to believe, for a single fleeting moment, that we could have something we never would.
I forced myself to consider potential suitors. But every time one of them took my hand for a dance, I heard the echo of Davin’s voice in my ear, telling me a doubtlessly exaggerated version of their flaws.
At least with the new lairds, there was no history, nothing holding us back from a…perfectly functional relationship. Perhaps I would actually study medicine.
Surely that would be worth putting up with Laird Foot Fetish.