Epilogue #2
The ceilidh was in the great hall itself, the tables pushed back, and the fiddlers already playing before the ceremony had properly finished.
Elliot had apparently been involved in organizing this, which explained why it was both well-run and slightly chaotic around the edges, in exactly the ways a ceilidh should be.
Annabeth found Ava first, near the edge of the dancing.
“Marcus is speakin’ to Elliot,” she said, appearing at Ava’s elbow. “Which means they’re almost certainly talkin’ about somethin’ they willnae tell us about. I’ve stopped askin’.”
She looked out at the dancers. A stretch of the Willow currently in lively motion, Caitlin visible at one end of it, smiling. “A few years ago I wouldnae have thought this would happen, ye ken.”
“The ceilidh?”
“Noah,” Annabeth said plainly. “He was different back then. After his father died, the debts and the war with our clan. Thankfully, Marcus and he were of the same mind ththat it was all nonsense and agreed to rebuild what their fathers nearly destroyed between the clans.” She glanced at Ava.
“He managed everythin’ on his own Whatever it took to save his clanHe was good at it.
Steady, capable and never once behaving as though he’d rthere be anywhere else.
But there was a quality to him like somethin’ bein’ held under pressure for a very long time. ”
She glanced at Ava. “He isnae like that now.”
“He’s still intense,” Ava said.
“Oh, completely. But it’s different. It’s...” Annabeth considered. “He’s present, now. Before, he was always a step outside of everythin’, managin’ it. Now he’s actually in it.” She smiled. “That’s ye.”
“That’s him,” Ava said. “He decided.”
“Aye. But he decided because of ye.” Annabeth touched her arm briefly. “I’m glad. Truly.”
Marcus appeared at Annabeth’s shoulder.
“The fiddle’s startin’ a reel,” he said. He looked at his wife. “We’re dancin’.”
“We are?”
“Aye.” He held out his hand with the flat, total certainty of a man to whom alternatives have not occurred.
Annabeth took it with a smile.
“He does that,” she told Ava, as she was pulled gently toward the floor. “Just presents it as fact. I still havenae figured out if it’s charmin’ or insufferable.”
“Both,” Marcus said, without looking back.
Noah was beside Ava before the reel had properly begun.
He had appeared the way he always appeared. She hadn’t heard him coming, and then he was simply there, at her shoulder.
“Ye were talkin’ to Annabeth,” he said.
“Aye. She told me ye were different before.”
“She’s nae wrong.” He was watching the dancers. “I was.”
“Different how?”
He thought about it in the way he thought about things, honestly, without deflecting.
“Like everythin’ was a problem to solve. Includin’ things that shouldnae have been.” He glanced at her. “Ye’re nae a problem to solve.”
“Nay.”
“Ye’re...” He paused. “The opposite of that.”
She looked at him. “That’s the most romantic thing ye’ve ever said to me.”
His mouth moved. “I have better ones.”
“Ye really havenae.”
“I have the one in the chambers. I love ye. That was good.”
She threw back her head and laughed.
He looked at her with the expression that still, weeks on, did something to the inside of her chest that she had stopped trying to describe.
“Dance with me,” he said.
“I’m nae good at dancin’. I daenae ken this one.”
“It’s a reel. Ye follow the steps.”
“Easy for someone who grew up doin’ this.”
“Ava.” He held out his hand.
It was the same gesture Marcus had used with Annabeth, not a question, just a fact presented simply.
She had spent weeks learning that this was how he did everything: plainly, directly, without ornamentation. She had come to find it the most reliable thing she knew. “I’ll nae let ye fall.”
She took his hand.
The reel was fast, warm, and loud.
With the fiddles driving the pace and the whole hall moving together in the way a ceilidh moved, half-organized, half-joyful chaos, everyone finding the beat or giving up on it and moving anyway.
Ava lost the steps twice, and Noah caught her wrist and gently set her back in place without comment. By the third time, she had most of it, and by the end, she was laughing, flushed, and completely herself.
When it finished, she was breathing hard.
“Told ye,” he said.
“I fell over.”
“Twice.”
“That counts.”
“It doesnae.” He had not let go of her hand.
He was looking at her with the settled, certain expression she had come to understand meant he had made a decision. “Come on,” he said.
“Where?”
He didn’t answer.
He led her out through the side door of the hall.
The one behind the dais, the one that led to the east corridor. The sound of the ceilidh faded behind them, muffled by stone, and then it was only their footsteps, the torch-lit corridor, and his hand warm around hers.
His chamber was just as it always was, but different in the way it had been before—the way a room feels when something important is about to happen.
The fire was already burning high. Someone, she suspected Elliot, had left wine on the table and then had the discretion to be elsewhere.
She turned to look at Noah.
“Here we are again,” she said.
“Here we are.” He looked at her, at the tartan sash still on her shoulder, the braid Caitlin had spent an hour on, the gown. “Ava.”
“Aye?”
“I love ye,” he said, the way he said everything important: plainly, directly, while looking at her face. “I should say it more. I’m goin’ to say it more.”
She looked at him.
At this man who had taken twenty years of managing everything alone and had, quietly and without ceremony, decided to stop.
“I love ye,” she said. “I have for, ye ken how long. I’ve told ye.”
“Tell me again.”
“Since before I was ready to,” she said. “Since before I kent what to do with it.”
She crossed to him. “Since the night on the roof with the stars, I think. When ye told me ye daenae ken how to be with Esther and asked me to help.” She stopped in front of him. “Ye were honest with me. Ye’ve always been honest with me. Even when it was harder than bein’ easy.”
Something moved in his face. His hand came up to her jaw.
“Ye’re the best thing,” he said. Not a sentence, just that, left open.
The best thing.
She kissed him.
This time, there was nothing left to argue about, no old voice reminding her of the gap between who she was and what this place was, no careful accounting of what she was and wasn’t fit for.
There was only this. His hands in her hair, the warmth of him, the fire behind them, and the particular quality of a man who loves someone and has stopped pretending he doesn’t.
He undid the tartan sash first. Carefully folding it and setting it on the chair.
She found his coat buttons. He found her shoelaces. They handled it efficiently, which made her laugh, and he looked at her with that expression, asking what, and she shook her head.
“We’re very practical,” she said.
“Is that a complaint?”
“Nay.” She pulled him down to her. “It’s one of me favourite things about ye.”
He kissed her throat, her collarbone, the curve of her shoulder.
His hands moved with the deliberate, unhurried attention she had observed months ago and still couldn’t entirely resist. She stopped observing and thinking, simply letting herself be here, present, his.
His.
The word settled in her chest without argument.
She pulled him closer, and he came without hesitation, his weight against hers as he put his manhood inside her.
She gasped as he started moving, slowly first and then faster.
The fire threw gold across the ceiling, and he said her name against her throat in a way that had nothing controlled left in it.
This is what I was afraid of wantin’.
I’m so glad I wanted it.
He went faster, and she matched his rhythm, feeling the coil in her stomach.
“Ava,” he said, low and rough. “I cannae.”
“Daenae stop,” she said. “I’ve got ye. Daenae stop.”
He didn’t stop.
And almost immediately, she felt his warm cum inside her. The coil inside her stomach gave way, and she released herself, too.
Afterward, they lay in the firelight as the castle was quiet around them, and somewhere down the corridor, distant, she could still hear the ceilidh. The fiddles wove their way through the stone, faint, warm, and celebratory.
“They’ll wonder where we’ve gone,” she said.
“They’ll ken exactly where we’ve gone.”
“That’s worse.”
“Is it?” He sounded entirely unbothered.
She thought about it. “Nay,” she admitted. “Actually nae.”
He was quiet for a moment. She felt his breathing even out beneath her cheek.
“Ava.”
“Aye.”
“I love ye,” he said again.
She closed her eyes.
“I love ye,” she said. “Now go to sleep.”
“I wasnae goin’ to sleep.”
“Ye were.”
She smiled against his chest and listened to the fiddles, distant and bright, playing through the stone.
Outside, the stars shone over MacGregor land. Their land, with the stag crest on the gate and the candles still flickering in the hall, and Esther asleep down the hall with her lavender plant on the windowsill and her herbal on the bedside table.
All of it, hers.
She had stopped being afraid of it.
She was home.
The End?