Sunday Snog: A Handfast Kiss From "The Marriage Cure"

Sunday has arrived again, the second Sunday of this year so it's time for another Sunday Snog!

This one comes from my historical romance, The Marriage Cure, published last summer from Astraea Press.  It's now budget priced at just 99 cents on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, in fact everywhere it's sold.

“Did ye mean it?” she asked.

“What?”

“What ye said to them in the corn.”

He called her his wife; words that resonated in her soul but she wanted to be certain he meant them.

“Ah, that,” Johnny said. His tone was lighter now than any time since they heard the Payton men coming. “Aye, ye know I did, woman. Ta gra agam duit.”

Her eyes moistened, her heart expanded, and she felt so happy that it almost hurt.

“I love ye, too, Johnny dhu, mo anam cara.”

Johnny turned to face her, the smile on his face lighting his eyes.

“Then will ye live with me and be my wife? Nial aon leighea ar an ngra ach posadh."

“’Tis true,” Sabetha whispered. “So cure me with marriage, then, and I’ll cure ye?”

“Aye.”

“I’ll be yer wife but Johnny?”

“What?”

She did not know how to say it so she just blurted it out.

“There’s no one to wed us proper.”

He laughed and rose, almost turning the bench over in the process, and swept her into his embrace. “Do ye care? I’ll take ye to a priest when one is to be found, or a minister, but in the meantime, hand fasting is good enough for me.”

Sabetha remembered how her Da spoke of hand fasting, how he and her Ma married so. It was, he said, a way of wedding that went back far before the Christ and before St. Patrick brought salvation to Ireland. If it worked then, he told her, it was valid enough now.

“My own parents married that way,” Sabetha said. “They did, back in County Tyrone.”

“Then won’t we do the same?” he said. “If ye like, I can kill ye a deer and bring it to you, the Tsa-La-Gi way but I’m never sure I can hunt without falling over in the woods and I don’t want to wait.”

“I don’t want to wait either.”

They stood, facing each other, hands clasped.

“I take ye, Sabetha, to be my own wife,” Johnny began, trying to recall some if not all of the words from his hasty marriage to Janey but he could not. “I’ll love ye, provide for ye, and care for ye as long as I live.”

She was crying, tears of joy as she said her vow to him, 

“Is sibhse fuil m’fhuil, agus cnamh mo chnamh, Tugaim duit mo chrop sa chaoi is go mbiodh an beirt again mar dhuide amhian, tugaim duit mo spiorad go crioch na saol.”

It was the old vow, ancient, that her Da had spoken to her mother, blood of my blood, bone of my bone, I give ye my body so we may be one, I give ye my spirit until our life is done.

He repeated the words back to her, his tongue as fluent with the Gaelic as hers. His face, as he recited the vow, was tender.

“Now ye are my wife, before God and man,” Johnny said. Hands still clasped, they kissed, sweet at first and then warm as her blood rose. Passion blossomed in her veins, carried little shivers of delight to every part of her body. She wanted him, body, and soul, and from the way he kissed her, he wanted it too.

Reason cast aside in the rising ardor, she did not stop to wonder if he felt well enough or if he might be strong enough. Instead, she released his hands, undid her dress, and stepped out of it. She came to him as naked as the hour of her birth, her long hair falling free and loose over them both.

****