Epilogue
Isle of Rùm, six weeks later…
Brisk, briny air filled Fitz’s lungs with every deep breath as he followed the steep dirt track up the flanks of Hallival.
Walking alongside a rushing burn, Fitz hitched the rucksack higher on his shoulder and relished the heat in his leg muscles as he pushed himself as quickly as he dared over the rocky deer path.
Each step brought him closer, a drumbeat in his blood pushing him onwards, onwards, back to her side.
Back home.
His lady wife waited for him at their small camp just below Hallival’s ridge.
Well, probably she hadn’t waited. Fitz laughed to himself, utterly certain that the moment he left for the tiny village of Kinloch, Caroline had grabbed her sketchbook and pencils and scrambled down the gully to check on the breeding grounds of the manx shearwaters they’d come here to study.
As eager as he was to reach Caroline and pop a bonnet on her head before she scorched all the skin off her dainty little nose again, Fitz had to stop and stare when the trail reached the open slope up to the main ridge and a sudden, heart-stopping view of the peaks of the Rùm Cuillin.
Wind buffeted him, forcing him to brace his feet against the grassy ground. For a heartbeat, looking at those jagged hills spearing up into the brilliant blue sky, Fitz felt as though he were rooted in place like an ancient oak, solid and immovable and connected to everything.
The breeze shifted, bringing the sound of the manx shearwaters’ raucous, joyous shrieks to his ears.
Grinning, Fitz began walking once more as he thought about the first night they’d spent on Hallival.
In the lonely landscape of one of the most remote islands off the coast of western Scotland, in a place inhabited by far more wildlife than humans, he’d awakened from slumber to a cacophony of eerie moans and blood-curdling wails.
In an instant, he’d been standing in his smalls over his new wife’s slumbering form, a pistol in one hand and a hunting knife in the other, ready to defend her from whatever demons or specters from hell could be making that ungodly noise.
It rose and fell all around them in a multitude of voices, seeming to come from above and below all at once, from the sky and from the very ground beneath their tent.
“They’re here!”
Caroline’s muffled exclamation came from the tangle of blankets they’d been sharing. Fitz glanced down to see her emerge from the nest with her wild curls spiraling out of control and a gleam of something in her eye that, confoundingly, did not appear to be gut-liquefying terror.
“Who’s here?” Fitz demanded, brandishing the knife at nothing. “What is that—who is screaming?”
“The birds,” she breathed, clasping her hands beneath her chin. “We made it in time. The manx shearwaters have come ashore to mate.”
“That’s never a bird. That is someone slaughtering innocents and drinking their blood, surely.”
“Fitz! You are ridiculous.” Caroline had looked up at him, standing guard over her, and a new light had come into her lovely violet eyes—a light that had less to do with scientific jubilation and more to do with the fact that she seemed to quite enjoy the way Fitz looked without his clothes on.
“Sheathe those weapons and come here,” she said throatily, lying back upon the pillows where he’d just had her a few hours before and already could not wait to have her again.
“I’ll show you where I sheathe my weapon,” Fitz had growled, setting the gun back into its case carefully before tossing the knife down within easy reach of their sleeping pallet.
Just in case.
It took an hour and a liberal application of soothing caresses and distracting kisses to bring Fitz entirely down from his battle-ready stance, but eventually he allowed himself to be convinced that the most chilling sound he’d heard in his entire life was nothing more than the normal speaking voice of the manx shearwater.
Caroline had assured him he was in good company in being ever so slightly unnerved by the shearwater cry.
Evidently when the good old Vikings visited the isle some centuries ago, they’d been so convinced the hair-raising screams emanated from fearsome trolls inhabiting the mountains, they’d named one peak ‘Trollaval.”
Fitz consoled himself that there were worse things to be compared to than a Viking warrior.
And after that night and the way the mating calls of her beloved birds seemed to inspire Caroline to a particularly vigorous, passionate mating dance of her own, he found the incessant noise of the birds more pleasant than not.
Anything that made Lady Fitzwilliam Drake happy was on the list of items approved by Lord Fitzwilliam Drake.
Fitz wondered if the contents of the rucksack he carried now would prove to make his wife happy, or the opposite. Only one way to find out.
Bees droned lazily amongst the tender new primroses and hardy rhododendron, their buzzing punctuated by the trills of various types of warblers—still one of Fitz’s favorite species of birds.
He spied their little encampment up ahead and found his strides lengthening to get there all the faster.
The remains of their cooking fire smoldered gently before the dun-colored canvas tent, flaps tied tightly closed against the midges whose bite felt more like getting stabbed with a knitting needle than anything else.
As expected, the camp was deserted. The only sign of Caroline’s presence was her plain straw bonnet, dangling forgotten from a corner of the tent, ribbons whipping in the relentless wind.
Shaking his head indulgently, Fitz rummaged about to retrieve a small square of folded paper from the rucksack he then deposited upon one of the camp chairs where he and Caroline perched to eat their dinner and stare up at the vast expanse of stars that blazed over the Sea of Hebrides at night.
He paused a moment to look at the hard little chairs, the rudimentary cookpot and rickety folding table, the rough tent that was too small for him to stand upright except in the dead center.
Their current abode was undeniably cramped and uncomfortable, at the mercy of nature and the elements.
There were midges. There was no valet. Fitz’s last bath had been in a frigid burn fed by melting snow.
They dined mostly on bread, cheese, and whatever he could catch, trap or hunt.
And there were midges. Days could go by without seeing another human being other than Caroline. Had he mentioned the midges? And yet…
There was also the fun of convincing crusty Scottish lairds that a mere slip of a lass was the best person to document the mating habits of a coastal sea bird.
There was the satisfaction of making all the arrangements for their camp and ordering everything just so for their mutual comfort.
There was the startled and delighted way Caroline smiled when he pressed a fresh cup of tea into her hand as she struggled to finish a drawing capturing their day’s observations—drawings that would eventually fill a book that would be published, and available for people the world over to read and learn and marvel at his wife’s brilliance.
Above all, there was purpose.
Slowly, Fitz smiled as satisfaction spread through all his limbs and suffused every sinew.
He had never been happier.
Scooping up the forgotten bonnet and whistling a cheery tune under his breath, Fitz set off to find his wife.
* * *
Utterly absorbed in her drawing of the spectacle of thousands of small black-and-white seabirds swooping about the nesting grounds, Caroline startled when she felt a bonnet plop onto her head.
The shade provided instant relief; she realized she’d been squinting all morning only when she stopped doing it.
Heart lifting higher than the birds wheeling overhead, she leapt to her feet and threw her arms around Fitz as though he’d been gone for four days rather than four hours.
“Hail the conquering hero,” he said grandly, “for I come bearing gifts and tidings of strange lands.”
Caroline peppered kisses all over his handsome face, delighting in the slight prickle of his beard as it began to come in.
The joys of being a wife: she was able to experience both the marble smoothness of the morning shave Fitz insisted upon, “lest standards begin to slip,” as well as the titillating roughness of his afternoon stubble. An embarrassment of riches, truly.
“I don’t need gifts,” she told him between kisses. “Only you.”
“You’ll be interested in this one, I think. You’ve finally had a response to your letter.”
“Oh!” Caroline bit her lip, drawing back to accept the missive Fitz produced from a pocket of his tweed shooting jacket. “Look, it was directed to Edinburgh originally. The Macleans must have sent it on. It’s taken its time getting here.”
“I suppose it isn’t always easy for mail to reach the island.”
Caroline turned the long-awaited letter over in her hands, suddenly reluctant to open it up.
Unable to support the idea of truly worrying her mother, she had written almost at once to inform Helena that she was well and happy and not, in fact, on her way to Gretna Green.
Which had been splitting hairs, perhaps, since she and Fitz had set off for Scotland the very next morning after their night in the Thornecliff orangerie.
They just hadn’t bothered to stop in the first town across the border, and had continued on to Edinburgh to meet with the laird of the Macleans of Coll, the clan who owned Rùm and whose permission Caroline needed to secure before beginning her work.
They’d wed in Edinburgh in a small chapel, in between provisioning for the voyage into the Highlands and Fitz’s campaign to charm the kilt and sporran off of Sir Charles Mclean and, indeed, his entire family.
Never Caroline’s favorite part of the job, Fitz had entirely taken over the task of explaining her research and its vital importance to the local landholders, and he’d excelled at it.