Epilogue
“Euan is so grateful ye postponed yer wedding until he was able to stand with Calum as his best man,” Muireall told Ella a week later.
“It wasna a difficult decision. He’s Calum’s best friend, as ye are mine. We needed both of ye with us as we take this step.”
“Still, ye didna have to do it, and I’m grateful for Euan’s sake. Ye are good friends to both of us.”
“And havena ye been the same to Calum and me?”
Muireall laughed at that. “Aye, ye have a point. Ach, ye are such a bonnie bride. I canna wait for Calum to see ye.”
Ella smoothed her simple blue dress, the Munro plaid she’d brought from home pinned at her right shoulder.
It hung along her torso front and back. After the priest blessed their union, Calum would drape the Brodie tartan over her left shoulder and across her heart.
Muireall would tie it at her waist on the other side, celebrating her new ties to Brodie and to him, but leaving the Munro plaid in place under it to acknowledge the clan she came from.
Friends from Rose and other nearby clans were here to show their support. No one from Ross had been invited, though. Ella appreciated the thought behind that.
Someone knocked on the chamber door. Muireall went to answer it while Ella turned her back. If it was Calum, he should not see her before she reached the kirk. After a low murmur of conversation, Muireall closed the door.
“’Twas Kenneth,” she said as Ella turned to face her. “They’re ready for us at the kirk. Are ye ready?”
Ella smiled, anticipation lifting her spirits, making her more excited than she’d felt in months, save perhaps, for the day Calum finally gave her his heart and asked for her hand. “I am. I canna wait to become Calum’s wife.”
Muireall opened the door and gestured Ella through it. “’Twillna be long now.”
The walk down the steps to the great hall, then outside and around the keep’s towers through the bailey to the clan’s wee kirk seemed to take forever.
Ella took deep breaths, trying to slow her heart’s frantic beating, and to notice everything around her.
The blue of the sky, the tang of salt in the breeze from the Moray Firth.
She recalled all the things Calum had noted as she’d walked with him in the bailey the first day he’d been allowed outside while his eyes were still covered.
That day seemed eons ago. They’d been through so much.
And now, it was all about to come together into the life and the family she’d dreamed of.
That they’d both longed for, even when they couldn’t admit it to themselves, much less to each other.
Finally the kirk came into view, a crowd gathered before it made up of friends and family. And on the steps, Father Innis, Calum and Euan. Annie and Cat, Iain and Georgie stood watching her and Muireall approach from just below the steps.
Both men had smiles of anticipation on their faces, Calum’s brighter and broader than she’d ever seen him wear.
She had no doubt the smile she gave him was just as bright, just as happy, and just as eager for their marriage to take place.
Even Muireall’s brother grinned at her, excitement lighting his eyes.
She mounted the steps and Calum held out his hand, reaching for her. Everything around her disappeared save for him, eager to touch her, to wed her.
“Ye are the bonniest bride in all of Scotland,” he told her, pulling her up beside him and bending to kiss her hand. “I’m a lucky man.”
Euan’s chuckle broke the bubble that seemed to surround her and Calum. “I’m glad ye finally saw what was right in front of yer eyes, Calum.”
Ella groaned, unsure how Calum would react to that unsubtle reminder of his injury, but he chuckled, so she laughed, too.
“It took me too long,” Calum said, his expression turning serious as he regarded her, “and nearly cost me everything. But Ella, I must ask ye again if ye are certain ye want a man like me when ye could have yer pick of any man in Brodie? Or anywhere else, for that matter. Iain was right about that. We will only do this if it is what ye truly want.”
“I want ye, Calum, to be my husband for the rest of my life. For all of our lives.” Her thoughts tumbled for a moment to the marriage she had escaped.
Calum was not the same as Thomas Ross. She did not want to inject the Ross name into this moment.
“The past doesna matter. The future does. Ye are everything to me.”
“And ye are everything to me. Despite how that realization scared me and made me do foolish things, I finally learned that I am more afraid of living without ye.”
“Dinna fash, love. Ye willna. My life starts now, with the man I see before me, and the future ye show me.”
“Then let us begin,” Calum said and turned with her to face the priest.
She didn’t hear most of what Father Innis said.
She replied, making her vows only with Calum’s help, his hand holding hers giving it a little squeeze when it was time for her to speak.
Finally, the priest declared them man and wife.
After Calum draped the Brodie tartan over her left shoulder and across her heart, he took her in his arms and kissed her in front of all their well-wishers.
Once the cheering died down, they entered the kirk for the wedding blessing before returning to the great hall for the celebration Iain and Annie arranged for them.
The clan’s laird and lady offered their congratulations first. “We’re so happy for ye both,” Annie said.
Calum met Iain’s gaze. “Were ye really expecting a betrothal offer for Ella to arrive soon?”
Iain smiled. “I lied.”
Before this day, Calum might have taken offense.
Another lie. And not a small one, like the many he’d observed when he discovered everyone but him knew about the Janet ruse.
Iain risked much. Ella might have taken him at his word and asked for a match away from Brodie.
Calum might have done something rash. Right now, he couldn’t think what, except that surely Euan would have been involved and there would have been trouble for all of them.
But now, healed and blissfully married, he found he could say, “I am very glad ye did,” and mean every word of it.
Annie grabbed him and kissed his cheek. “Ye were stubborn, Calum, but worth the trouble. Still, Ella has her work cut out for her, living with ye.”
“And I’ll enjoy every moment of it,” Ella said, having overheard Annie’s last comment after being distracted by Muireall and Euan joining them. “What are we talking about?”
“Unless I miss my guess,” Euan said, “yer stubborn husband. If we all hadna taken him in hand, I dinna ken if we’d be here right now.”
“Nay, Euan,” Muireall interrupted, poking him in the ribs with her elbow. “We canna take credit for this. Calum and Ella both made this decision. The right one. Though we werena certain they ever would.”
Several hours later, the food, drink, dancing and excitement took their toll. Ella was ready to leave the party.
Calum took her hand and stood. “’Tis time for us to go to our chamber, my wife.”
“Gladly, my husband,” she told him with a smile and rose to her feet beside him. “I’m ready for ye to make me yer wife in all ways.”
“Ye will tell me if ye are at all uncomfortable, aye? I dinna wish—”
“All will be well, husband. I trust ye to care for me.”
“And I love ye beyond reason, Ella. We will see many happy years together, starting tonight. I promise ye that and more.”
“Yer love is all I need, husband, for me to have everything I have longed for. With ye.”
“Damn it, I dinna need the healer!” Euan’s voice echoed down the hallway from the great hall a fortnight after the wedding.
Ella, recently accepted and confirmed as the healer’s apprentice, glanced at Mhairi and shrugged. “Nay doubt he was on the practice field again. Muireall will no’ be pleased.”
The healer nodded as Calum pushed Euan ahead of him into the herbal. “Sit yerself down, lad,” she directed with a stern look as she noted the blood on Euan’s sleeve. “What happened?”
“He willna listen,” Calum said before Euan could defend himself.
“Doing too much again, aye? Ella, see to him.”
Surprise lifted Euan’s brow.
“I’m the apprentice,” Ella told him. “With full authority to bind yer arm to yer side if ye dinna stop yer foolishness.” She pulled the blood-soaked sleeve away from his skin as Calum stepped forward to untie his leine and shove the neck wide enough to expose the cut Euan had spent weeks healing.
Blood welled from a new cut just below it. “Ach, Euan, this isna the same wound.”
“Nay, ’tis another, damn it. One of the lads got a wee bit carried away with being given his first real blade.”
“’Twasna Georgie, was it?”
Calum shook his head. “Nay, an older lad did this.” He frowned at Euan. “I told ye they were no’ ready for those blades,” he said.
Euan simply growled in response.
Ella bit back a laugh as she cleaned the wound and inspected it. “Despite the blood, ’tis no’ too deep. It will heal well—if ye let it.”
Calum, at her back, snorted. “I guess that means I’m in charge of training the lads again.”
“Ye are the apprentice arms master,” Euan reminded him. “So next time, ye will be the one sitting here…ach!” He gave Ella a pained stare, brow wrinkled over slitted eyes. “While yer wife tortures ye. I’ll look forward to seeing that.”
“Wheesht!” Ella demanded. “I’m no’ torturing ye. I’m making sure this wound doesna fester.”
“Dinna complain,” the healer interjected, “or I’ll make sure yer wife kens how ye’ve been greetin’. Annie’s wean makes less noise than ye.”
“Greetin’!” Euan barked out his objection to being characterized as crying like a baby.
Calum roared with laughter.
“Ye and Calum are cut from the same cloth,” Ella told both men. “Stubborn, and poor patients. Mayhap I should rethink being the healer’s apprentice.”
The healer, on the other side of the chamber, cleared her throat. “Or mayhap nay.”
“It seems we both have our path decided for us,” Calum told her and leaned in to kiss her cheek.
“Aye, well, ye are still a Brodie scout, yer greatest wish. What do I get to do to make up for dealing with cantankerous patients like this one?” She asked and tilted her head at Euan. Her hands were busy binding his arm.
“Ye, lass, were my greatest wish. But as to the other, let me think…helping to decorate the hall for the midwinter solstice feast?”
Ella snorted, her gaze firmly fixed on what she was doing to Euan’s wound. “Good try. What about the rest of the year?”
“Being wife and lover to me, ye bonnie lass,” Calum told her, kissing her cheek once again. “That should be enough to make any lass ecstatically happy.”
Euan coughed so hard, Ella was afraid for him. Then he broke into a grin.
“Like to live dangerously, do ye, Calum?”
Ella elbowed her husband away when he leaned toward her again. “Go on with ye. Euan doesna need ye to supervise. Nor do I.” Then she turned fully to him and kissed him. “I’ll see ye in our chamber later, husband. Be more careful than yer friend, here, so I dinna have to tend to ye in this one.”
Calum grinned. “Aye, and I will look forward to it. Being tended to in our chamber, that is. No’ this one.”
The hearth fire in their chamber burned down to embers by the time Calum tucked Ella against his side.
She breathed softly and evenly, already drifting into slumber, warm and safe and sated.
He took a breath, still awed by the love they now shared.
Getting past his stubbornness and both their reluctance to trust the person they loved had been a hard-fought battle.
For him, at least. He’d learned his pride was a dangerous thing, keeping him from the happiness he needed and she deserved.
She’d stood by him after his injury, stubborn enough in her own way to need to be part of his healing, and knowing better than he that he needed her there.
As herself and as Janet, the side of her not afraid to be stern with him, or to stand up to him.
To do what his sweet Ella, at that time, could not do herself.
“I love ye, lass,” he murmured into her hair. “Both of ye. Both sides of ye saved me.”
“Both…what are ye babbling about, love?” She roused and rose up on her elbow to look at him with eyes full of slumber and a face so lovely it hurt to look upon her. Yet her visage was not as lovely as her heart. Her spirit.
“Ye, as ye, and as Janet. Ye saved more than my sight, ye ken. Ye saved my life. And, perhaps, my soul. I was broken, and ye wouldna let me remain that way. I owe ye everything, my wife. Both of ye.”
“Janet wasna real, husband.”
“Aye, she was.” He took her hand and ran his thumb from wrist to fingertips and back again.
“She was the part of ye that ye couldna show to anyone but me, because I needed her the most. She sacrificed her beautiful hands to convince me she was someone I could trust. She didna let me wallow in myself. I love my sweet Ella, but I also love my stern, determined Janet. They’re both ye, love.
And they’re both safe with me. I never want ye to harm yerself again for me. ”
She tightened her fingers over his thumb. “My hands healed, Calum. They’re fine now.”
He lifted hers to his lips and dropped a kiss on her delicate wrist. “Aye, they are.”
“And if ye need her again, will ye welcome Janet’s return?”
“Dinna ye mean when I need her again? Surely I will.”
“Verra well, when…”
“I’ve learned my lesson, love. I may no’ welcome the need for her, but I will welcome her.”
“Then that is enough. For both of us. And perhaps there are more sides to me that ye have yet to experience?”
“Aye? Such as?”
She brushed her fingers gently across his upper chest, then lower. “I have learned much from ye, husband.”
His belly tightened with anticipation.
“But there is still more to learn. To experience. To love about ye.”
“’Tis glad I am that ye think so,” he managed to mumble, deep in his chest, as her hand drifted to his belly. “What else would ye like to learn?”
“All there is to ken, love, about loving ye. Pleasing ye.”
“Nay more than I wish to learn all there is to ken about pleasing ye, Ella. ’Tis my greatest wish at the moment.” He sucked in a breath as her hand slipped lower. “And forever.”
She gave him a saucy smile, full of both sweet Ella and determined Janet. “Then let us begin.”