Epilogue
SIX MONTHS LATER
Cairstina
It doesn’t come as a surprise to me that Leith wants to be married non-traditionally. He takes me and Tate to the Cathedral one day, and when we return, I’ve got his ring on my finger and his last name.
“Och, son, I’d have loved to celebrate heartily,” his mum says, but he only smiles and nods.
“Mum, that’s precisely why they did it the way they did,” Islan says with a pointed look. I smile at her. I love that she understands. I love Leith with all my heart, but the gift of two sisters is something I never expected.
She’s right. The idea of a big to-do makes my stomach swirl into knots. I’d much rather celebrate in private… and we do.
Being married to Leith is nothing like I ever imagined marriage to be like, and I do think I’ve got quite the imagination. In my mind, if I were lucky I’d end up with a good bloke, a good looker. We’d live in a decent house, and have a few children, perhaps a cat, or a little farm somewhere.
But this… this is nothing like that at all.
He does his work, and I give him space to.
I don’t ask questions, and he only gives me the answers he thinks I need.
We live in the most beautiful place I could imagine, the ethereal mountains.
I wake in the morning with the smoky clouds over the peaks.
We sit in silence with steaming mugs of tea, enjoying the quiet.
We forged our relationship on very few words, and as the months go by we find we don’t always need words to communicate.
A clasp of a hand, a tender kiss, a knowing look.
We understand each other, perhaps the way few ever really would.
His sisters and I grow close, as we all love these fierce men of the north.
Bram recovers from his injury, but it’s humbled him. One night at dinner, he says something critical to me, and Leith gives him a dressing down that leaves the rest of us stunned.
“We’ll respect you as former Captain,” Leith says sternly. “But you’ll not ever raise your voice to my wife, my sisters, or my mother again.”
And it’s the last time Bram Cowen ever raises his voice in his house again.
Paisley and Leith form a sort of truce. She doesn’t ask too much, and he gives her more freedom with a bodyguard in place.
Islan still loves to take the piss out of Leith — hell, she likes to take the piss out of everyone, including me.
But she’s fiercely loyal, and the first to congratulate me when I return home Mrs. Cairstina Cowen.
Leith and I enjoy that I can speak now, and every night he plays a game.
We sit by the fire, my feet in his lap. Sometimes we drink whisky, sometimes wine, and sometimes our game takes place in bed.
“Your favorite sweet,” he’ll say. I’ll mull it over before I respond.
“Belgian chocolate.” I had it once when I was in town, and I haven’t forgotten it. He’s good at remembering and spoiling me rotten, as the very next week a golden box of Belgian chocolate’s delivered to our home.
“Mountains or ocean?” I ask.
“Mountains,” he says decidedly. “No fucking question.”
We play this game so often, there seems hardly a thing we don’t know about each other. Our questions go from simple —“green tea or black?”— to complex —“Can money buy happiness?” Black, and no, according to Leith.
I finally tell him how I sustained the injury that rendered me literally speechless, how I became the target in an altercation between my father and brother.
How my father struck me on the head so badly I sustained brain damage, a fact my mum and brother never acknowledged or accepted.
I have, though. I’ve accepted it and moved past the brutal pain the people who should have loved me inflicted.
It’s easier, now that I know true love. Now that I’ve learned I’m someone worthy of love.
But nothing… nothing prepares me for the question I ask one night, on a cold March evening, after a hearty meal we took alone in the kitchen. I tremble a bit before I ask him, nervous as to how he’ll respond.
“Leith,” I say, as I gather up the courage to speak, to tell him, as I await his response. I swallow hard, draw in a deep breath, and hold his gaze as I ask, “Boy or girl?”
I watch as the question dawns on him. I’ve only seen his eyes grow misty once, when he first heard me speak, but he’s overcome with emotion as he looks at me.
“My bonnie lass,” he whispers, my favorite name. “Are you expecting?”
I nod, my own eyes watering. I can’t speak, this time from emotion. Finally, I whisper, “Aye.”
He kisses me, his lips meeting mine as he holds me to him, then he answers the question. “Either, doll, as long as our bairn has your pretty eyes.”
Sometimes we wish for a different life. Sometimes we wish for a second chance. And sometimes, we realize, reflected in the love of another, that we already have everything we need, within us.