MacAlister’s Hope (Kilmartin Glen)

EPILOG

Epilog

Kilglashan Village, 1323

“’Tis a perfect tincture, Mairi!” Fia placed the small glass bottle on the shelf above the workbench in her stillroom. “I do not think there is aught else I can teach you of herbs.”

Mairi grinned. “Mum says the same for the Lamont healing gift.”

“I do indeed,” Elena said as she walked through the wide open door, bringing the scent of spring inside with her. We’ve brought someone to see you,” she said as she shooed the toddling twins, Fia and Ranald, into the chamber on the ground floor of the hallhouse. Upon Fia’s marriage to Kieron, the MacAlister chief had insisted she take the space for her stillroom.

“Who?” Fia asked, trying to look around Elena to see out the door, though the sound of a fussy bairn gave away the answer.

“The wee princess, of course,” Kieron said as he stepped around Elena and her weans, his crying daughter on his hip. “Hope is hungry and only her mother will do,” he said as he handed their nine month old daughter into Fia’s arms.

Warmth filled Fia’s heart as she held her bairn. Kieron beamed at the two of them, as proud a da as she had ever seen, and her eyes filled with tears.

“What is it, sprite?” Elena asked quietly.

Kieron just smiled and pulled Fia close with an arm around her shoulders. “She is happy,” he said, laying a sweet kiss upon the crown of her head.

Elena looked skeptical, so Fia smiled and leaned into her husband’s embrace. “I cannot help it. I am so happy the tears just come.” Hope let out a cry of frustration as she nuzzled at her mother’s breast, stymied by her mother’s gown. “Patience, little one,” Fia said, moving to the chair she kept in the stillroom for just this reason. She quickly settled the bairn to her meal.

“’Twould make a good name for our next one,” Kieron said as he settled onto the stone floor. Ranald and the new wee Fia immediately clambered over their uncle.

“What would?” Fia asked.

“Patience,” he said, a twinkle in his eye.

“Nay, ‘twould be too confusing since that is what I say to both of you all the time.”

“But patience is difficult for us MacAlisters,” he said, and she could tell he was trying his best to keep their secret. All at once the love she felt for him and the bairn they had made filled her heart to overflowing.

“You can tell them,” she said, laughing at the look of glee that swept over his beloved face.

Elena and Mairi were looking from one of them to the other. “Well?” Elena asked.

“We are having another bairn,” Fia and Kieron said together.

Elena and Mairi whooped so loud they startled the twins and the baby. Fia calmed Hope. Elena and Mairi each scooped up a twin, bouncing them on their hips to stop their crying. Kieron rose from the floor and kissed his wife, and his bairn, and the joyful tears that seemed a constant in Fia’s life of late once more trembled on her lashes. Fia could not imagine a better life, a better husband, or a better family, old and new, than she had.

“I think if ’tis a girl,” Fia said to them all once the weans were quieted, “we should name her Joy.”