Claimed by a Possessive Scot – Extended Epilogue
One Year Later
The candles in the chapel had burned down to stubs by the time the priest pressed the cool water to the baby’s brow, and the small protest the boy made, rang off the old stone and pulled a low laugh from the gathered clan. Fiona stood at the front with her son against her shoulder, the warm weight of his little body steady through the wool of her gown, and the whole of Sinclair stood at her back now, where for twenty-four years it had been a thing she skirted on her way to the door. Morning light fell through the high window onto the worn baptismal font where her own mother had never once been allowed to stand. She’d thought about that on the climb up, then set it aside, because the day belonged to the living child fussing against her neck and not to wounds a year and more behind her.
The chapel emptied toward the great hall once the rite was done, the guests spilling into the corridor with their talk running ahead of them. Fiona walked through the heart of the crowd, not its edges, with her boy. The people of Sinclair turned to her as she passed, reaching to brush the baby’s blanket for luck, calling blessings on him in a dozen rough voices. Old Duncan of Tornish, leaning harder on his stick than a year past, squinted into the bundle and declared the baby the image of his mother and God help the lad for it, which set the whole passage laughing.
“He has yer scowl,” she said when Ewan fell into step beside her, his hand coming to the small of her back, his head bending toward his son. “Look at him. He’s affronted by the whole business already.”
“He’s got sense, then.” Ewan touched one finger to the baby’s fist, and the small hand closed tightly around it. The breadth of his shoulder brushed hers as they walked, the heat of him reaching her through the press of the corridor, and her pulse answered the nearness the same as it had on the clifftop a year and a half gone. “A roomful of folk come to gawk at ye. Affronted is the only sensible reaction to it.”
“Ye’d know.” She tipped her face up to his, near enough in the crush to catch the amber waking in his eyes where the window light reached them. “Ye spent the first month of yer lairdship looking at this clan exactly so, and half of them looking back at ye twice as sour.”
***
The great hall had never held a happier crowd, and Ewan stood at the head of it with his son in the crook of his arm and watched a clan that once buried its men on opposite sides of a gate raise their cups to a single child.
He carried the boy down from the dais to bring him through the room, table by table, naming him to the headmen come in from across Sinclair land, to the villagers who’d sheltered behind these walls the night of the fires, to the Gordon men who’d stayed on and taken Sinclair wives in the year since. Robb of Carn Dubh stood to grip his forearm, the arm Fiona had stitched gone strong again at the haying. The Tait children, taller by a hand each, crowded in to see the baby and were waved back by their mother for the second year running. Brian took the boy a moment himself, the captain’s scarred hands sure around the small bundle, and the look he turned up held the whole of what neither of them said aloud.
“He’ll have an easier road than ye did.” Brian handed the child back with care. “That’s worth the last two years on its own, that one thing.”
“Aye.” Ewan settled his son against his chest, the small weight of him a thing he still couldn’t quite believe he was allowed to keep. “It is.”
He carried the boy back across the hall to Fiona at the edge of the floor and eased him onto her shoulder, where the child drowsed with his fist still curled. The fiddles started as the tables were pushed back, and the hall gave itself over to the dancing. Ewan stood close at her side, the flush of the warm room high on her cheeks and a loose strand of auburn fallen across her face. The sight of the two of them there, his wife and his son, and the bright noise of the clan behind, tightened something beneath his ribs, the same wonder and disbelief he’d felt since the first morning he’d woken beside her and let himself believe she’d stay.
“They’ll nae let this one quiet down before midnight,” she said as he reached her, shifting the sleeping child higher on her shoulder. “Half the glen’s in here and the other half’s still on the road.”
“Let them stay till dawn.” He brought his hand up and brushed the loose strand back from her cheek, his fingers grazing her jaw, and felt the catch in her breath at the touch even now, with a year of marriage behind them and a child between them. “A while back this hall couldnae hold two of these folk without blades coming out. Now look at it.”
She rested her cheek in his palm for a moment, then tipped her chin up to find his eyes, the candlelight moving gold across the crowded floor. “I am looking,” she said, her voice gone soft at its edges. “I’ve been looking all day. My brother held this clan twenty years through fear and near broke it in his fist. Ye held it one, and they’ve come three valleys tae put their hands on yer son for luck.”
“Our son.” He bent until his brow nearly touched hers, the baby warm between them, the fiddles climbing toward a song neither of them would dance tonight. “And ye held it as much as I ever did. Ye stitched half of these folk back together tae get us all here.”
Her hand came to rest at his chest over the hard beat of his heart, the same place it had found a hundred times now, and the warmth of her palm through his shirt pulled at him the same as the first night she’d pressed it there to feel him living in a falling castle. The boy stirred and went quiet again between them. Her thumb moved once across the linen at his chest, a small motion she likely didn’t know she made, and the heat of it ran through him clear to the back of his neck even here, in a hall packed wall to wall with his clan.
“Ye’re looking at me like there’s nae a soul in the room,” she said under her breath, the flush climbing past her cheeks now, her eyes bright and wet at the rims. “Behave yerself, Laird Gordon. Yer son’s between us and the whole glen’s watching their laird go soft over his wife.”
“Let them watch that as well.” His hand spread wide at her back, drawing her and the child in against him until the three of them stood pressed together in the candlelight. “I’ve spent two years giving this clan a thing tae talk of that isnae blood and fire. They can talk of this instead.”
She laughed under her breath, leaning into him past the last of her sharpness, and across the hall the dancers turned and turned in the gold light. Gordon and Sinclair and villager with their arms linked and no telling whose was whose. Ewan drew his wife and his son closer against his chest as the clan he’d been handed in blood spun whole and laughing in front of him, hers and his to keep, and the whole of the rest of their lives still ahead.
The End
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Chapter One
Sinclair Castle, 1609
The needle went in clean, but the man flinched anyway.
“Hold still,” Fiona said, not looking up. “Ye’ll make it worse.”
“It already is worse.” Cormac, one of the older Sinclair guardsmen, had the grace to look embarrassed about it. He was broad across the shoulders and had survived three border skirmishes. He’d split his forearm open on a tavern table because Ramsay MacLeod had called him a coward for switching his allegiance to the new Gordon order. Torcall Sinclair had been dead eleven days, and his men were still sorting themselves into the living and the left behind. Cormac, to his credit, had chosen the living. “Could’ve just left it.”
“Ye’d have lost the arm by morning.” She pulled the thread through again and heard him hiss between his teeth. “Then ye’d have nothing to swing at MacLeod.”
“Aye.” He flexed his uninjured hand against his knee, a slow curl and release. “That’s fair.”
The infirmary was quiet at this late hour, a quiet that pressed against the ears. Three tallow candles burned on the workbench beside her, throwing amber light across the row of narrow cots and the bundles of dried herbs hanging from the rafters. The castle beyond its walls was not quiet. It hadn’t been quiet since Torcall died, and a low restlessness had settled into the stones themselves over the past four days, watchful and unresolved, like a fever building towards a breaking point Fiona could sense but not yet name.
She tied off the last stitch and set her needle aside.
“Keep it clean,” she said. “Change the dressing tomorrow. Dinnae let Moira do it. She’ll be too gentle and it’ll stick.”
“I heard that,” Moira said from across the room, not looking up from the poultice she was wrapping.
“Ye were meant tae.”
Cormac reached for his shirt. He was one of the ones who’d stayed quiet during the worst of it, the arguments in the great hall, the raised voices on the south corridor when word had come that Malcolm Gordon had sent his younger relative ahead to take the lairdship. Ewan Gordon, thirty-one years old and already carrying a reputation that made the older Sinclair men go tight around the mouth when they said his name. Fiona didn’t know what she thought about that yet. She hadn’t let herself think about it too much because there were injured men to tend, and that was enough.
“Thank ye, lass,” Cormac said.
She was already moving to wash her hands when the candles guttered, but not from a draft because there was no window open. Fiona paused with her hands in the basin and felt it, the same low wrongness she’d been feeling for days, except now it pressed against her like a blade.
Then the shouting started.
It came from the north corridor first, muffled through stone, and for a moment she thought it was another fight. Drunk men, old grievances, violence that lived in the spaces between orders and broke loose when leadership went soft. She’d stitched up four such men in the past week. She reached for the cloth to dry her hands when the alarm bells rang.
All of them at once, the full cascade of the castle’s warning system that Torcall had installed in the second year of his lairdship and that Fiona had never once heard used at full peal in her lifetime. The sound went through her chest like a fist.
Cormac was on his feet before she turned around. Moira had gone still, her hands pressed flat against the workbench.
“What—” the young kitchen girl, Elspeth, started from the doorway where she’d been waiting for a burn salve.
The door flew open and she stumbled back. It was Tam, one of the undercooks, face white and sheened with sweat, still holding a pot rag in one hand.
“They’ve taken the gatehouse.” His voice cracked. “Councilman Griffith’s men. They’ve got the gatehouse and they’re moving through the east wing, taking down anyone who willnae fall in line. They’re saying—” He stopped, his eyes landing on Fiona and the fear in them giving way to grim resolve. “They’re looking for ye, lass. Word is they want tae hold the castle before the Gordon arrives and they need… they said yer connection to Torcall makes ye leverage.”
The room went very still as Fiona set down the cloth.
“Bar the door,” she said.
“Fiona—”
“Cormac, the door. Moira, the supply chest. Everything we can move. Tam, are there more of ye in the kitchen corridor?”
“Two lads, maybe three.”
“Get them. Quietly, if ye can manage it.” She was already moving to the far wall, pulling down the herb shelf’s lower bundles and reaching for the locked box behind them. Her hands were steady as they always were when things turned dire. She’d noticed in the years since she’d taken over the infirmary, that the worse things got, the stiller her hands became, as though her body recognized that someone had to stay calm and it had volunteered itself without asking her. “Elspeth, stop standing in the open doorway.”
Elspeth moved, crossing to Moira’s side. She was perhaps sixteen, gap-toothed and wide-eyed, but she had good instincts and had learned early that the nearest calm person was the safest place to stand.
Cormac had his shoulder against the door. It was heavy oak, but the bolt was old. Fiona knew this because she’d asked Torcall’s steward twice to have it replaced and twice been told it wasn’t a priority, so she had stopped asking altogether.
She unlocked the supply box and pulled out the two short blades she kept wrapped in oilcloth at the bottom, beneath the extra bandaging. They were both sharp, and she tucked one into her belt while she held the other one.
“There are wounded men on the cots,” she said, looking at the three who were still there, Cormac’s arm, a shoulder wound from two days ago, a badly twisted knee. “If ye can stand, I need ye tae help move the cabinet.”
The man with the twisted knee nodded and got to his feet.
Smoke reached her first through the gap under the door, thin, not fire smoke, more like torches held too close to tapestries, the acrid burn of men moving fast and not caring what they touched. Then she heard several sets of heavy boots, moving with purpose rather than panic. Griffith’s men knew where they were going, and not long after, pounding shook the door, rattling its frame.
Cormac leaned harder against it, jaw tight.
“Open it,” a voice ordered from the other side.
One of the injured men, the shoulder wound, young, couldn’t have been more than twenty, made a sound in his throat and lurched toward the cabinet they’d moved in front of the door, as though he intended to shift it himself and let them in. Fiona caught his arm, stopping him mid-run.
“Dinnae,” she pleaded.
“They’ll kill us.”
“They willnae kill the healer.” She held his gaze until he stopped pulling. “They need me functional, which means if ye’re standing beside me, ye’re safer there than on the other side of that door.” She kept her voice even, but she wasn’t trying to reassure him because she didn’t have the energy for reassurance. She was as steady as she could be because that was what the moment required. “Help Cormac with the cabinet.”
He did, putting his weight against it.
The door splintered on the second strike, a long crack running through the upper panel, splinters falling across Cormac’s boots. Through the gap Fiona could see torchlight and the edge of a drawn sword. There was more than one man, four at least, or maybe six.
“The back corridor,” she said.
Moira was already there, knowing where it was because she was with Fiona when she’d found it two years ago during a leak in the roof and they’d had to shift the herb shelves to move a water-damaged cot. Behind the tall shelf of dried rosemary and thyme, pressed into the stone, was a narrow door that opened onto the servants’ passage running parallel to the east wall. It was barely wide enough for one person sideways and dark as a grave.
“Move,” Fiona ordered. “Elspeth first. Tam, take the back. Cormac—”
“I’m last,” Cormac said, already turning his back to her to face the door.
Fiona didn’t argue and took Elspeth by the wrist, pulling her toward the gap in the shelving. The girl’s pulse hammered against her fingers.
The cabinet shrieked across the stone floor as something struck the door again from outside.
They went through in single file, Elspeth, then Fiona, then the man with the twisted knee moving faster than she’d expected, then the shoulder wound, then Moira, then Cormac dragging the shelf back into place behind him. The servants’ passage was black, close, and smelled of old plaster and mouse droppings. Fiona pressed her back against the wall to let Elspeth move past her so she could take the lead.
Smoke was heavier here, filtering through gaps in the stonework from somewhere above, acrid and thin but building steadily. She could hear shouting, close and then suddenly closer, another corridor running parallel to this one, men moving fast.
She put her free hand against the wall for guidance and kept moving, following Elspeth’s pace. Fiona could feel her shaking through their joined hands, quick tremors that came and went in waves, but the girl was moving and that was what mattered. Behind her came the shuffle and scrape of the others following, Moira’s quiet breathing, Cormac’s heavier tread.
The passage turned left after thirty feet, and the noise fell back slightly. Fiona didn’t slow down. There was a door at the far end that opened onto the courtyard near the well, behind the main stables, far enough from the gatehouse that Griffith’s men might not have reached it yet. She knew the castle’s bones the way she knew her patients’ injuries, not because she’d been given a tour but because she’d spent years moving through it quietly and unnoticed, learning which parts would hold and which would give under pressure.
Torcall had never considered that useful information.
She was almost at the turn toward the courtyard door when Elspeth stopped.
Her feet planted and her free hand went flat against the wall. She was breathing in shallow cuts that weren’t moving enough air.
“I cannae.” Her voice was barely audible. “I cannae, I cannae go any further, please, dinnae leave me, please—”
“Elspeth.” Fiona couldn’t see the girl’s face in the dark, but she could feel her, rigid with panic and every joint locked. “Look at me.”
“I cannae see ye—”
“Then listen to me.” She took the girl’s face in both hands, her blade hand, her free hand, holding her still. The girl’s cheeks were wet. “I’m nae leaving ye. Do ye hear me? I havenae left anyone in this corridor and I am nae going to start. But I need yer feet to move. That’s all. Just yer feet.”
Elspeth’s breath stuttered, caught, then steadied by a fraction. It took her another second before she moved.
They were ten feet from the courtyard door when the passage ahead filled with light.
Torchlight, carried by two men who’d found the servants’ entrance from the outside and come in the other direction. They were Griffith’s men, confirmed by the mark on their coats, which she could see even in the unsteady glow, a twisted silver cord that Griffith had taken to wearing on his lapel since Torcall’s death, his own private signal of what he intended to become.
Both men were bigger than her, one with a drawn sword and the other with a hunting blade, and they were both looking directly at her.
“There she is,” the one with the sword said.
Fiona stepped in front of Elspeth and raised her small blade, facing the two men blocking the only exit from this passage. For the first time since the bells had started ringing she felt the full weight of how badly this could go. Behind her, Elspeth, Moira, and everyone else in the passage had gone still.
The man with the sword took a step forward, and Fiona watched the torchlight run down the blade. She didn’t move because there was nowhere to move. Behind her Elspeth had gone rigid against her back, and the passage wall was cold and close on her left. The two men in front of her were filling the remaining space without urgency, shoulders loose, eyes steady, already certain the ground between them was theirs to close.
“Put it down, lass,” the one with the sword said, not unkindly. “Ye’re nae going tae use it.”
She had decided to use it the moment they’d appeared in the passage, and she was going to follow through even if they broke her arm for the trouble, because if they got past her they’d get to Elspeth and Moira and the rest of them, and she was going to make them work for every inch of ground between them.
She shifted her weight forward onto her front foot.
The man with the hunting blade moved first, faster than she’d expected for his size, and got his hand around her wrist before she’d completed the motion. He didn’t twist it, just held it roughly, and she felt the bones of her wrist compress under his fingers. The small blade stayed in her hand for two more seconds through pure refusal before her fingers opened and it dropped, striking the stone floor with a sound that settled into the passage walls and didn’t echo back.
“There we are,” he said.
She didn’t look down at where it had fallen, and instead, kept her eyes on the man with the sword and her chin level. Her heartbeat was very loud in her ears, but her face was still, and that was the only thing left she had any say over.
They took her arms and turned her back toward the castle’s inner corridors. Behind her she heard Elspeth make a frightened sound and Moira’s voice cutting across it, and then the sound of boots moving the other direction, away through the passage toward the courtyard door. They were letting the others go, which told her something about what she was worth to Griffith and what the rest of them weren’t. She held onto it and turned it into something useful, because useful was the only thing she could afford to be right now.
Chapter Two
Fiona was dragged through the great hall with her heels scraping stone. She’d stopped fighting the grip on her arms two corridors back, not from surrender but from calculation. The men holding her were bigger, there were three of them, and burning her strength against their hold would leave her with nothing when it actually mattered. So, she let them move her, kept her weight low, and watched everything she could see through the smoke and torchlight.
She’d lived in this castle for twenty-four years and right now, it was unrecognizable. The tapestries were torn from their brackets, a body was slumped against the base of the staircase that she forced herself not to look at too long, two Sinclair men were kneeling with their hands bound while one of Griffith’s moved between them with a torch held low. The warning bells had stopped ringing, which was more unsettling than when they’d been sounding. Silence meant Griffith’s men had either won the gatehouse fully or silenced the men ringing them.
The smoke was thicker here, clouding her eyes. A wall hanging near the south window had caught, the fire still small but climbing, and nobody was moving to stop it.
“Keep moving,” the man on her left ordered, tightening his grip.
Fiona’s shoulder screamed, but she pushed the pain away.
Griffith Cameron had set himself up in Torcall’s council chamber, which was the largest room in the castle’s inner keep, with the high-backed chair at its head that Torcall had never called a throne but had clearly treated as one. Griffith was standing rather than sitting when they brought her in, which told her he was too agitated for the performance of calm, and that was useful. His dark coat was immaculate despite the chaos outside. The silver rings caught the firelight from the hearth behind him.
“Fiona.” He said her name as though they were meeting for a council breakfast. “I’m glad they found ye.”
“I’m sure ye are.” She pulled against the grip on her arms, not hard enough to achieve anything, but just enough to make the men holding her work for it. “Ye’ve gone tae considerable trouble.”
“Sit her down,” Griffith said to the men.
They pushed her into the chair nearest the door, and she felt the impact through her whole spine, bit down on the sound that wanted to come out and kept her face neutral. Her shoulder throbbed with a deep, insistent pulse she diagnosed automatically as not broken, but bruised and manageable. Her blade was gone, taken from her in the corridor.
Griffith moved to the head of the table and set his hands flat against its surface, studying her with a patience that had been building for a long time and had finally found its outlet.
“Ye understand what’s happening,” he said.
“A man with no legitimate claim is burning his own clan’s castle tae the ground,” she spit out. “Aye, I understand it fine.”
The patience behind his eyes thinned by a degree. He was still in the part of this where he believed it would go the way he’d planned, which meant he hadn’t fully accounted for what was coming. “Clan Sinclair needs leadership. Ewan Gordon isnae here yet. When he arrives, he’ll find a clan already settled under capable hands, and the matter of his appointment will become considerably more complicated.”
“And ye need me because of my blood.”
“I need ye because yer Torcall’s kin, his half-sister, and the men who still care about Sinclair legitimacy will follow that.” He straightened. “Ye’ll be kept comfortable. I’m nae unreasonable, Fiona.”
She’d seen enough on the way through the corridor to know exactly what his version of reasonable looked like. “Aye,” she said. “Clearly.”
His jaw tightened and he moved slowly around the table toward her, his patience running thin.
“I’d rather have yer cooperation,” he said. “But I dinnae require it.”
“Of course ye dinnae,” she said. “Ye just need my name and my face at yer side, which is nae cooperation at all. It’s furniture.”
He was close enough now that she could see the smooth political intelligence in his face giving way at its edges, the composed surface of it thinning to reveal a patient and settled intent that was considerably worse than fury.
His hand came down across her jaw before she’d fully registered the movement, snapping her head sideways and setting her ear ringing, pain blooming up through her cheekbone in a bright immediate wave, her hands gripping the chair arms before her mind had caught up with what had happened.
“I need ye present,” Griffith said. “Nae combative.”
The ringing in her ear was very loud, but through it she could hear shouting, distant and then closer, boots on stone, the unmistakable percussion of a fight breaking out somewhere beyond the chamber walls.
Griffith heard it too, his chin lifting toward the sound.
The door to the council chamber crashed open and Gordon men poured through it, six, seven, moving fast with swords already drawn. Behind them came two more, and then a final figure through the doorway, taller than the others, broader across the shoulders and chest, dark hair falling past his collar and damp from the night air, scarred hands loose at his sides, his dark eyes moving across the room with an intensity that didn’t require volume to make itself felt. His gaze went to Griffith first, then to the men at the table, then to Fiona in the chair with her hand pressed to her jaw, and it stopped there for two full seconds before the chamber erupted.
Griffith’s men came off the walls with blades drawn and the Gordon men met them. The room became a collision of bodies and iron that Fiona had no part of except to stay in her chair and keep herself small. She pulled her feet up off the floor, getting them clear of the scrape and stamp of boots, and pressed her back against the chair.
The man who’d entered last moved through the fight rather than around it, finding the gaps, redirecting where he needed to, his body doing the work of three men without any visible effort behind it. He took a blade away from one of Griffith’s men with a grip that seemed almost casual and had him on the floor in the same motion. Fiona’s eye caught the way he held his left side, an imperceptibletension around his ribs that he was working to keep out of his movement. Her healer’s mind had already recognized it before the rest of her had decided what to do with the information.
Griffith saw him coming and was already moving for the far door, one of his men positioned between them with a sword raised, but the Gordon man walked through that too, barely checked, and then there were just the two of them, Griffith with his back to the far wall and the composure draining from his face as he understood how this was going to end.
“This isnae over,” Griffith said.
“Aye it is,” the man said, his voice even, without volume or heat behind it.
Griffith’s eyes cut to Fiona, held for a moment with a coldness that had nothing defeated in it, then moved back. “Clan Sinclair’s future isnae yers tae decide, Gordon. This isnae finished.” He left through the far door with two of his remaining men behind him, the others already down.
The chamber went quiet except for the sounds of men breathing hard and one of Griffith’s soldiers making a low pained noise in the corner that one of the Gordon men moved to address.
The man Griffith called Gordon crossed the room toward her. Up close he was larger than she’d thought from across the chamber, built across the shoulders and chest in a way that came from years of actual warfare, with dark brown hair that fell past his collar and dark eyes that moved over her face with a directness that was neither pity nor appraisal, and harder to dismiss than either would’ve been. His gaze dropped to her jaw, held there long enough to take it in, then came back up to her face.
“Can ye stand?” he said.
His voice was low and even, stripped of anything meant to impress or intimidate, which made it more difficult to brace against than either would have been.
Fiona took her hand away from her jaw, her face already settling into a deep steady ache that would be spectacular by morning, and got to her feet.
“Aye,” she said.
He didn’t reach for her arm, didn’t offer a hand, just watched her get upright and gave a small nod. “I’m Ewan Gordon.”
She’d heard his name every day for eleven days, passed between Sinclair men in tight-mouthed fragments that told her more about their fear than about him. She’d had a version of him assembled in her mind before she’d ever seen his face, a man built for taking things, for arriving somewhere and claiming it by force. The man standing in front of her wasn’t what she’d assembled.
“I’d say I’m glad tae see ye,” she said, and found that her voice came out lower than she’d meant it to, the bravado thinning at the edges. “Though I think I am. I’ve nae had the chance tae decide it properly.”
“Take yer time,” he said. “I’m nae going anywhere.”
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Claimed by a Savage Scot – Extended Epilogue
Three months later…
Snow drifted softly beyond the castle windows, whitening the valley and the moors and the mountains in the far distance, casting the area surrounding Castle Gordon in hues of silver and pale blue.
Inside the infirmary, however, warmth filled the chamber from the fire burning gaily in the hearth. The air was redolent of the sweet smell of pine logs and drying herbs, bundles of which hung from the from the rafters above.
It was just Catriona and Mairead. The last patient had come and gone an hour ago. All was calm.
Catriona sat quietly at the worktable, head bowed as she worked at the pill press. Mairead sat opposite her, grinding some powdery substance in a mortar. Tea things sat nearby along with a pot of honey.
The two women were talking, and the older healer wore an unusually knowing half-smile as she decanted the powder from the mortar into a small jar and stoppering it firmly before placing it down on the table.
Folding her capable hands before her, she asked Catriona, “So, how d’ye feel now? Still nauseous?” she asked.
“Nay. ’Tis only in the mornin’s when I get up,” Catriona replied. She lifted her cup and sipped the ginger tea, meant to settle her stomach.
“And this had been goin’ on fer several days, ye say?”
“Aye, since Monday,” Catriona supplied. It was now Thursday. “That was when me courses were due tae start. I thought mayhap it must be late because of this upset stomach. I thought perhaps I’d caught a chill or somethin’.”
Mairead snorted softly and smiled at her. “I think we both ken what it is, Catriona, and it’s nae a chill.”
A small glow of intense hope flickered to life in Catriona’s chest at Mairead’s words.
“Well then,” Mairead said, patting Catriona’s hand gently. “I suppose ye’ll be wantin’ confirmation from someone besides yersel’.”
Hope flicked again. “So ye think ’tis really…?”
“The only way tae be sure is fer me tae examine ye.”
“Aye, that’s what I want,” Catriona said, desperate to know if she was right.
“I’d stake me reputation upon it.”
In an anteroom, she undressed down to her shift and lay on the cot. Mairead examined her thoroughly, palpitating her belly with expert hands. When she was finished, she looked at Catriona with kind eyes.
“Congratulations, me lady. Ye’re with child.”
For a moment the world seemed to stop entirely for Catriona.
A child. Malcolm’s child.
Joy rushed through her so swiftly it almost frightened her. Instinctively her hand settled against her stomach.
“So soon,” she whispered faintly.
Mairead chuckled. “Well, considerin’ the way yer husband looks at ye, I’m surprised it took this long.”
Catriona’s heart soared with the certainty. She found herself laughing helplessly through a sudden bout of tears as she dressed and made herself presentable.
“Thank ye, Mairead, thank ye so much,” she told the older woman sincerely, kissing her on both cheeks. “Please dinnae say anythin’ until I’ve told Malcolm. I want it tae be a surprise.”
“Of course nae.”
“Thank ye, Mairead,” Catriona said. Feeling in sore need of some wise advice, she went on musingly, “I wonder what he’ll say when I tell him. Three months seems very soon after the weddin’.”
Mairead squeezed her hand warmly. “He’ll be overjoyed, lass.”
Catriona silently prayed that it would be so.
After leaving the infirmary, wanting some fresh air to help her take in the momentous news that she was with child, Catriona went for her usual walk. She was on her way back from the stables, crossing the snowy courtyard later that afternoon when a sudden thought occurred to her.
What if the thought of bein’ a faither scares him? What if he feels pushed aside? His old fears might return tae haunt him again.
At the same time, her logical side argued that she was being silly. Malcolm liked bairns. He was always kind to them.
The warring thoughts jostled in her head. By the time she reached Malcolm’s study, her pulse was racing.
Inside, she found him bent over some old maps spread across his desk, discussing some external repairs to the walls with Ewan.
The moment Malcolm looked up and saw her, his entire face changed. It lit up, the hard lines softening into a loving smile that made her heart skip. The warmth in his eyes made her feel cherished beyond reason.
“Cat,” he said immediately, moving to greet her. “Come in.”
“Are ye busy? I can comeback…” She trailed off then because he bent and kissed her soundly on the lips.
Ewan snorted. “Jaysus, ye’ll kiss the lassie’s lips right off her face if ye carry on like that,” he teased.
Malcolm ignored him completely, turning to Catriona with a smile. “Were ye lookin’ fer me, me love?”
“Aye,” she said, settling into the chair he pulled up for her. “I have somethin’ tae tell ye, but when ye are done,” she said softly.
Something in her tone must have reached him because concern flickered instantly across his features. Without hesitation he straightened and looked at his brother.
“Ewan, ye need tae leave. Now.”
“Eh?”
“I said out.”
Ewan rolled his eyes dramatically. “I ken where I’m nae wanted,” he said, laughing.
Once alone, Malcolm crossed quickly toward Catriona. He squatted beside her. “What is it?” he asked softly. “Ye look pale. Has somethin’ happened?”
A lump came up in Catriona’s throat, making it hard to speak. “,” she whispered. “Naethin’ bad, if that’s what ye mean.”
Still, uncertainty must have shown upon her face because he reached immediately for her hands.
“Cat?”
Unable suddenly to find words, she drew a tiny knitted bundle from within her cloak. Malcolm frowned faintly as she placed it carefully into his palm.
“A babe’s bonnet?” he said slowly, dark brows drawing together.
She watched realization strike him, saw the way his eyes suddenly widened, how his entire expression transformed him utterly.
“Cat…” His voice broke roughly. “Are ye tellin’ me…?”
“Aye.”
For one heartbeat he simply stared at her. Then he laughed. Actually laughed aloud with pure, stunned joy before pulling her into his arms so quickly she squealed in surprise.
“Ye willnae be able tae dae that in a few months’ time,” she told him, clinging to his broad shoulders and laughing breathlessly as he spun her around.
“Christ,” he whispered against her hair. “Christ Almighty…”
When he finally drew back, his eyes were shining.
“A bairn?”
“Aye.”
“Our bairn?”
She smiled through tears. “Our bairn.”
He kissed her then with overwhelming tenderness. Then he placed his hands over her belly, a look of awe on his face as he stroked her. She laughed when he laid his ear against it.
“Wheesht, woman, will ye stop laughin’ so I can hear the wee yin?” he pretended to complain, rubbing his ear.
“’Tis too small tae hear yet, ye goose.” She ran her fingers through his curls, enjoying the heat of his head in her lap. “Ye’re happy then?” she asked, smiling down on him.
His head lifted sharply, his eyes meeting hers. “Happy?” he echoed hoarsely. “Cat, ye’ve just given me the greatest gift anyone ever could.”
Tears spilled freely down her cheeks then. “Och, Malcolm…”
He cupped her face tenderly, catching tears with his fingertips and putting them to his lips.
“Nay, dinnae cry, mo cridhe. This is a happy time, eh? Ye’re happy about the bairn?” he asked, a thread of worry in his voice.
“I’m over the moon, even more so because ye’re happy too,” she sobbed, hugging his neck for comfort. “I want this more than anythin’.”
Laughing softly, he kissed away her tears.
Then, his expression shifted, becoming more serious. “Cat, if the babe’s turns out tae be a lad, I’d like tae call him after me braither, Arran.”
The name pierced straight through her heart. Without hesitation she laid her hand over his.
“I think that would be wonderful,” she said, pressing a sweet kiss to his lips.
For a moment he was silent, though he continued holding her hands. Catriona watched him carefully, for he seemed to be in the throes of some revelation. Then it struck her. What she was witnessing was the healing of an old, deep wound that had poisoned his days.
He was not ever going to forget. But there was no longer only grief in his life. There was love and happiness and hope.
Malcolm pressed his forehead gently to hers. “I wish ye could have kent him,” he murmured. Then he kissed her again, crushing her against him. The kiss was long and slow, full of passion, and she responded to it in kind, dissolving as always into him.
Time stopped then suddenly restarted again when they were interrupted by a voice sounding from the corridor outside.
“If ye two are finished producin’ heirs, some of us still have work tae dae!”
Malcolm groaned.
“Ewan,” Catriona laughed.
The door opened immediately. Malcolm stood, offering Catriona his hand to draw her up next to him. Ewan took one look at their faces and stopped dead. Then his eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“Och, nay,” he said slowly. “What’s happened?”
Malcolm looked positively savage with happiness as he replied, “Me wife is with child.”
Ewan blinked once, then broke into a grin nearly as wide as Malcolm’s own. “Well,” he declared, “that explains why ye’re both lookin’ so daft.”
Malcolm and Catriona exchanged one helpless glance before Ewan let out a shrill whistle and then shouted excitedly, “I’m about tae become an uncle!”
A stunned silence followed. Then Malcolm’s rich laughter echoed through the hall, to be joined by Catriona’s.
“I suppose congratulations are in order,” Ewan said, clapping Malcolm so hard on the back he coughed. “Well done, Braither. I was startin’ tae think ye were too old for this malarkey. But ye’ve proven me wrong.”
He gently took Catriona’s hand and kissed it. “Congratulations, Cat, I’m very happy fer the both of ye.”
“That’s kind of ye, Ewan. Or should I say, Uncle Ewan?” she quipped, eliciting more laughter from Malcolm and a complimentary nod to her wit from Ewan.
“I’ll be makin’ an announcement about the bairn at supper tonight,” Malcolm said when he had stopped laughing.
“After that, I’ll feel free tae boast tae everyone I’m goin’ tae be an uncle,” Ewan joked before departing again.
“Peace at last,” Catriona sighed happily, leaning into Malcolm and linking her arms about his neck, pulling him down for more slow, nuzzling kisses.
“’Tis strange tae be standin’ here like this. I never imagined in me wildest dreams that I’d leave the priory and fall in love and get married and now have a bairn, all within a few months. It seems like a wonderful dream.”
“Aye, and if it is, I never wantae wake up,” he murmured against her ear.
Catriona smiled at him, her heart overflowing with love. “Mmm,” she said. “Me neither.”
The kissing resumed in earnest.
The End
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