Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
She could feel his hands through the plaid.
That was the first thing she was aware of, after the cold air, the smell of heather, and the steady movement of the horse beneath her. His arms were resting around her waist, clasped together at her front, and every few minutes, they tightened slightly. Not much. Just enough that she felt it.
She said nothing about it.
She leaned back in his arms and watched the hills turn to soft hues of gold ahead of them, grey fading away at the eastern edge.
She pondered on the fact that she was alive and warm and going home, and that the man holding her had said I love ye with his hands shaking and blood soaking through his sleeve.
She pressed her fingers over his clasped ones.
His arms tightened again. He did not speak. She felt his warm breath fan the top of her head.
“Yer arm,” she half-asked.
“It’s fine.” He smiled.
“Ye said that already.”
“Still fine.”
“Magnus, it needs to be taken care of.”
“When we’re home.” His chin dropped briefly to the top of her head. “When we’re home, Elspeth.”
She closed her mouth, looked at the hills, and felt his arms tighten once more. She turned her hands over beneath his and held them properly, and he let her do so without objection.
That told her more than anything he had ever said.
Ben Cruachan appeared over the last ridge as the sun cleared the eastern hill. Its stone walls caught the first proper light of the morning, and Elspeth felt her chest tighten at the sight of it.
Three weeks ago, she had looked up at those walls and seen a prison. This morning, she looked at them and thought: home.
The courtyard was full.
A sea of faces was the first thing she saw as they came through the gate.
It seemed that every soul on the estate had decided that the courtyard was where they needed to be at this particular hour.
They had brought the dogs with them, and someone had brought Morag, who was still wearing one of her wedding ribbons.
Duncan spotted them first. He was standing near the gate with Liam and four of the guards, and when he saw Magnus’s horse come through, he uttered a short and sharp word to Liam and hurried across the yard.
His pace could not quite be described as running, but he was making his best effort to be quick while maintaining his composure.
He stopped at the horse’s head and looked up at Elspeth. Then at Magnus. Then back at Elspeth.
“Ye found her,” he said.
“Aye,” Magnus uttered.
Duncan pressed his lips together hard for a moment, looked away at the gate, then back. “O’Brien?”
“Dead.”
Duncan nodded once, his jaw working hard, and briefly put his hand on Magnus’s boot to give it a soft squeeze. It was the most unguarded thing Elspeth had ever seen him do.
He then stepped back and cleared his throat, saying, “I’ll see to the horses,” which there were men enough to do, and they both knew it.
Magnus dismounted and lifted Elspeth down, setting her on her feet and keeping hold of her a moment after. He kept her close, his hands resting on her waist, checking her face with a quick sweep of his eyes.
“I’m standing,” she assured him.
“Aye.” He let go of her waist, slowly, and his hands moved to her shoulders instead, which was technically letting go and technically not.
She heard Mrs. McAulay rush toward her. A sound followed her from somewhere near the kitchen door. It was a high, wordless sound, neither a word nor a wail, but something in between. She had barely turned before she was engulfed.
Mrs. McAulay ’s arms went around her, pulling her in with a fierceness that pressed the air from her lungs. She was shaking, not a little but a great deal, muttering prayers and reprimands into Elspeth’s hair, neither quite completed before the next one started.
“Ye foolish, beautiful bairn,” she tutted. “Ye daft, precious lass.”
“I’m all right, Mrs. McAulay .”
“Ye arenae all right. Ye are covered in ash, and yer hair is disheveled.” Another sound that was not a word. Her arms tightened. “I’ve been standin’ in this yard since Duncan told me, and I’ve made three batches of shortbread. They are all burned, but I daenae care about a single one of them.”
Elspeth put her arms around her and held on, pressing her face into the older woman’s shoulder. Then Mrs. McAulay pulled back, took her face in both hands, and looked at her with red eyes and a very firm chin.
“In the kitchen,” she said, with enormous authority for a woman who was still crying. “Both of ye. Hot water, bannocks, and I will see to that arm of his, whether he wants me to or nae.”
“He willnae want ye to,” Elspeth said.
“He never does.” Mrs. McAulay released her and turned toward Magnus. “Sit down, me Laird.”
Magnus sat.
Katherine arrived at a pace Liam had clearly failed to prevent, breaking through the crowd with one hand pressed flat to her middle and the other reaching for Elspeth before she had fully stopped moving.
She pulled her in and held her without speaking—something unusual enough for Katherine that Elspeth stood very still and let her have it.
Then Katherine pulled back and hit her on the arm.
“Ow!”
“Ye absolute disaster of a woman!” Katherine’s eyes were streaming.
She hit her again, lighter. “Ye went out alone. Alone, Elspeth! In the dark. On the eve of yer wedding. Ye went out like the heroine of one of yer dreadful novels and nearly gave me a…” She stopped.
Pressed her hand to her middle again. Drew a breath.
“I have been standing in this courtyard for three hours.”
“Katherine!”
“Three hours, Elspeth! Liam tried to have me sit down. I told him what he could do with the chair, and he had the good sense to put it away.”
“I believe ye.”
“I wrote ye a letter.” Katherine wiped her face with her sleeve, which did very little. “I wrote ye a letter while I was waiting, in case…” She stopped again. Her chin wobbled once. “It was a very long letter.”
“I should like to read it.”
“Ye absolutely may nae.”
Katherine took both her hands, saw the redness on her wrists, and her expression shifted, the scolding giving way to something quieter and softer. She turned Elspeth’s hands over slowly, looking at them, and then cradled them between her own very gently.
“Ye’re all right,” she said, which was not a question but needed saying anyway. “Ye’re actually all right.”
“Aye.” Elspeth squeezed her hands. “Aye, Katherine, I am.”
Katherine closed her eyes for three seconds, breathing deeply through her nose. Then she opened them, straightened up, and looked across the yard to where Magnus was enduring Mrs. McAulay ’s attentions on his arm.
“What a man! He found ye,” she said.
“He did.”
She watched him hold still under Mrs. McAulay ’s hands with his jaw set, and then she looked back at Elspeth with a knowing expression on her face.
“I told ye,” she quipped.
“Ye told me nothing of the sort.”
“I told ye to trust me.” Katherine lifted her chin. “In the solar, when this all started. I told ye to trust me.”
Elspeth looked across the yard at Magnus, who had caught her looking and held her gaze for a moment before Mrs. McAulay redirected his attention by pressing firmly on the wound. His expression shifted from steadiness to pained restraint.
“Aye,” she said. “Ye did.”
Agnes appeared at her elbow, quiet as always. She stood beside Elspeth and slipped her small hand into hers. She said nothing; she only held on. Elspeth looked down at her and felt something whole and warm settle deep in her chest.
“Is he all right?” Agnes asked, looking at Magnus.
“Aye,” Elspeth replied. “He’s all right.”
Agnes nodded, satisfied, and kept holding her hand.
Elspeth stood in the courtyard in the morning light, with ash on her rosy cheek, dark shadows under her eyes and burns on her delicate wrists, but felt, for the first time since she had walked into an auction dreaming of princes, that she was exactly where the story had been heading all along.
* * *
Magnus woke up before the household.
That was nothing new. He had woken before the household for thirteen years, rising in the dark to check the walls, the yard, the roads, the silence that told him whether the night had passed without incident.
He had done it for so long that it had stopped feeling like vigilance and started feeling like breathing.
This morning, he lay still for a full minute instead.
The castle was quiet and peaceful. He could distantly hear the first birds outside the window. Somewhere below, the kitchen fire was being built up. No other noise was present. Everything was still.
He stared at the ceiling and took stock of his body; his arm, which ached and burned where Mrs. McAulay had stitched it. His jaw was still tender where O’Brien’s elbow had found it, and the rest of him was present and functional and apparently going to be married today.
He got up.
The yard was already bustling by the time he came down, which should not have surprised him but did.
The speed of it, the cheerful, organized chaos of a household that had collectively decided that nearly losing their future Lady was sufficient reason to make their wedding the finest Ben Cruachan had ever seen.
Two boys were hauling more greenery through the gate.
A woman he recognized from the village was directing the arrangement of benches in the yard with a hand-drawn map she kept consulting and revising.
The musicians were warming up near the stables, better than yesterday, the reel working properly this time.
Duncan appeared at his shoulder with a cup.
Magnus took it without looking. “How many men on the western approach?”
“Two. But Magnus.” Duncan waited until he looked at him. “It’s done.”
Magnus looked at the yard—the benches being set up, flowers arriving in armloads of bouquets, and a ribbon someone had tied to the gatepost. He looked at it all and then turned back to Duncan.
“Aye,” he said.