When I asked what was to become of their shop in Concord, they both heartily agreed that it was time to move it to Lexington. The town had grown. Any who knew of them would come there, and those who did not would learn.
With more good fortune smiling upon me, the choice—on Cullah’s insistence—that I had worn my own creation in the lavender embroidered gown, had filled Johanna Parmenter’s slate with orders. She sent word within three days that customers waited anxiously for as much as I could turn out, and I could easily have a fortune by spring.
On the twenty-ninth of January, 1737, at noon I donned my lavender gown, my jewels, and a pair of white kid slippers that August carried in his trunk, to pledge my life and my fortune, my body and future, to Eadan Cullah MacLammond. I was yet seventeen, he twenty-five, though he looked younger than my brother who was twenty-three. Even as the minister said the words, I wondered what a marriage was to a man with so many names, and was I really now Wife Lamont or Wife MacLammond? Wife of Cullah or Eadan?
We celebrated with a small dinner with August and Jacob, and to my surprise, Johanna Parmenter came. They three left after the sun began to set. I could not be sure but there seemed to be a little too much fraternity among the three of them, and I suddenly wondered why I had met no husband of hers, since I knew she had had a babe. I wondered if it would be my brother she would bed before dawn.
Once again I was alone in the house with Cullah. All my previous desire turned to fear. Faced with the reality of him, the close physical presence, this surrender—filled me so with dread that my knees shook.
“I must clean the trenchers,” I said.
Cullah removed his scarf and opened his collar. “I will help you.”
“No. It is woman’s work, and I am not ill. If I were, I would let you.”
He put one hand upon my shoulder. “Will you come to me?” he asked.
I kept my eyes low and whispered, “If you will kiss me.”
“I will kiss you.”
I raised my face to his. Three candles—for I was sparing no luxury on my wedding day—gave a golden light to the room. He smelled of rosewater and beeswax, and I smiled, thinking of his boots, so shiny that he did not want to wear them outdoors, and had put on his work boots to walk out and put my goats into their shed. Cullah pulled the trenchers from my hands and set them before me on the table. He turned me to him. Then with more delicacy than I had used to don them, he raised the string of pearls from my neck and held them to his cheek. “They are still warm,” he said. “They smell of you.” He kissed the string of pearls as if they made a rosary, and then laid them on the table as he inspected my bodice. “I look at all these ties and ribbons and I am lost. I would help you but where do I begin?”
I smiled. “Kiss me again, and I will tell you,” I said, then I fell into his arms as he complied.
“You are trembling,” he said at last. “So am I.”
“I have not,” I started, but found my mouth dry and my tongue stilled.
He smiled. “I know you have no experience. You promised that for a kiss, you would tell me which cord to pull.”
I pulled first at the cords that bound my stomacher to the waist. Then I loosed the sleeves. He pushed them back and down. “This next,” I said, “is a ridiculous contraption of fashion, making it seem I am half caught in a birdcage. It is only two ties; one in front, here, and one you will have to find in back by my waist.” In a moment, I felt the hoops and panniers fall to the floor and my skirt sink in on itself like sails in doldrums. I opened the skirt and stepped out of it, standing before Cullah in my shift alone.
The season had turned, the week before. A chill crossed me with the natural moistness of the shift after wearing a heavy dress gown. My nipples made two hard buttons that held the shift from my body. With the candles behind me, he must see through the light linen shift! My trembling increased. “I am so cold, now,” I whispered. “I should wait in bed for you to undress.”
He flung his shirt over his head and pulled me to his bare chest, holding me closely. My hands traveled the curves of his muscles as a blind woman would explore a statue, finding every swale and swell to my great liking. Then he sat upon the bed and pulled off his boots, letting them hit the floor with a solid bang. Cullah smiled and patted the bed beside him. “Come to bed, wife, but pray, for a moment, endure the cold and let me have a look at you.”