‘They love you. Your mother gave you the brooches. They’re significant, aren’t they? They were what you were expecting back at McCrieff Castle, not the necklace and the ring.’
‘They are very significant. When they weren’t in the chest sent to us after our wedding, I was certain our marriage would fail. These brooches that we wear now have been handed down for generations. They’re symbolic.’
‘And sentimental,’ she said reaching across their laps to take his hand. ‘I watched your parents and the love they had for them. So Helen waited to give them to you and me in front of all the clan. Your father didn’t stop her. They love you, they’ve claimed you. Your mother gave you to this clan. You’re a Lochmore.’
In that truth, and with Ailsa’s touch, he was defeated. Though deceit and lies surrounded them, there was still this connection with Ailsa, still this future that showed some hope. This marriage, and wife, he desperately wanted. The brooches they wore shouted to all the world their love and devotion for each other. There was hope.
Turning his hand so he now held hers, he gently pulled her across the bench to hold her that much tighter in his arms.
Ailsa welcomed her husband’s warmth and for a long time she simply welcomed this one moment between them. She told him everything in his life was something else and yet he appeared to be accepting it. Accepting her.
‘You believe me,’ she said quietly.
‘You asked me that before,’ he answered and she felt his words through his chest. ‘I believedinyou even when I didn’t know you. You have too much honesty and truth about you, Ailsa, it’s startling and wondrous. I can’t understand it all. I do believe if you weren’t holding me right now, I’d spout words and feelings about my lack of deservedness. But I don’t think you’ll let me talk of that much longer.’
‘You do deserve it,’ she said. ‘You have my heart, Rory.’
She felt him shake his head. ‘You married me thinking I was the legitimate Lochmore heir. You gave your heart to a different man.’
‘I gave it to a man I barely knew, but I knew enough before I married you. Remember how observant I am. Merely a few hours in your company revealed to me your noble and honest heart. So it was very easy to give you mine.’
Slow steady heartbeats and breaths, she concentrated on that instead of the tension threading through him and, after a time, it eased. ‘You give me words of love when everything between us has fallen apart.’
‘Nothing is falling apart. I wouldn’t love a man who wasn’t deserving of it.’ She hesitated to talk more now there was peace between them, but it had to be said. ‘Now that a Lochmore and a McCrieff are wed, when our fathers die there is a chance for the clans to unite.’
He stiffened underneath her. ‘I won’t make promises I can’t keep.’
She tilted her head and he bowed his. ‘We’re married, you won’t talk of it?’
‘We shouldn’t. It’s treason with the Chiefs still living and, with the Great Feud, though we know other facts now, our clans won’t put much merit on our marriage.’ A muscle in his jaw tightened,released. ‘Has this been your purpose all along, Ailsa, to have the clans unite?’
‘I told you why I married you. I simply want to stop bloodshed. I will never forget Magnus or all the other injuries I and Rhona have healed over the years.’
‘Uniting our clans isn’t possible. After everything we’ve been through, you know that.’
She did, but something in her held on to that bright future. ‘And you? If you’re Chief you gain—’
‘No,’ he interrupted. ‘I’ve given up on control and power a long time ago, lass. Around the time you brandished your shears at me. Perhaps earlier than that, when I spied that hair of yours in the doorway.’
That moment was like that for her as well. ‘I like that doorway, I like our courtyard, but if we’re to stay together, I have accepted it won’t be at McCrieff Castle.’
‘Clever wife. You may be smarter than me as well.’
‘Now you admit it.’ She laughed softly.
‘I have thought on this, too. I know we need to return to your clan, but your clan is divided and, as long as I am a Lochmore, our children will be considered Lochmores. It wouldn’t besafe there. Even here, I am thinking of building tunnels to safeguard ourselves.’
She couldn’t think of their homes as not being safe, but since she met Rory it was the truth.
‘You wouldn’t mind living here, Ailsa? My father and Mother are older, Lochmore Castle is large. There are plenty of storerooms to hang herbs.’
She liked the image of that. ‘I think my father would expect me to be with you.’
‘Yes, but you’re not just a daughter of a Tanist, you’re also the McCrieff healer.’
‘I have trained Hannah and to some degree Mary. With more training, they will be enough when I am not there.’
Rory took her hand and placed it on the brooch still attached to his tunic. The longer he did so, the more she felt the weight of the smaller, but identical one that was pinned to her breast. These pins were significant. Indicating they were both of the Lochmore clan, that they were married, that they were a pair never to be separated. For the rest of her life, she knew she’d wear that brooch.
