Chapter 25
THE GATHERING LIGHT
“It is all right. Ye can let out that breath ye have been holding,” Aila said with a chuckle. “If I dinnae ken better, I would have thought ye were the one getting the stitches, nae me.”
Lachlan bent his head over her hand where he had sat, on her bedside, holding it while the healer worked to clean and stitch and bandage Aila’s wounds.
He pressed a kiss to her fingertips, letting his eyes slide closed with relief.
As instructed, Lachlan blew out the air that had been trapped in his lungs from the moment he watched the Englishman’s sword come down on his wife.
“Are ye all right? Truly?” he questioned, scanning her face for any lingering signs of pain.
As predicted, she hadn’t made so much as a sound while her torn and ragged skin was sewn back together. Whether her efforts of silence were for his sake or her own, he didn’t know. But he was grateful all the same that it was over with.
“Aye, my love. I am well. Just a wee bit tender, but nothing to make a fuss over. Dinnae fash. Everything is well.”
Her words hung in the space between them, and he realized for the first time, picking his head up to scan the Great Hall, that she spoke the truth.
There were no raiding redcoats, men hunting down the women and children hidden within the castle walls.
Sounds of battle echoing from the courtyard had ceased.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he had heard Oliver’s voice carrying over the grounds, but he hadn’t been paying enough attention to know all that was said.
“He is a traitor,” Lachlan said in a mixture of resignation and relief. “His claims against me, against us, cannae stand.”
“He is dead,” Mary, the old healer Lachlan and Aila had brought into the Kincaid Clan for Arran, what felt like a lifetime ago, said dryly.
Aila’s eyes shot to Lachlan, wide open with shock.
“Did ye nae hear them cry it out just a bit ago?” the wrinkled woman questioned with a faint smile on her thin lips.
“Er— I was a bit preoccupied,” Lachlan admitted, feeling feeble under the weight of the old healer’s stare. “My thoughts were only on Aila.”
“The children,” Aila said at once. “We must see to the children.”
Pushing up from the table, Aila quickly tugged on a clean shirt, not wanting to frighten anyone with a blood-soaked tunic. She wrapped her fingers in Lachlan’s hand, and they left the healer’s surgery, a small and crowded room just off the Great Hall.
“Och, what a mess,” Aila remarked, seeing the rushes coated with spilled blood, the tables and chairs knocked over. “And after we had just finished making everything so nice.”
The Kincaid tapestry, boasting their insignia—a hand armed with a claymore stretching out over the three turrets of Kincaid castle—had been ripped from the wall behind the dais.
Lachlan walked to it, the green wool checkered with thick black and thin red lines, in his hands.
Already servants and villagers were bustling around the grand room, setting things to rights, cleaning what they could and creating a pile for the things they would have to burn.
“We will hang it again. We will clean it all again,” he told her. “We will rebuild with the hope that this is the last time, for the rest of our lives and the lives of our children and our children’s children, that this castle is ever invaded.”
Rising on the tops of her toes, Aila pressed a kiss to his cheek.
Lachlan turned to smile at his lady when movement from the corner of his eye caught his attention.
Sprinting into the hall, proud grins plastered on their faces, were Arran and Christopher.
Little Elsie and Edith trailed behind the boys, just as excited.
“Uncle Loch!”
Arran flung himself into his godfather’s arms, squeezing so tight that Lachlan huffed out a wheeze. Christopher piled on behind Arran while Elsie raced into Aila’s arms.
“Och, my loves,” she gushed. “Are ye well? Are ye unharmed? Did ye stay hidden as we asked ye do?”
She pulled Elsie back, examining her top to bottom.
Satisfied that the girl was uninjured, she then wrenched Christopher off Lachlan, wrapping him in a tight embrace before checking him as well.
By the time she had Arran in her arms, Lachlan had swallowed the lump of emotion in his chest at seeing their family together again.
“Nanny Edith fainted! And Arran jumped on a man’s back. Christopher and I were verra brave. I threw a bear at him, and he passed clean out!”
Elsie’s ramblings, so excitedly put that the words ran together, hardly made any sense.
“Ye threw a bear?” Aila asked, trying to make sense of it all.
At the same moment, Lachlan’s eyes flitted to his old nanny, an eyebrow raised.
“Ye swooned? I did nae ken a woman as stout as ye kent how to do such a thing.”
Edith, trying to look stern, waved Lachlan off, but her control lasted only a moment before she was bursting into nearly hysterical laughter.
“Och, my lad,” she said fondly, “ye should have seen yer wee warriors. They were ferocious devils. I daresay, the poor man never stood a chance.”
Alarm went through him as he started to realize what Edith was saying.
“An Englishman? Someone found ye?” he pressed, scanning the three children and then Edith over for any signs of injury.
“Aye,” Arran answered, his chest puffed with pride. “He came in alone, sneaking and snooping about. Nearly upended the whole room before he ever got close to our hiding spot.”
“That’s when Nanny Edith fainted,” Christopher chimed in, his own smile broad.
“What did ye do?” Lachlan asked, his own pride in the children growing.
“I kent the only advantage I would have was surprise. So before he could find us, I jumped out of the closet and onto his back when he was nae looking. He put up a fight. I was nae likely to win.”
It was then that Lachlan could see the bruise starting to bloom on Arran’s cheek. Rage simmered just beneath the surface, but Lachlan kept himself in place, promising to deal with the man later.
“So we jumped out too!” Elsie exclaimed, hands on her hips in the same warrior pose Aila had a tendency to adopt whenever she was facing a problem.
“Ye did?” Aila blinked. “But ye were supposed to stay hidden.”
“We could nae let the man hurt Arran,” Christopher told her, as if it were a clear line of logic she was rather ridiculous for not having followed.
She chuckled, ruffling the boy’s hair.
“Aye, I suppose ye are right. So then what happened?”
“I told ye, I threw a bear at him.”
“She means the bear shaped bookend,” Christopher explained with a roll of eyes.
Lachlan still saw the small smile creep onto his mouth, though.
Cradling his family in his arms, safe and warm and free from threat or harm, Lachlan was nearly overcome with gratitude. He didn’t have the chance to express that for the next several hours, however.
The Great Hall turned into a makeshift surgery.
Mary and Edith worked their way around the tables, stitching up wounds and setting bones.
Taryn and Sorcha followed after, offering herbs and salves and anything else they could come up with to relieve lingering aches and pain.
Behind them, Aila with some of the other clanswomen—including James and Laura’s mother, Isobel—offered food and ale.
Lachlan stood to the side, making friendly conversation with Iona, while Finn and James swapped methods and training routines for the men.
Oliver kept busy with standing watch over the few Englishmen who had wandered in for treatment.
He also saw to the order of the courtyard, his presence ensuring that by the time the sun had set, he was the only Englishman still on Kincaid soil.
The frenetic movement of the room mellowed into the din of a somewhat normal dinner.
Of course, there were three times as many mouths to feed with the McGregors and McKenzies still in attendance, but things were calm enough.
Lachlan climbed onto the dais, pleased to find that in only a few hours time, he had managed to become acquainted with most people in the room enough to recognize their faces.
Aila stood beside him, her cup in hand, and together, they surveyed their clan.
“I want to begin,” he called, allowing his voice to carry over the noise, silencing it with ease, “by saying that I will never be able to repay all of ye for yer help today.”
Surprising himself, he managed to keep his voice steady as he spoke. Though, it was still full of the emotions that had not left him since the battle ended.
“I look around this room and see nothing but brave men and women who have fearlessly defended these lands, their home, from an enemy who has plagued us for far too long. Tonight, I will sleep without a weight on my chest, without fear of what tomorrow may bring. I thank ye for the gift ye all given me. It is a peace I have nae kent since I was a lad.”
Flashes of his parents’ faces, of all the kinsmen he had lost over the years, darted in front of his eyes. A pang of longing that they too could be here to celebrate such a day rang through him, but he pressed on.
“To our new friends, the McKenzies.” He lifted his goblet high in salute. “Ye came when ye did nae have to. Ye allied yerselves kenning this day might never come. Ye fight with a fierceness I admire. We have much to learn from ye. To the McKenzies!”
The room echoed his toast, slapping the tabletops and drinking their ale as Lachlan sipped his.
“To my bride,” Lachlan continued, with a bit more emotion to his words. “And my children. Ye have given me reason to fight, reason to become a better man. Thank ye for staying by my side and for making this home one worth defending.”
“Here, here!”
Again, they all drank.