“I think I should just keep my mouth shut.”
“I rescued you from a medieval dungeon.”
“And that, darling, has earned you a lifetime of my cooking and occasionally cleaning up after myself.”
She smiled and looked at him. “Will I hurt you if I put my head on your shoulder?”
“’Tis a pain I’ll gladly bear.”
“You talk altogether too much, Nathaniel MacLeod. But while you’re talking so much, why don’t you tell me how it feels to now be related to the guys up the way?”
“Bastard cousin and all that.”
She put her arm over his waist. “Your grandfather no doubt wishes he had such a claim to that lord’s chair.”
“We’ll go find out later, then see if there’s anyone still breathing who has a birth date more recent than 1400. With what I hear has been going on in those lists, I’m not sure we’ll find anything save James MacLeod cleaning off his sword.”
She shivered. “I think I could be done with the past for a while.”
He thought he might want to be done with it forever, but he wasn’t sure that was going to happen any time soon. He understood that Jamie had a family ring waiting for him to use if he cared to handfast soon with the woman falling asleep in his arms. He also suspected he would be driving either his grandfather or Emma’s father or the both of them to a certain curator of blades in Edinburgh to see what could be made specifically for them. That would be made substantially easier given that said blacksmith, who was supposed to be across the Pond, had apparently been putting his feet up for the past few days down at Roddy MacLeod’s inn.
Gerald, he supposed, would come to terms with his life or he wouldn’t. There was nothing to be done except contemplate that patch of nettles in Patrick’s garden, but he supposed he wouldn’t be contemplating very long. He’d seen enough death for a lifetime.
All of which could be thought about on the morrow. For the moment, he had numbers on his phone that didn’t disturb him, a warm fire in his stove, and the woman he loved in his arms.
That was enough present for him.
Epilogue
Emmasat in a lovely floral chair in a sitting room that overlooked an adorable little street in Notting Hill and stared at the man sitting across from her, reading in the sunshine.
That man happened to be her husband, but perhaps that wasn’t anything unexpected.
He was reading, for what she was sure was the thousandth time over the past six months, a letter his mother had written him.
She supposedthousandthwas an exaggeration. He’d read the letter many times during the few days after he’d retrieved it from the box his mother had locked it in, a box his grandfather had told him about on the day of their wedding.
The combination had been 1387.
Neither of them had been surprised.
The letter was long, written in a rather medieval-looking hand, detailing Ceana’s adventures with her natural father Malcolm, who had been very kind to her, and her subsequent desire to test the secret of the MacLeod forest, which had also been very kind to her, if not a bit terrifying.
Emma didn’t envy her, having had her own brush with the secret of that forest.
Ceana had written of her struggles to assimilate, her desire never to go back in time, and her very lovely marriage to Nathaniel’s father. Her children had been her joy and her former life had seemed like nothing but a dream until she had,one fine day in the fall of Nathaniel’s eighteenth year, looked at him and noticed something she’d almost forgotten.
He was the lad she had helped rescue from the Fergussons’ dungeon who had in turn rescued her from the Fergussons’ keep.
Emma watched Nathaniel turn the last page, sigh, then look at her. He smiled.
“Sorry.”
She shook her head. “Don’t be. I’m happy she had a good life with your father who adored her and you and your siblings who loved her so dearly.”
“I imagine she did,” he agreed. He smiled, folded the letter and put it away, then leaned over and kissed her. “I’ll go make tea.”
She watched him go, then stared out the window and considered the state of both their lives.
