She meant, Fiona knew, that she had not been able to produce a living son, despite miscarriages (the total number of which she didn’t divulge), two stillbirths, and four healthy baby girls. Of this sad fact everyone in the Douglass keep was fully aware, for periodically Father would erupt into one of his angry outbursts, quite often in the Great Hall with dozens of people present.
You’ve failed me, madam! he would roar, pounding his silver goblet on the table, denting it in a way that would have been comical if it wasn’t all so unpleasant. Other men have ten sons—a dozen sons—and I have none!
Or: I had my pick of maidens, and ’twas my misfortune to choose you, madam. They told me you were fertile! Fertile for sons, that is, he might add, with a contemptuous glance toward his daughters.
Or: I’ve managed to save this clan from extinction, and what have you done all these years? Nothing!
Mother would sit quietly, passively, but Fiona—watchful, observant, even as a child—would see the quiver of her tender mouth, the quick rise and fall of her chest as she gave a deep silent sigh, her shoulders held tensely high.
And then Father might fling his tankard out into the Hall, striking an unwary soul, or abruptly stand up and shove back his chair, toppling it, or stalk off, aiming kicks at the dogs who, fortunately, had learned to be preternaturally nimble when their master’s voice was raised. Fiona would look around and see the tears in Mother’s eyes, and in her sisters’ eyes, too. Not hers, though: her eyes were dry and her heart would feel all stony and angry.
“Mother,” she would hiss, “he’s awful.”
And then Mother would pull herself together, and drop her shoulders, and smile. “Oh no, Fiona dear, it’s just that he’s had so much on his mind. Didn’t you hear him say there’s a wolf after his sheep, and the Talbots are feuding again and setting fires? It’s not easy being chieftain, you know. Here—won’t you have another slice of mutton? I vow, you’ve somehow gotten thinner since breakfast!”
And grumblingly Fiona would accept the mutton, being, in fact, still hungry.
The human storm that was Father would just as easily shift into good humor, and then there was no one in the world more delightful to be around. But you could never trust that he’d stay cheerful. His expression could darken in an instant, his fists would clench, and things might fly across the room. You always felt a little wary around Bruce Douglass.
Eventually, he seemed to accept his fate as the father of only daughters. There was, at least, a crumb of comfort for him in this unfortunate debacle: the wealth he’d amassed made the Douglass girls highly desirable matrimonial quarry.
Father had therefore had quite a bit of fun by decreasing his daughters’ dowries on a whim, or suddenly increasing them to astronomical sums, thus keeping his lawyers in a continual anxious flurry of documents destroyed and rewritten. Fiona’s case was a little different. When, in his opinion, she’d been particularly annoying by—for example—forcefully disputing something he’d said, or disappearing all day on her horse, Father would retaliate by eliminating her dowry entirely. But not forever. The sun would shine, Father would change his mind, and eventually restore it, quite possibly to a radically different amount.
Over the years, suitors for the Douglass girls came and went, thronged and melted away, and Father watched, welcomed, interrogated, feinted, scorned, rejected, laughed, and allowed himself to be shamelessly flattered by them all. One by one, his daughters wed.
All except Fiona, who had never, somehow, found someone she liked enough to accept, and Father, rather surprisingly, had only nine or ten times threatened to lock her in her bedchamber until she said yes.
And so the time had passed, on the whole not unpleasantly. Fiona had kept herself busy. There was always so much to do.
But weddings tend to resurrect old issues, old emotions; new ideas, new possibilities.
As if on cue, Fiona was distracted from gazing steadfastly (if a little absently) at Rossalyn and Jamie when, from his seat four pews away, Niall Birk turned and smiled at her, showing all his teeth and this, in the context of a rather long face with large damp eyes, reminding Fiona forcibly of a horse.
Niall Birk hadn’t given her the time of day for quite a while, which probably meant that Father had, in a last-ditch effort to get his remaining daughter off his hands, taken advantage of the massive clan gathering at the keep to make it known that Fiona was not only dowered again, but—judging by the breadth of Niall Birk’s grin—very generously as well.
Fiona’s suspicion was confirmed when, as soon as the ceremony was over, not only was she swiftly approached by Niall, but Ross Stratton and Walraig Tevis came crowding up around her, eagerly soliciting her hand for the dancing that was to follow the enormous meal awaiting them in the Great Hall.