Epilogue
Avery adored the beach and the sea.
Of course, it wasn’t the forest, concealing and silent, but she found peace there.
Ard Cael stood at the edge of a rocky headland that reached into the sea, sheltered on one side by a short but sheer cliff and on the other two by long stretches of pale sand.
Avery sat there now, wearing her tunic and breeches—new ones grudgingly commissioned by Morggán’s mother—as she sometimes did whenever she wanted relief from the léines and kirtles expected.
She still couldn't understand how women accomplished anything dressed in so many layers, with heavy skirts forever tangling about their legs and wool so finely woven that she was forever worried about staining or tearing it.
The matter had been one of the few genuine disagreements between her and Morggán after they arrived.
Avery had refused outright to abandon the clothing that had served her for ten years, insisting that no sensible person could work comfortably in a gown.
Morggán had countered, with half-amused patience, that she was no longer expected to labor from dawn until dusk merely to survive.
“But it's not me, Morggán.”
Those four quiet words had settled the matter more completely than all her earlier arguments. He’d conceded almost instantly, asking only that she wear a léine and kirtle when they dined in the great hall or received visitors.
She knew he did truly understand, and then Avery found herself choosing the gowns more often than she ever expected she would, as a bit of a thank you to him.
In time, it didn’t always feel like someone else's costume.
They had simply become another part of this life of hers.
And if she were honest, she rather liked the way Morggán looked at her when she wore them.
She would never forget the first time she had appeared before him dressed as the women of Ard Cael did, her hair braided neatly about her head.
His gray eyes had fixed upon her with such open admiration that she had become suddenly, absurdly self-conscious.
Later, when they were alone, he’d admitted that he thought her beautiful no matter what she wore, and then had proceeded to show her at least one benefit of skirts, hitching them up to her waist, in what she and he now teasingly referred to as easy access.
She missed the quiet of the forest at times—the scent of pine after rain, the little burn winding past her house, the familiar paths her feet had known almost instinctively.
Some mornings she still found herself waking with her first thought being that Charlie would be waiting impatiently at the door, eager to check the snares before the sun climbed too high.
It had not been easy leaving the forest, even amid the confusion of that frantic night.
She mourned the little house more than she ever imagined possible, and for weeks afterward she caught herself wondering whether anything remained of it, or if the English had discovered it, perhaps burned it to the ground.
It had been all she possessed for so very long that losing it had felt, for a time, like losing herself.
Yet the sea had slowly carved out a place inside her.
There was something about its endless horizon that quieted her mind.
Unlike the forest, which had secluded her and had been all the world she knew, the sea stretched beyond sight, reminding her almost daily that the world was so much larger than what she’d known of it for the last decade.
She rather liked knowing that, being reminded of that. Suddenly, she wasn’t alone in the world.
Several months had passed since arriving at Ard Cael, enough that the keep no longer overwhelmed her each time she crossed the great hall or climbed the worn stone staircases that seemed to disappear endlessly upward into towers older than the nation she’d once called home.
She still found herself occasionally stopping to run her fingertips along the cool stone walls, struck anew by the absurdity that she was living inside a castle built nearly seven hundred years before she’d been born—it remained no less astonishing simply because it was becoming familiar to her.
Morggán’s mother and sisters hadn’t given her much choice, but to settle in and not be alone.
After her initial shock, which she hadn’t bothered to hide, Morggán’s mother had embraced Avery with a quiet determination that left little room for protest, and somewhere between lessons in household customs and every day stuffing Avery into cumbersome léines and kirtles, Ealasaid mac Ruaidhrí, with her firm but warm disposition, had become very important to Avery.
His sisters, on the other hand.... Avery smiled grimly to herself. She would need more time to get used to them.
There were four of them, and one talked more than the next.
They were full of questions and a sense of aghast wonder at the solitary life Avery had lived, and seemed for some reason to want always to include Avery, and be with Avery.
They drifted endlessly in and out of one another's chambers—Avery’s included—borrowing ribbons, arguing with each other, laughing at things Avery didn’t understand, and made enough noise that often left her longing for the profound quiet of the forest.
Hence her regular need to visit the beach.
Sighing now, she pulled her gaze from the hazy blue sky and dark but quiet water and caught sight of the narrow gold band on her hand. She turned the ring a bit around her finger but there was hardly any sunlight to catch on the gold. Still, she smiled, thinking about how she’d come to wear it.
Ealasaid had been scandalized to discover that Morggán intended for Avery to be with him, in his chamber at Ard Cael. His mother had declared—with affronted dignity, Morggán had later told Avery—that such an arrangement would not occur beneath her roof unless they first stood together before God.
Morggán had recounted the conversation to Avery afterward with no small measure of exasperation, rolling his eyes at what he plainly regarded as needless formality.
“My mother has decided we are to wed,” he’d told Avery.
“Oh,” Avery recalled responding, her eyes widening. “And what do you... how do you feel about that?”
In truth, she’d not given one thought to marrying him, not even after they’d left the forest, not in any of that week of days on the road, journeying to Ard Cael, when they’d shared everything—his horse, his tent, their bodies, and on occasion, secrets and laughter.
At her question, Morggán had looked at her with neither his familiar fierce certainty nor anything that suggested he was against the idea. In fact, he’d displayed almost a boyish uncertainty, something she absolutely had never before seen upon his face.
“I thought...” He had rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “I thought mayhap... if ye wanted...”
Avery understood at once it wasn’t his mother’s insistence, but Morggán actually asking.
He didn’t get down on one knee, didn’t produce any ring in a black velvet box, and apparently, there’d been no carefully rehearsed speech.
There was only Morggán, standing awkwardly before her, looking more nervous than surely he ever had when facing a hundred English soldiers.
She had loved him all the more for it.
By then they had already shared enough nights in one another’s arms that she knew the rhythm of his breathing as well as her own.
More importantly, she believed she knew the man beneath the sword and title—the one who laughed rarely but wholeheartedly, who carried every burden as though it belonged to him alone, and who had, true to his word, not failed her.
Avery hadn’t waited to be asked properly.
“Yes.”
Oh, and his smile then—that rare, unguarded smile that transformed his whole face—made her certain that no grand proposal could ever have meant half so much.
Still wearing a lazy smile at the memory, Avery saw Charlie at the water’s edge, inside the slow-rolling surf, having given up his desire to chomp at the waves—today’s were simply too small.
The happy hound lifted his head and stared beyond Avery for a moment before darting from the water and past her, tail wagging as he went.
She put her hand in the cool sand and turned a bit, expecting she would find her husband, Alasdair, or Eòin—Charlie’s favorite people.
It was Morggán.
Her husband—she still couldn’t fathom it, but her heart smiled all the same.
He crossed the narrow stretch of sand with the same easy confidence with which he seemed to do everything, his long strides not slowed at all by the shifting ground that often threatened to steal Avery’s footing.
The sea breeze tugged at the loose folds of his tunic and lifted the edge of the dark plaid draped across one shoulder.
Sunlight caught in his brown hair, now a little longer than when she had first met him, while Charlie circled him in exuberant loops before dashing ahead and racing back again.
As often happened, Avery forgot the sea before her, the cries of gulls overhead, and the castle standing watch behind her.
She saw only the man striding toward her—the same wounded soldier who had once collapsed inside her forest, now strong again, impossibly broad of shoulder, his gray eyes already intent upon her.
Even across the distance, she felt the fierce warmth of his gaze, and her belly flipped a little with delight.
“Ye canna hide in plain sight, love,” he called before he reached her.
She feigned offense, and insisted, “I am not hiding.” She was merely taking a break.
He grinned at this, lifting one brow to challenge her, but said no more about it before sitting down next to her in the sand. He leaned sideways a bit and kissed her briefly.
“Good morn to ye, wife,” he said affectionately.
“Good morning. And where had you gone—gone before I woke?”