Chapter Text
"No, no, no, no, no, NO!"
I stomp through Lallybroch's back corridors, shouting, and growling, and searching desperately for something to throw.
"No, NO NO!" I nearly shriek, scaring away the two nice ladies in attendance in the wedding present display room. Lallybroch is a high-end wedding resort, and they provide a fully deluxe experience, but tending to distraught and furious would-be brides rampaging through the back halls is definitely not a part of the service.
I slam the big double doors behind them as they scurry out, then whirl over to the tables of glittering, fancy things Frank and I have been given over the past few weeks. From bedsheets to fruit bowls, garden shears to a box of fine cigars, they are all laid out to seen to best advantage, appreciated and admired. My eyes fall upon the big china tea set Frank's mother sent us, with a poisonously sweet little note, full of sarcastic bile apparently only I could see, and no one else believed was there.
I pick up the cups and saucers one by one – beautifully thin and translucent bone china, painted blue and red and green, with gilded accents and delicately scrolling slipwork – and deliberately, forcefully, one at time, smash them on the floor. I leave the teapot til last, and slam it down especially hard, in the middle of the mess I've already made, as a gloriously loud and satisfying coup-de-grâce.
This last shattering crash dies away, and finally, finally, I can cry.
I curl myself into a corner behind the main display table, and weep into my veil, not caring about it, or my makeup, or who might be looking for me, or anything else at the moment.
Frank has abandoned me, an hour before we were set to be married. I am left alone, to deal with our friends and our family, in the wreck of all our plans for the future, draped in his shame and cowardice and failure, but with nowhere else for it to go. . .
One of the double doors opens softly, and quiet footsteps cross the room. I ignore them until a face is lowered next to mine.
"Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp, ye daft numpty, git the hell up!"
Geillis's face is furious, but her voice is only stern, not cruel. I shake my head, in flat refusal.
"Why no'?" my maid of honour demands, fists planted fiercely on her hips.
I dig in my tiny lace handbag, and hand her my phone.
She takes it, and punches the button for message replay, then speakerphone. I let her. It's high time I heard it again. . .
"Claire," comes Frank's voice, slightly thin and tinny, "I know this is probably the coward's way to do this, but. . ." he sighs, and sounds genuinely regretful for a moment, "I don't love you. I never did, and I'm sorry I ever made you feel like I did. I just couldn't stand there today, Claire, saying vows to you I wanted to be saying to someone standing only a few places away from you."
There's a giggle then, and I recognize once more the vapid, bubble-headed laugh of Sandy Travers – a graduate student in Frank's department at Oxford, and his research assistant.
And the only member of our wedding party he had personally insisted on. . .
"I couldn't take anyone else on the honeymoon I booked, Claire, I'm sorry. We'll get married at Gretna Green on our way to Spain. Feel free to keep all the wedding presents, my dear – you deserve them. I hope we will meet again at a more auspicious time. Au revoir."
Then he makes the disgusting kissy-face noises I always disliked his habit of making, and rings off to the sound of more idiotic giggling from Sandy.
Geillis looks at me, aghast.
"Weel. " She sighs, and snorts all at once, "I allus kent he was a bastard, but I didnae ken he was that bad. The mingin' bawheid."
Despite myself, I almost laugh, "Yeah. What am I going to do, G?"
She shrugs, "Dinnae ken, yet. But I do know what I'm going tae do, an' that's tell the rest of the weddin' party. They need tae ken, at least, tho' judgin' by the state of the room -" she glances around, taking in the shredded mess of the obliterated tea set, and the complete absence of the usual room attendants, "I'd say there's a significant number of folks at Lallybroch who already ken something is up."
I manage to force out a flat chuckle, "Yeah. I don't suppose many of their brides get jilted at the altar, but I can't possibly be the first."
"Jilted?" G says, with a jeering eyeroll, "Dinnae give him the credit, hen. He's a straight-up liar, nae twa ways about it. Nothin' classy or romantic, just flat-out cruel black-hearted jackassery. One of a million common scumbags. No' worth yer time."
I try to chuckle again, but can't. I shake my head, "Not comforting at the moment, G. Sorry."
She stands up straight, her lip twisting sarcastically, "Weel. Lemme go tell Gail, Jen an' the boys."
Then she leaves my line of sight, and the door closes gently behind her.
I retreat back into tears, luxuriantly torturing myself.
Stupid! So stupid! I've been lying to myself for five years. Five years! I knew Frank didn't love me. Or at least wasn't passionately devoted to me. But I was willing to settle for nice, friendly, jog-along affection. Many do worse with more, and very very many do better with far less than that. I'm in my mid thirties – I had neither time, nor patience, nor inclination to go searching for more. Especially these days. I loathe dating websites.
Stubborn!
That's really all it was. My own stupid, stubborn insistence. I was attached to Frank in a collegiate, Professorial kind of way, which was natural enough, under the circumstances. A Professor of History, and a Professor of Botony – it was a match made in Oxford, if not heaven, and suited me perfectly adequately. So I hadn't trusted it, every time these past five years when he showed me he'd make a terrible husband.
The day-drinking, the smoking, the flirting with women who weren't me. The late nights he refused to explain, the sneering comments about what counted as "real" academia, and how Botany was just on the edge of a group that History was solidly in the middle of. The subtle abuses of power over his students. The gaslighting, the emotional withdrawal, the public humiliation. . .
Shit.
I look down at my lace-gloved hands, and cuss myself out. I really did set myself up for this. . .
Stupid, stubborn, blind, idiot-
The door opens again, interrupting my spiral of self recriminations. I expect it's G, so I call out from my spot on the floor, my voice damp and gruff with crying, "Join me in the shame corner, if you dare."
But the person who sits down on the ancient flagstone floor next to me isn't G. It's the big, broad-shouldered, lavishly booted and be-kilted form of Frank's best man, and our mutual friend, James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser. Professor of Rare and Endangered Languages at Queen's College, Oxford. Jamie, to his friends.
The whole reason we are having the wedding at Lallybroch in the first place. Jamie's older brother owns it, so we got a good price. Frank would never have splashed out for a luxury wedding otherwise. . .
"Aye," he grunts, ruefully, "The clarty bastard has shamed us all, that's right enough, Sassenach."
I manage a faint smile at the nickname. He's always called me that, even though we met in Oxford. The tone he gives it has always been one of gentle affection, and I've never objected to it, save just a little at first.
Frank always sneered at nicknames. . .
"The way I see it, we've three ways for'ard."
"Oh?" I blink a little, and wipe at my eyes with a tiny cambric handkerchief from my handbag. "Care to enlighten me?"
"A'course. First – ye call the whole thing off, an' ye an' I, an' whooe're else we c'n stand tae look at, go inta the dining room an' git roaring drunk on all those cases of champagne an' whisky we'ev got prettily stacked up in the kitchens, all bought an' paid fer. Ye c'n drink yerself stupid, an' I'll see ye're cared fer."
I close my eyes for a moment. The thought of alcohol-fed oblivion does sound mightily appealing just at present.
But. . .
If Frank took the coward's way out, it feels a bit hypocritical for me to only go and do the same.
"Second?" I ask flatly.
Jamie nods solemnly, "Second, ye could throw the reception annyway – an' we could eat an' dance an' party – AN' git roaring drunk on fancy wine and good Scottish uisge-beatha."
I manage a smile at the thought. That's a much nicer prospect. But, it still lacks something. . . I don't know quite what. Some spice. Some punch. . .
"Third?" I ask, almost brightly, curious what his last plan could possibly be.
"Weel. . ." he hesitates for a long moment, "Errything is all prepared, right there all ready an' waitin'. . ." He gently touches the back of his hand to mine, in a soft, chaste, but also somehow thoroughly intimate caress, "We could. . . ye could. . ." He licks his lips, and gives me a look of inexplicable longing, "Marry me instead?"