Page 28 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

"Heather, then," Isobel said. "It's in bloom now, it's everywhere for free, and it looks better in a Highland hall than anything ye could import at twice the cost."

"Heather it is." Grisselle found she meant it. "My grandfather used to say a bride carrying heather was carrying the whole hillside with her."

"Yer grandfather sounds like he'd have gotten along well with half this castle," Greer said, and something in her voice went a shade warmer than before.

"What about the Laird's colors?" Isobel asked, tapping her pen against the paper. "He'll want the Herston plaid somewhere on him, at least, even if he pretends he doesnae care."

"Does he care?"

"He cares about everything and admits to none of it. Ask him what he wants and he'll say 'whatever's simplest,' and then scowl for a week if it's the wrong shade of anything." Isobel grinned. "Get Greer to choose. She's the only one who's ever gotten it right."

"Rowan berries in the hall," Greer said, without hesitation. "He asked for it at his sister's christening, twenty-odd years back, and never said why. I've never forgotten it."

Grisselle's hand went still on the swatch of pale blue linen, thumb tracing the same inch of fabric twice before she noticed she'd stopped talking.

"He'd have argued with Senga about oatcakes within the hour," she said finally, and Isobel laughed loud enough that Greer had to shush her, though she was smiling too as she did it.

"Aye, that sounds about right," Greer said. "He's never once let a kitchen keep its own opinion in peace."

They went on like that for the better part of the afternoon. Arguing over whether the tables should run the length of the hall or across it, whether the pipers should play before the vows or only after, whether Grisselle's dress ought to have sleeves at all given how cold the chapel got in the mornings.

Isobel produced increasingly improbable second-hand wedding disasters from clans three valleys over, each one somehow worse than the last.

"Tell her the goat one," Isobel said to Greer, already grinning in anticipation.

"I'll nae tell it. Ye'll tell it wrong and make it funnier than it was, and then I'll have to correct ye, and we'll be here till supper."

"Then ye tell it properly, and I'll sit quietly."

Greer gave her a look and set down her needle regardless. "This was the MacInnes wedding, three summers past. The bride's own mother had raised a goat from a kid, kept it in the kitchen garden, spoiled it something rotten. Fed it scraps from her own hand every morning."

"Naming it 'Bonnie,'" Isobel put in. "Which should have been the first warning."

"I said I'd tell it, Isobel."

"Sorry. Continue."

"The morning of the wedding, a girl left the garden gate open no more than a minute, fetching flowers for her hair, and Bonnie took the opportunity as only a goat can. Walked herself straight into the chapel, up the center aisle, bold as any Laird, right as the priest was asking if anyone present objected to the union."

Grisselle had gone still, bread forgotten halfway to her mouth. "It didn't."

"It did. Stood there chewing on the corner of the bride's own veil, looking the priest dead in the eye the whole while, like it had every right to an opinion on the matter."

"What did the priest do?"

"Fainted," Isobel said, delighted. "Dead away. Cracked his head on the stone step and had to be revived with whisky meant for the toast."

"He did nae faint," Greer said. "He merely sat down rather suddenly."

"He fainted."

"He sat down, Isobel, with considerable haste, which is a different thing entirely from fainting, and I'll thank ye to tell it accurately if ye insist on interrupting me every second sentence."

"Fine. He sat down. Suddenly. In a manner indistinguishable from fainting." Isobel turned back to Grisselle, entirely unrepentant. "The groom had to finish reading the vows himself, off the priest's own book, while two grown men wrestled a goat out of a chapel by its horns and the bride stood there laughing so hard she couldnae say her own name when it came time to say it."

"That part, at least, is true," Greer allowed. "I heard it from three separate sources who couldnae possibly have coordinated the lie between them, so I'm inclined to believe the goat, at least, actually happened."

"The goat absolutely happened," Isobel said. "I have opinions about the fainting."