Her own joy was boundless now, had been for so long she could scarce recall before Alec, before love. None of it mattered, save that it put her where she was and made her who she was, that he could know her and love her.
They arrived at Hawkmore just after noon, greeted by waves from the battlements and an open gate.
Lachlan and Mari waited inside, near the keep, with Diana and Edric and another dozen happy souls gathered in the bailey. Katie’s eyes lit on Mari, who was covering her mouth with her hands, hardly able to contain her excitement. Katie waved her arm wildly with her own delight. They’d visited last just before the snows fell. It had been a long winter without seeing her friends.
“If you leap from this cart before I’ve stopped it fully,” Alec warned her, his tone suggesting he did not tease, “I swear to God, I’ll tan your hide.”
“I love you, too. I will wait for your assistance, husband, lest you have fits.”
“I’m just asking you to be careful, mindful of the babe.”
Not in a thousand years would she tease him about his concern. It had taken her three days to convince him that they could still enjoy lovemaking during her pregnancy. Actually, she hadn’t convinced him at all. She’d set Malcolm to the task, which in turn had resulted in a scolding from her husband, that she’d discussed so private a matter with his captain.
“It was either him or your mother,” she’d told him then.
But he’d made love to her splendidly that night. And all the ones before, and all the ones after.
HE LOVED THE BEACH at Hawkmore. He thought he should make a point to visit more often.
Loved particularly this view just now, his gaze set so happily upon Katie while she frolicked with Mari and Maggie and Henry and several others. Possibly, she wasn’t aware of his scrutiny, as he’d come from the dunes further down, content to sit inside the tall grass, unobserved. He sat on the small slope, his legs bent before him, his hands locked over his knees.
He liked best when her hair was loose, as it was now, likely encouraged by Mari and Maggie as neither of them had wound their manes into any serviceable knots. The soft blonde shone brighter under the midday sun, swinging around behind her when she lifted her skirts and dodged away from the incoming waves. Her laughter reached him, so damn bewitching, hearty and infectious.
A noise behind him turned his head.
Lach and Iain came quietly and joined him.
“It’s a good view, aye?” Lachlan asked, sitting next to him.
“Never gets old,” Alec said, instinctively knowing that Lachlan referred to the people and not the gorgeous sea.
Iain slapped Alec on the shoulder and sat as well. “How’d we get so lucky?”
“I dinna ken about you,” Alec challenged with a grin, “but I had to work fairly hard to get this.”
“Aye, and you’d do it again. And again and again.”
“Aye.”
Henry was down there by the sea with them, equally at ease in the company of soldiers and lads his own age and with family. Alec hoped he stayed that way, hoped he didn’t go through any stages that brought his mother grief, as Alec was sure he’d done to his own.
“We were some cocky lads, eh?”
None could deny it.
Iain dared, “Got that kicked out of us in bluidy fine fashion, aye?” They didn’t often discuss their time as captives of the English. Sometimes they’d reference it, aye, that was before Falkirk, or you recall so-and-so who was kept with us at Hawick House, but they rarely, if ever, discussed any particulars, and certainly not the residual effects.
But then Lachlan said, “Alec, if your mam said it once, she’s said it a hundred times to me—everything happens for a reason. Never sat well with me. I thought it trite, thought your mam only dinna ken how or what to say to explain the why of it. Why us. Why we suffered. Why we lived, why they died.”
Sensing that he was going somewhere further, Alec prompted, “And?”
“Sometimes I get to thinking I’d no’ have...if that hadn’t happened, if I’d never been scarred, if I’d kept on as we had as lads—arrogant, selfish, oblivious to so much—I’d no’ have appreciated, no’ have been able to appreciate Mari.”
Iain and Alec nodded, contemplating, though they said nothing, that Lachlan expounded, “What she is, how good she is”—he shook his head, trying to figure it out internally—“why I need her.”
As youths, if any one of them had spoken so openly, so emotionally, they’d have ripped into him, have jibed and mocked him ceaselessly for showing such weakness.
They didn’t now, of course. Alec said, “Christ, I’d like to think I’d have ken Katie was meant for me, even without...all that.”
Iain admitted, “I dinna ken. You’re right, though, Lach. We were different people back then, our trajectory different, our heads mostly up our own arses.” He shrugged.
They were quiet for a few minutes, all eyes on the group near the water. Mari was shouting something out to Lachlan’s captain, Murdoch, whiling away in a dinghy close to shore. Maggie and Henry had their heads together, both on their knees near the water’s edge, bent over whatever had caught their attention. Katie stood near, one hand on her hip while the other shielded her eyes from the sun as she talked with Diana and Edric now. She laughed at whatever Edric said, the sound carrying magnificently across the sand and sky.
“Aye,” said Alec. “used to be, I dinna want to see you, either of you. Dinna want to resurrect those memories, and that’s what being around you did. I understood the connection, the bond wrought by that time, but it was hard to escape it, if I spent too much time around you. But I dinna ken, today it’s different.”
It had been different before that even. Since Katie.
“That’s peace,” Lachlan surmised.
“Aye, a wee critical something come to save you.”
The End
Other Books by Rebecca Ruger
The Highlander Heroes Series
The Touch of Her Hand
The Memory of Her Kiss
The Shadow of Her Smile
The Depths of Her Soul
The Truth of Her Heart
The Love of Her Life
And Then He Loved Me (A Highlander Novella, Book 1)
Watch for Torren and Muriel’s tale to be written in
Mountains To Move, A Highlander Novella, Book 2
Coming January 2021
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