The Border Trilogy by Amanda Scott Page B

Both of them have the most annoying notions regarding proper female conduct.” Since Mary Kate had no good reason to doubt that statement and every reason to believe it, she held her tongue, allowing her guest to continue. “That,” Margaret said, “is why my lady mother sent you that proper little message. She knew Father and Adam would both think it unseemly if she were to set her true feelings to paper. She had nearly despaired of Adam’s ever getting married, you know. After all, he will be thirty in just two years.”
    “Deplorably ancient, in fact.”
    Margaret grinned. “You take my meaning well enough. Most men marry earlier than that. In any case, my lady mother is well pleased and will be better satisfied yet when she meets you.”
    Mary Kate replied absently that she looked forward with pleasure to that event. For a brief moment, while Margaret had been describing Sir Patrick Ferguson, she had thought perhaps there were men in the borders who would not expect their women to be always subservient. But Margaret’s comments about her mother’s hesitation to describe her true feelings put that thought to flight and reaffirmed Mary Kate’s earlier convictions. Several moments passed before she was able to return her attention to her companion’s cheerful conversation.
    With guests to entertain, there was no time for rest before supper, and later that evening there was the highland foot-washing ceremony to be endured, when friends and houseguests gathered to watch the bride and groom wash each other’s feet. This was no staid ritual but an uproarious one, filled with revelry and merrymaking, and most of the participants ended the evening in damp clothes. At last, however, Mary Kate could fall into bed with her own thoughts for company. She was not yet reconciled to the notion of marriage to a border knight, but she was beginning to feel a strong yearning to pit her mettle against his. She liked his father, had found a friend in his sister, and looked forward to meeting his mother, whom she was certain to admire. How could one feel otherwise toward a woman who thought, sight unseen, that one was wonderful?
    Though she still assumed that Douglas expected to teach her to be properly submissive once they reached the borders, she no longer feared that he might succeed. Indeed, she welcomed the challenge of proving herself a power with whom he must reckon. Perhaps, she thought, as she drifted off, if she were clever enough, Douglas would soon shed the arrogant, domineering manner that surfaced so uncomfortably from time to time, and marriage to him would not be as dreadful as she had feared.
    Shortly before sunrise the next day Morag MacBain woke her with a shake. “Coom, lassie,” she urged, “’tis no day for slugabeds. ’Twill be a glorious morn, and ye’ve flowers tae fetch, so up wi’ ye the noo.”
    Mary Kate stretched languorously, then slipped out of bed, feeling an unexpected surge of exhilaration. Today was the day. She threw on an old brown tamsin gown and, a few minutes later, hurried downstairs and out into the crisp, gray, dew-ridden dawn, a straw basket hung over her arm. By the time she had climbed the steep hill behind Speyside House, the rising sun had begun to shoot fingers of golden light through the branches of the trees and shrubbery and across the new, emerald-green grass on the hillside. She gazed with delight upon a sea of early wild-flowers nodding their cheerful heads in the light, chilly breeze wafting up from the river.
    It took no time at all to fill her basket with flowers that would be arranged by the maids with dried broom, rosemary, and myrtle for her wreath and her nosegay, and when she returned to her bedchamber, two housemaids were filling the huge canopied tub with steaming, rose-scented hot water for her bath. Half an hour later, glowing and refreshed, she sat wrapped in a voluminous robe, brushing her hair dry before the crackling fire. The maids were gone. Only the