Page 107 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

Katherine ate her apple.

Mrs. McAulay came back a fourth time with the white flowers she had been pressing since yesterday, small and starlike, and started weaving them through Elspeth’s curls. Her hands were steady only because she was concentrating very hard on keeping them that way.

Elspeth watched her in the mirror and said nothing, because Mrs. McAulay ’s lips were pressed together in a way that indicated she was determined not to cry. Her efforts required a short moment to take effect.

“There,” Mrs. McAulay announced, stepping back to look at her handiwork and wipe a bright drop from the corner of her eye. She lifted her chin with pride. “New beginnings.”

“Aye,” Elspeth said softly.

Mrs. McAulay cried anyway, briefly and efficiently, and went back downstairs before anyone could comment on it. Or even worse, join in.

The green gown went on last. Katherine set the apple down to help with the laces. She tied the last one and stepped back to look at her beloved friend.

For a moment, the room was quiet. Elspeth looked at herself in the mirror and thought about the solar in Liam’s castle, and her father producing papers, and a friend who had commanded “trust me” with her eyes and meant it with her whole heart.

Katherine met her eyes in the mirror. She said nothing. She only pressed her lips together and nodded once, which was enough.

The hills were draped in gold when Elspeth came out.

Ben Cruachan had been many things to her in the last few weeks—a fortress, a surprise, a home before she had ever thought to call it one. She had seen it in rain and firelight and pale morning stillness. She had not seen it like this, not with all the hills painted amber above a joyous gathering of people in the yard below.

Every face she had come to know over the past weeks turned upward to watch her descend to her happiness. The pipes sounded someplace she could not see, and Magnus appeared at the foot of the steps.

He had dressed in Wallace tartan, the dark wool clean and well-fitted around his broad shoulders. He was standing very straight with his hands at his sides. He was looking up at her intently with a profound fondness. When she finally reached the bottom step, he offered his hand. She took it, and his fingers gently closed around hers.

“Ye wore the ribbon,” he said, his voice low.

She had. Threaded through the curls on the left side, there was the auburn ribbon from his coat pocket, the one he had carried from the stables yesterday morning while she was still missing. She had found it on her dressing table this morning without a note because Magnus did not leave notes, but she knew him. And she knew where the ribbon had come from, and she had threaded it in herself before Becky had even come to dress her.

“Aye,” she said.

His hand tightened around hers, and they turned toward the gathering together.

Duncan stood to Magnus’s left. Elspeth had seen him in many configurations over the past weeks: amused, scheming, teasing, strategizing. She had never seen him like this: his jaw set and his eyes bright with joy and red at the corners. He caught her looking and straightened immediately, clearing his throat and shifting his gaze to the hills.

Liam glanced at him.

“I’m nae,” Duncan said preemptively.

Liam looked away with a smirk.

Duncan pressed his fist briefly to his mouth and looked up at the sky.

The words came from the elder who had known Ben Cruachan before the fire, an old man with a voice that carried across the yard and up the hillside without effort.

Elspeth listened with her hand in Magnus’s, and felt every word of it settle differently than she had expected.

This did not feel like a ceremony. It felt like the confirmation of a decision that had been made some time ago in a study, or at a ruined tower, or in an armory in the middle of the night, at a time when she had asked a man to stop pretending he did not like poetry.

She looked at Magnus while the elder spoke. He had turned his gaze forward, his jaw set, his composure present and collected. He must have felt her look because his eyes dropped to her face and lingered there. He did not look away again. His thumb moved once across her knuckles. Back and forth, slowly.

She heard Agnes somewhere to her right making a small decisive sound.

When the time came for the vows to be exchanged, Elspeth had hers ready. She had been carrying them in her chest for three days. Now, she was watching Magnus reach inside his coat.

He produced a book. It was small and worn, its cover soft from handling. She recognized the crease along the back cover from where she had held it open too long in the same position at the ruined tower.

Her poetry book. The one he had used to steady a wobbling desk. The one he had carried in his saddlebag to the hills.