Epilogue
One month later
Maiden of wind and sky…
The line resonated through Juliet as she stepped onto the pile of rubble that had once been part of Dun Sgathaich, the castle that had been built upon the ruins of Dun Scaith—Scáthach’s mythical Castle of Shadows—and stared out across Loch Eishort toward the far-off hills of the Cuillins.
This was the air Scáthach had breathed.
Warrior til the day ye died…
Juliet didn’t bother jotting the lines down. They were middling at best.
Movement below caught her eye. Rory was climbing up to the opposite set of ruins.
Once, a drawbridge had connected the outcropping where the main castle sat with the mainland.
Now, the drawbridge was deteriorated and gone, and the castle could only be accessed by scaling the thirty-foot cliff.
As there wouldn’t have been a drawbridge in Scáthach’s time, Juliet imagined this was a closer experience to the Dun Scaith of yore, where young warriors had to prove their mettle by breaching the fortress.
Still, Juliet found herself calling out, “Be careful.”
Rory tossed her a smile over his shoulder and kept climbing.
How like a wife she sounded.
A wife.
A gust of wind from the north whipped through her hair, setting long tendrils free from the loose braid. No signs of civilization for miles around, this was the wildest place she’d ever experienced—a place carved down to its rawest elements. Fight. Survive. Live. Die.
The stakes ran high in a place like this, and it took a special kind of person to thrive here.
Juliet didn’t think she had it in her, but the man currently scaling a thirty-foot cliffside—her husband, impossibly—he did.
Physically, he was built for it. But that was only exterior strength.
It didn’t mean much. Toughness of the mind, that was what it took, and what Rory possessed.
Though only she saw it…and his tenants. They saw it, too.
It was obvious in the respect they showed the laird of the manor who they considered mostly English—which was all down to Rory and the grit he hid behind those lopsided smiles of his.
Oh, how she adored this man.
Warrior of earth and Skye…
That was the line.
She grabbed the journal out of her knapsack and scribbled it down. Once finished, she noticed the folded paper peeking above the front cover.
Delilah’s letter.
Juliet didn’t need to open and read it again, for she’d memorized its contents.
This last month she’d shed so many tears of happiness. When she and Rory had announced their intention to marry, immediately… Over the anvil as she’d spoken her vows… On her wedding night in Rory’s arms. The ever cool and composed Juliet Windermere—now Lady Kilmuir—had become a leaky bucket.
But the tears that sprang to her eyes now held happiness tinged with a note of sadness.
In the gain of Rory—the love of her life…
the center of her future happiness—there had been loss, too.
It wasn’t that she’d lost Delilah, or the bond only they shared, but never again would they be two halves of a whole.
Rory was her other half.
And someday, Delilah would find her other half, too—if she would but see him.
Which was for Delilah to decide. Nay, not decide. ’Twas not a decision made with the head, but with the heart—not with reason, but feeling.
One large, masculine hand, then another, appeared on the cliff’s edge near where Juliet sat, followed by Rory’s head and shoulders, the muscles of his bare forearms tensing and releasing as he pushed himself up. She would never tire of seeing her husband exert himself physically.
A trace of desire rippled through her. She couldn’t have predicted she’d be a lusty sort of wife, but here she was plainly lusting after her husband.
Cheeks bright and a bead of perspiration rolling down his cheek, he lowered to a seat beside her, shoulder to shoulder, and reached for her hand, twining his fingers through hers.
He jutted his chin toward Delilah’s letter.
“We’ll see her when we’re in London in August,” he said, intuiting the direction of her thoughts.
“Actually,” said Juliet, “I don’t think we shall.”
Rory’s eyebrows lifted. “Oh?”
“She mentioned in the letter that she would be visiting a friend in Switzerland through the summer. We shouldn’t expect her back until October.”
“Which friend?” asked Rory, idly, as he pulled a pasty from the knapsack.
“Indeed,” was Juliet’s reply. Delilah hadn’t said, and Juliet knew that meant one thing. Trouble.
“She’s hatched a plan, hasn’t she?” Rory asked around a bite of pasty.
Leave it to Rory to cut to the quick of the matter. She loved that about her husband.
“She has,” said Juliet.
You set your gaze upon the world…
The line didn’t scan with the other, but she liked it. She wrote it down.
“Here.” Rory held out his half-eaten pasty. “You must try this.”
Juliet already knew there was no point in resisting. “You’re constantly feeding me, husband.”
His turquoise gaze turned serious. “You need to be ready.”
“And what is it I need to be ready for?”
He glanced down at her stomach, and she reflexively rubbed her hand across its still-flat expanse.
Her menses were nearly two weeks late, but she hadn’t yet mentioned it to Rory as she didn’t want to spark hope.
But now…with a bright summer sun shining on them and the air scented with gorse and sea…
perhaps now was, in fact, the perfect time to speak it aloud.
“Rory, the possibility may exist that I’m—” A knot of emotion formed in her throat.
Here they were again. Those blasted tears.
Rory reached a strong arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “Aye, lass.”
He’d noticed.
Of course he had.
His hand covered hers on her stomach, and they stared together out across the loch toward the brown and gold Cuillins. “What a place Scáthach built for herself,” said Juliet, and other words flowed, too, as she wrote them down. “Upon you they gazed and found not fearsome hero but undeserving girl.”
This line didn’t scan either, but it would get there. For all its frilly reputation, the composition of poetry was hard toil and certainly not for the faint of heart.
A moment beat by before Rory said, “My warrior poet.”
“I’m not sure Scáthach would’ve found use for a warrior poet. I suspect she’d have much preferred an ability to wield sword over quill.”
Rory directed his lopsided smile at Juliet. As ever, a melting sensation spread from dark, deep-set parts of her that only his smile touched.
“Ah,” came a velvet rumble from the depths of his chest, “but that would’ve been her loss, and certainly my gain.”
He tugged her closer, and his head angled so he caught her mouth with his.
As sparks flew through her and lit into flame that only her husband could slake, a thought came to her.
No longer did she wish this man to take a flying leap off Ben Nevis.
And if he ever did, she would be right there, taking flight alongside him.