by Jackie Ivie
“You miserable, low bastard!”
There was a sword to the captain’s throat before he finished, and it was Angus MacHugh holding it. Langston watched as the old warrior looked the man up and down and then turned toward him.
“You want me to slice him for you, my laird?” he asked.
“Nae. Na’ yet.”
“Langston.” Captain Barton had a bit of trouble talking with a blade against his throat. It sounded in the way the word choked out.
“Aye?” Langston replied.
“What…do you want?”
“From you?”
Barton nodded, although it scraped his skin against the blade, starting a small trickle of blood he probably couldn’t even feel.
“Saladin.”
Langston turned and went back into the house, and waited until the sound of the large, heavy doors were shutting before he was running up the stairs like life and joy depended on it.
Epilogue
Randolph Dugall Monteith arrived on the exact day his father conceded there would be no win, only a compromise. It was a good compromise, though, and there was cannon fired over it, making the sound of thunder rumble through the glens and across the lochs and causing more than one of the clansmen that had joined Monteith to raise their voices in prayer.
That was what a round of cannon fire meant, in case any wondered over it, although from that day forward, it was also used to announce a birth in the clan.
It had taken two rounds of negotiations before the treaty was written, gold changed hands, and Monteith Castle could bid adieu to its guests. In that time, King George had, at first, tried to put a limit on the size of army Langston Monteith wanted to maintain, while it was already increasing daily; he wanted twice the gold that was offered and wanted it delivered in half the time; and he wanted to put limits on the size and amount of armament they’d be allowed. Then there was the bagpipe issue, and the debate on if it truly was an instrument of war or not.
It was a compromise, and the fact that he’d agreed never to bear arms against England was the hardest to swallow. Langston looked down at the grapefruit and toasted bread that he’d ordered for his breakfast and swallowed his disappointment. It could be worse. It could be a lot worse.
He knew it, as the final draft was delivered to him nearly seven months to the day after he’d first sent word that he had something to negotiate. Langston took his time opening it. He knew what it would contain, and so he set it aside to read to Lisle when she woke and let him in to see her. She was getting so large and unwieldy that she rarely came down the steps anymore to have her meals with him at all.
She didn’t want him to visit her until she’d had her breakfast and her bath, and was covering over every part of the shape she’d grown into. He couldn’t convince her she was the most lovely woman in the world still, and had gotten so bad at trying, she called him the worst liar born.
The sound of heavy quick steps filled the rooms, echoing from the front hall. “My lord! Come quick! It’s Her Ladyship!”
Langston was on his feet and passing the maid up the stairs and then he was in the room, and there wasn’t anything amiss, other than Lisle was taking her time getting out of her bed, and then she was moaning and calling to him.
“The bairn,” she whispered. “It thinks ’tis time to arrive.”
That began the longest day of his life, where there wasn’t a square of his castle that was safe from his pacing and roaming, sweating and fretting. Sometimes he had company, like Angus, who was keeping perfect marching time with the laird; and at others, he was accompanied by every clansman that had perished on every battlefield in every battle. Then it was over, and Langston got to see the result of an entire day of labor by the woman he loved, and there wasn’t much of substance to say about the little red-faced bundle they handed him, except it had a healthy head of thick black hair.
“’Tis a lad, my love,” Lisle said, and there was the softest, most loving look on her face that Langston’s head felt like it might come loose with the explosion of peace, love, and joy.
And there came a time when Highlanders again owned and walked across their own land, and Clan Monteith coveted a new, most valuable asset—its children.
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Copyright © 2007 by Jacquelyn Ivie Goforth
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ISBN: 978-1-420-12946-5