Epilogue
The bracken had gone brown on the hills above Kincaid Keep, and the courtyard smelled of cut wood and baking, and Arran Kincaid had walked the length of the west wall eleven times since breakfast.
He knew the number because Cassie was counting.
“Eleven,” she said from the top of the mounting block. “That’s eleven, Arran.”
“Have ye nae miscounted?”
“I have not miscounted! Mama, he says I’ve miscounted!”
Aila Kincaid did not look up from the flowers she was tying to the gate post. “Ye’ve nae miscounted, lass. I made it eleven as well.”
“Twelve, if ye count the one where he went halfway and turned around,” said Lachlan.
Arran stopped walking.
His father was sitting on the bench by the hall door with a rug over his knees and a cup of something in his hand and the look of a man having the finest morning of his year.
Lachlan Kincaid had been laird of this place for as long as Arran had been alive.
He had never once, in all that time, been so obviously delighted about anything.
“Am I pacin’?” Arran said. “I’m nae pacin’.”
“Nay,” Lachlan agreed. “Ye’re patrollin’. It’s entirely different.”
Christopher and Morag were sitting on the hall steps in the sun. Christopher had his arm out of the strapping at last and a piece of bread in his hand. He had not said a word in twenty minutes. He did not need to. Morag was openly laughing at him.
“Leave him be,” Morag said. “The poor man’s been up since it was dark. I heard him at the stables before the birds.”
“Can a man nae have things tae see tae?”
“Ye had yer horse saddled and ye rode as far as the burn and came back.” Morag took a bite of Christopher’s bread. “He looked at the road for a while and then he came home. I watched him do it out the window like a lass waitin’ on a letter.”
Cassie shrieked with laughter and fell off the mounting block into the straw.
Arran went and picked her up and set her back on it, and checked without meaning to that the block was steady and the flags around it were dry, and then he made himself stop doing that too.
“Are ye goin’ tae marry her?” Cassie asked.
“Aye.”
“Today?”
“Tonight, if her father doesnae change his mind on the road.”
“He’ll nae change his mind!” Aila said. “That man has written tae me twice about the seatin’.”
Then the dogs went off at the gate, all of them at once, and every head in that courtyard came up.
Arran was on the wall before he knew he had moved.
They came up the last rise from the east with the sun behind them. Murray colours and McKenzie colours together, riders strung out along the road further than he could see, and a carriage at the head of it painted a yellow so bright it had no business in that landscape at all.
His heart went up into his throat and stopped there, and he was so glad and so frightened at once that he had to put his hand flat on the stone.
He got down off that wall faster than was dignified. Behind him he heard Lachlan say something to Aila and Aila laugh. He did not care in the slightest.
The gates came open. The carriage came in and had not properly stopped before the door of it went.
Alexandra came down out of it in blue, with her brown hair up and half of it already escaping. She saw him across that courtyard, and her whole face changed, and Arran loved her so much in that moment that it hurt him.
Neither of them said anything at all.
He got to her in about four strides. She came up off the ground when he took hold of her. He kissed her in front of her father and her mother and both clans and that whole yard. She had both hands in his hair, and it went on a good while longer than it strictly needed to.
A Murray voice cheered at the back. Then all of them did.
“Ye’re late,” Arran said, into her hair.
“We are nae late. Ye’re early. Ye’ve been early since the harvest, and me mother says ye’ve written her three times about the road.”
“Twice. Was it three?”
“Three times, Arran.”
He put her down and did not let go of her hand.
Iona McKenzie came down out of the carriage after her daughter and Finn handed her down. The two of them stood in that courtyard looking at the flowers on the gate post, like people who had not been certain they would live to see any of it.
And then Rory came.
He came slowly, because he still could not do it any other way, with a stick in his left hand and Catriona at his right elbow not touching him, which Arran understood immediately was an arrangement they had negotiated at some length.
He had put on a little weight. Not enough.
His hair had grown back badly and the scar came up out of his collar and stopped under his jaw.
He would carry the limp for good, the healers said.
He was laughing at something Catriona had said as he came.
Arran had not seen him laugh in a long while, and the grief and the gladness of it came up together and nearly took his legs.
“Kincaid.”
“McKenzie.”
They looked at one another. There was a thing there that neither of them was going to be able to say in a courtyard, and both of them knew it, and Rory McKenzie had never in his life let a difficult thing sit.
“I’ll say it now and get it over,” Rory said, “and then we’ll neither of us mention it again, because I’ve a wedding tae get through and I’ll nae do it with a wet face.”
“Rory—”
“Nay! Ye’ll let me.” He got his weight over onto the good leg. “Do ye remember the stables?”
Arran did.
Two boys of no great size in the loft over the McKenzie stables on a hot afternoon, and a girl below them in the yard shouting at a stablehand about a pony.
Rory would have been twelve. Arran, a year older, a Kincaid orphan with the marks of the illness still fresh on his face, in a house that had taken him in and had not yet decided what he was.
“If anythin’ ever happens tae me,” Rory had said, “ye’ll look after her. Hold yer hand out and say it properly. Keep Alexandra safe.”
He had agreed to it. He had not thought about it since as a thing with a date on it. It had simply been in him afterwards, as the shape of a bone is in a leg.
“How could I forget it?” Arran said. “I remember it.”
“Ye were a solemn wee thing.” Rory’s voice had gone.
“I’d nae have asked another soul. I want ye tae ken that I’ve thought about it.
In that place. I thought about it a great deal, and I couldnae do one thing from where I was, and the only thing that let me sleep was that I’d asked ye and ye’d said aye. ”
Arran’s throat had closed entirely. He could not speak.
“Ye kept it,” Rory said. “I was dead in a hole in the ground for weeks and ye kept it the whole time and ye’d nae idea whether I’d ever ken about it.” He put his hand out. “So. Thank ye. That’s all I’ve got and it isnae enough.”
Arran took his hand and then took hold of him properly, careful of the side, and Rory McKenzie put his face down on his shoulder and wept for a moment in front of them all, and there was no shame in either of them about it.
“Ye were the best of us,” Arran managed.
“Aye, well. I’m nae dead. Try tae keep up.”
Behind them Rolland Murray came through the gate at the head of the Murray convoy, with Seamus and Flora riding either side of him. The courtyard filled. There were people everywhere and horses everywhere, and a piper near the gate had started without being asked.
Arran stood in the middle of it with Alexandra’s hand in his.
Somebody had brought Splendor out into the yard with ribbons plaited into his mane, which he was suffering with an ill grace.
Rory got himself over there without the stick.
He stood a while with his forehead against the horse’s neck, the way he had always done before he got up on him, and nobody in that courtyard went near the pair of them.
He looked around at them. Lachlan and Aila on the steps with Cassie between them.
Christopher and Morag, arguing already with Rolland about something.
Elsie coming down the outside stairs two at a time.
Iona with her arm through her husband’s.
Catriona holding Rory’s stick while he got both arms around Hamish.
Flora and Seamus, side by side at the gate.
All of them. Alive. In one place, on one afternoon, under a sky that was not doing anything in particular. His eyes had gone hot and he did nothing at all about them.
He had spent his life counting the exits from a room. He found, standing in that yard, that he had not counted a single one since the gates opened.
They were married that evening under the trees on the south side of the keep, and there were lanterns strung in the branches, and it took an age to get them quiet.
The banners hung along the wall behind them. Kincaid in the middle, and Murray and McKenzie either side of it, and Blackwood and McGregor beyond them, which not one soul who had lived through the last four years would have believed if they had been told.
Alexandra came down between the lanterns on her father’s arm, and Arran’s heart went so hard he could hear it.
Arran did not remember much of the earlier part.
He remembered that Finn McKenzie put his daughter’s hand into his and held onto the both of them a moment longer than the rite required, and said, under his breath and for Arran alone, “I was wrong about ye.” Arran would keep that as long as he had anything to keep it in.
Then it was his turn to speak, and he had prepared a thing. He did not say it.
“I’ve nae got the words for this,” Arran said. “I’ve been tryin’ at them for a month and they willnae come right, so I’ll say the true thing instead and ye can all make of it what ye like.”
A woman at the back laughed. Alexandra’s eyes had already filled.
“I’ll tell ye what ye’re gettin’,” he said. “A house that’ll never once be quiet. A gate that stands open tae yer father and yer brother and every soul ye care tae bring up that road. Work, and plenty of it, and me at the other end of all of it. Bairns, God willin’, and a yard for them tae wreck.”
He had hold of both her hands. He was not going to manage much more.
“And ye stood in yer father’s council with the whole room shoutin’,” Arran said, “and ye put the choosin’ of it intae me hands.
Naebody had ever done that for me. So that’s the first thing I’ll swear tae ye.
Every choice that’s yours tae make, ye’ll make it, and ye’ll make it free, and ye’ll never once have tae fight me for it.
” His voice went. “So here’s me vow, Alexandra McKenzie, and ye can hold me tae every word of it.
I’ll be at yer shoulder for every step of it.
Every road ye take. I’ll nae be behind ye and I’ll nae be in front of ye.
I’ll be at yer shoulder, and I’ll be there in the mornin’, and that’s me vow and I’ll keep it the same as I kept the other one. ”
Alexandra was crying and grinning at once, which he had never been able to withstand.
“Ye’ve made mine very difficult!” she said.
The whole yard went up.
“Right.” She got her breath. “I’ll be brief, because he’s said most of it already.
” A laugh went round. “Here’s mine. Ye’ll never wait on me again.
Nae for an answer, nae in the rain, nae for a word I’m too afraid tae say.
Whatever’s comin’ at us, ye’ll hear it from me first and ye’ll hear it plain.
” Her chin was going. “And I’ll say I love ye every day of me life, startin’ now, in front of every soul in this yard.
That’s me vow, Arran Kincaid. Ye’ll nae get a moment’s peace. ”
“Aye,” Arran said. “Grand!”
He kissed her, and the noise that came off that yard went up into the trees and set every dog in the keep off at once, and Cassie Kincaid was heard to say loudly that she was going to be sick.
Then the family had them, and there was no getting out of it.
Sorcha got to Alexandra first and kissed her on both cheeks and told her she had taken the best of them and was not to say so in front of the others.
Oliver shook Arran’s hand and made a short speech he had plainly been working on for a week.
Taryn cried without any embarrassment at all. James waited until the end of it.
“We had a wager on the pair of ye,” he said. “I lost it twice, and I’ve never been gladder of a thing in me life.”
They danced until the lanterns started going out.
Late on, Arran found himself at the edge of it with a cup he had not drunk, watching them.
Rory was sitting down with his leg out in front of him and Catriona beside him, and the two of them had their heads together over something.
Elsie was dancing with Rolland and neither of them was any good at it.
Christopher had his wife’s hand on the back of his neck and his eyes shut.
Alexandra came and stood against his side, and he put his arm around her without looking.
“What are ye doin’ out here on yer own weddin’ night?”
“Lookin’ at them.”
Elsie came out of the light with Christopher a step behind her, the way the two of them had arrived everywhere since they were children, and neither of them said anything for a moment.
“Is it done?” Elsie said. “I keep waitin’ for somebody tae tell me it isnae.”
“’Tis done,” Christopher said.
Arran looked at the pair of them, and at Rory with his bad leg stretched out by the fire, and at his wife under his arm. “We’re free,” he said. “The whole lot of us. Naebody’s comin’ up that road.”
Elsie put her head against his shoulder and left it there.
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