Epilogue
Castle Cairncross
Four weeks later
“I’ve lost Cassiopeia again.” Callum squinted up at the sky, then flopped onto his back with a scowl. “I have no idea how you keep track of her. She’s the slipperiest star I’ve ever encountered.”
They were sitting on a blanket he’d spread out on the turret roof for them, the remains of their dinner picnic pushed to one corner.
Cat and Hamish thought they were mad, picnicking on a roof during the cold Scottish winter, and perhaps they were, but they went to the roof at night as often as the weather permitted.
They could remain there for hours, wrapped in each other’s arms, studying the stars.
At least, Freya studied them. He spent more time gazing at her than he did the stars. Queens were all very well, but there was only one lady who enthralled him, and it wasn’t Cassiopeia.
“Cassiopeia isn’t a star, she’s a constellation, and I promise you, constellations don’t simply disappear. They’ve been in the sky for thousands of years and will remain so for thousands more.”
“Hmmm.” He could listen to her talk about the stars forever. Her voice took on the most adorable lecturing tone when she spoke of them, rather like the tone a stern headmistress might use, except she was an exceptionally beautiful and desirable headmistress, and he was her only pupil.
“Cassiopeia does appear to change shape depending on the time of year and the time of night, however, which I’ll allow makes her tricky to find.”
“Ah. She’s slippery, just as I said.”
“A bit, yes. There she is.” Freya pointed to the sky, tracing Cassiopeia’s lines from the northwestern tip down to the star anchoring the constellation’s southeastern corner, then held out her hand to Callum. “Come here. I’ll show you.”
He eased closer to her, a low rumble of contentment rising in his chest when she slid her arm around his waist and pressed herself against him. “There she is, just where she’s always been. Cepheus is northeast of Draco, and Cassiopeia is northeast of Cepheus. Now do you see her?”
“Hmmm.” He took her hand and pressed a kiss to her fingertip. There was nothing he loved better than lying under the dark sky with Freya, but for all her patient lessons, he’d proved to be an indifferent pupil of astronomy.
Not because he wasn’t interested in stars. He was. Sometimes.
But he was more interested in Freya, especially when they were nestled together under a sky filled with sparkling pinpricks of light, her warm body pressed to his and her hair tickling his neck. It was lucky she hadn’t been his headmistress, or he never would have learned a thing.
She nudged him. “James and Lorna will laugh at you if you can’t even find Cassiopeia by the time we return to Balnagown Castle.”
He snorted. “James will laugh at me either way.”
After much discussion, they’d made up their minds to remain at Castle Cairncross until Hamish and Cat’s wedding, which would take place in a month’s time. They’d return to Kildary afterward to attend James’s and Lorna’s wedding just two weeks later, in the chapel at Balnagown Castle.
When they returned to Dunvegan, they’d bring Aila with them, so she’d be there when they married next year. He’d wanted to marry Freya at once, as soon as the banns could be called, but she’d asked if they might wait until Sorcha returned home.
The only dark cloud over their happiness was Sorcha and Keir’s continued absence.
There were those in the village who claimed to have seen one or both wandering Dunvegan Wood.
But there’d never been any shortage of rumors when it came to the MacLeod sisters, and they’d searched the woods many times and come up empty every time.
Despite their best hopes, neither Sorcha nor Keir had yet reappeared. There were those among the villagers who whispered that the devils Sorcha communed with had made off with them, snatched them up, and sent them hurtling into a fiery abyss.
More bloody nonsense, of course. He knew Keir too well to believe his friend was anywhere he didn’t wish to be.
For all Keir’s mild temperament, he was one of the cleverest men Callum knew.
He was wilier than a fox, and Sorcha no less so, and that they were both missing seemed to imply they were together still.
For now, Sorcha and Keir had chosen to remain hidden, and they likely had a good reason for it. They’d reveal themselves when the time was right. He only hoped it would be soon, for Freya’s sake, as Sorcha’s absence weighed on her.
As for the villagers, he and Freya hardly spared them a thought. They walked into the village regularly with Cat and Hamish and paid no attention at all to the stares and whispers they encountered as they made their way down the High Street.
The rumors about the MacLeod sisters’ so-called sorcery persisted in Dunvegan, but once the magistrate, Mr. Anderson, had put a definitive end to the arson charges against them, there’d been no more talk about nooses or the gibbet, particularly after Clyde Stewart had turned back up.
He’d been spotted by one of Dunvegan’s villagers at the Sheep’s Heid Inn in Edinburgh several weeks after the fire.
From the account they’d heard, he was very much alive, quite thirsty, and amazed to discover he was meant to be dead.
It seemed he’d wandered off to Edinburgh in the early morning after the fire and had been there ever since.
“There’s Perseus.” Freya pointed to a collection of stars to the south of Cassiopeia. “See the tip of his sword?”
“Hmmm.” He nibbled delicately at the sensitive skin behind her ear. “Lie down with me,” he whispered, tugging at her earlobe with his teeth.
She laughed, even as she shivered at the caress. “You’re a most disobedient student, Callum.”
“Yes, but I make up for it with my exceptional skills in other areas.” He brushed his lips down her neck. How could her skin be so soft?
Freya dropped her head to one side, offering the long, pale line of her throat to his seeking lips. “Come now. Don’t try and tell me you’re not interested in Perseus’s sword. Aren’t all gentlemen interested in swords and—”
She broke off with a little squeal as he tossed her onto her back on the blanket and lowered himself on top of her. “That’s better.” He dropped a chain of light kisses over her neck. “I’m far more interested in wee redheaded Scottish lasses with dirks than in warriors with swords.”
A sly smile drifted over Freya’s lips. “Is that so?”
“Indeed.” He slid his hand up her leg, slowly raising her skirts and stifling a groan when the creamy skin of her bare thigh was revealed. God, he wanted to devour her.
But when he raised his heated gaze to her face and saw those green eyes on him he paused, his heart swelling with love. “You’re so beautiful, Freya, all of you,” he murmured, tracing the lines of her face with his fingertips.
Beautiful, and mine.
She smiled at him, her eyes hazy with desire. “I love you, Callum.”
“I love you, too.” He returned her smile, but it faded a little as he traced the faint scar still visible on her temple.
“So serious.” She gave his lower lip a playful tug. “I’m all right now, you know.”
“I know.” But his gaze remained fixed on the scar, and he leaned down to press a tender kiss to it.
“I wish you wouldn’t look at it. I can’t bear to see that lost expression on your face.”
He swallowed, meeting her eyes. “I look at it to remind me.”
“Why would you want to be reminded of that? I hardly ever think of it.”
He brushed her hair aside and once again pressed his lips to the small patch of raised skin where the tree limb had struck her. “I don’t want to forget how close I came to losing you. I don’t know what I would have done if—”
“Hush. You could never lose me.” She cupped his face in her hands, and his breath caught at the stars reflected in those dark green depths. “I’ll always be with you, Callum. Forever.”
He smiled. “Like Cassiopeia?”
“Yes,” she whispered, her hands gentle on his cheeks. “Just like that.”