Epilogue
The two little girls played with their poppets together in the courtyard. Wee Willie, not so wee anymore (he would be turning six on his next birthday) came to watch the girls play.
“Will ye come ridin’ with me, Sorcha?” he asked the little girl with the white-blonde hair sitting next to his sister. “I will let ye ride me favorite pony if ye like.”
His sister pulled a face and huffed. “We dinnae want to play with ye, Willie. We’re playing poppets.”
Wee Willie held a soft spot for Sorcha Fearguson since he had first seen the tiny bairn in her crib nearly three years ago.
He had told his mother, Meria, that the bairn with the white hair was a fairy come down from Tir Nan Og to bless them.
He had never stopped thinking this and would have done anything for Ailsa’s daughter.
Disconsolate, the little boy went off to look for his father.
He found him in the smithy with Uncle Will, and the two men were in conference with Master Fearguson.
Since the two men had set up their smithy at MacNair Castle, the region had become a hub of weapon-making.
Ships docked at every bay, eager to pay any amount of money for the sharp arrowheads, helmets, and swords that were crafted in the smithy at an astonishing rate.
Already, the MacNairs and Grays had amassed a fortune from trading weaponry on the Continent.
French ambassadors and Teutonic Dukes would travel far so they might be measured for a cuirass or sword by the masters themselves.
Having no luck getting someone to ride with him at the smithy, Willie went to the mill.
The mill was a huge barn where many looms had been set up, spinning and weaving the most beautiful tapestries.
Gudrun ran the mill, but often Ailsa could be found there with her hair tucked under a cap and her fingers busy creating a tapestry for some wealthy laird or lady.
In a few short years, Castle MacNair had gone from being a rundown estate that had once used slave girls for labor to being one of the wealthiest areas in the Highlands.
When anyone asked Ailsa what the secret of the castle was, she would jokingly reply, “Love, labor, and lots of food. That’s what keeps us smilin’.”
But that was only a trite saying that she told people. The truth was that she did not know why the arrangement at the castle worked, only that it did.
It was summer and so hot in the barn of looms that Ailsa whispered to her mother she would go down to the stream for a swim.
“The rains were heavy last night, so be careful where ye choose to enter the water,” Gudrun said.
The spinster said nothing more. She knew her daughter would not be down at the river on her own. Every summer, as soon as the snow melted and the waters warmed enough from the sun, Ailsa would leave her work at noon and go to meet her husband by the stream.
He was waiting for her under the willow tree branches and had not lost the power to take her breath away with how handsome and well built he was.
The brothers still sometimes liked to pull tricks on people, but ever since their wedding day, Will always let Ailsa in on the joke before it happened.
He never wanted her to get a shock, especially since the news she had given him last night.
“Are ye made weary by the bairn?” he asked her as she undressed, moving behind her so he might run his large hands over her growing belly.
“Nay more than usual,” Ailsa told him, allowing Will to hold her hand as she climbed down the bank into the water. He followed her, making sure she did not slip.
Feeling the soft sand slip between her toes, Ailsa sighed and felt the back of her neck, which was stiff. Immediately, her husband was behind her, rubbing her shoulders and back with his strong hands.
“Will?” Ailsa said in a dreamy voice. “Would ye ever ask yer brither who they discovered yer faither to be? In case Sorcha or our new bairn want to ken?”
Will grunted. “Cal told me two years back, love, but like ye said, too much water has flowed for it to make any difference. Just as we suspected, the man keeping m’mither for his own at the tavern was the MacNair’s youngest brither, a man by the name o’ Donnan.
He heard of a wench claimin’ she was a MacNair from men who used the tavern.
Donnan MacNair traveled to the tavern under a false name to verify the woman’s claims an’ fell madly in love with her, even though she was married to his brither.
He was killed in battle, as was the fate of many young war-hungry Highlanders, but no’ before planting me in Mither’s belly.
“With both her husband and her patron dead, our mither had no choice but to become a common tavern wench. We were able to piece the story together from the woman down in Skail and the MacNair’s own memories about his young brother who never wed but claimed to have a common wife anyway.
I supposed he was ashamed to say he loved his brither’s widow. ”
Ailsa turned to look at him and found Will’s expression to be serene. “So, Callum and ye are brithers and cousins?”
He nodded.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and allowed him to wade deeper into the riverbed, pulling her after him. Whenever she was with Will, he made her feel lighter and freer. The past was behind them and must stay buried there. When the water reached her shoulders, he stopped.
“Do ye ken, Wife, that yer naked body is even more beautiful now than it was when I first saw ye here?”
“Mmm,” Ailsa whispered in a dreamy voice. “Why is that, Husband?” she asked him.
He gave her a grin, and suddenly he was the young blacksmith once more, the man who would have left all of his family behind if it meant he could be with the woman he loved.
“Because the nursing has made yer breasts larger an’ more voluptuous than ever before.”
And ducking his head under the water, Will demonstrated to Ailsa just how beautiful he found her to be.