“We’ll be there soon.”
Soon was relative, for it took the better part of an hour for the procession to scale the wooded slope. The singing continued until Rory Carson led his family beyond the fringe of the wood to stop at Murdoch’s side, where the path wound on through the furthermost dwellings of Town Blair. Rory paused there, still holding the reins of Finley’s horse. A young lad of perhaps eight years, barefoot and curly haired, was stationed at the rear wall of the cottage nearest the path, and upon catching sight of the Carson party, he sprinted up the path toward the center of town.
Without command, the Carson fine rose up through the crowd to flank the wedding party on either side. The revelers grew suddenly solemn, and Finley realized in that moment that this journey—this ceremony—was a bigger risk than anyone had dared admit aloud to this moment. Once the procession entered the town, they would all be vulnerable to attack.
She could be dead before she ever laid eyes on the mythical Lachlan Blair.
But Murdoch nodded to Finley’s father, and Rory clucked to his horse, moving himself and Finley to the fore of the group, the Carson warriors escorting them.
Finley was soon distracted from her ominous misgivings as they entered the town proper; the longhouses here were wide, their thick walls cracked from the long winter, but none crumbled. The roofs were so well rounded with thatch that each one appeared a little hillock in and of itself, smoke curling luxuriously from their centers. Shutters were straight and in good repair; implements and tools hung along wooden braces, gleaming and sharp; dooryards were swept clean around sturdy benches and troughs; posts held torches or little pots of new, trailing vines. A cow lowed from somewhere beyond the rooftops and was answered in kind from the other direction. Softly clucking chickens; pigs and cats and goats with fresh, spindly kids roamed the alleys, bright and sleek and completely unconcerned with the large party stirring up dust as they moved along toward the center of their town.
Finley realized she was frowning at the clear signs of prosperity around her, so at odds with the state of her own home just beyond the falls. It was like being in a foreign land.
The maze of longhouses opened up at last to a wide green in the center of the town. To the right was a long structure studded with half doors, golden hay spilling out of the farthest openings; the fabled Blair storehouse, rumored to hold enough grain to last three towns five years. To the left lay the largest longhouse Finley had ever seen, but unlike the others she’d passed, this one was shuttered tight, with no potted herbs, no torch at the post poised for lighting. It was a dark, startling shape in the otherwise verdant tableau, like the space from a knocked-out tooth in a pretty girl’s smiling mouth.
Archibald Blair’s house, she guessed. As dark as any grave he now lay in.
Directly across the green from where the wedding party approached was a small, square structure, built not in the old Highland fashion, but of bright, new wood and stone above the ground, with a stone roof and a timbered cross at its peak. Town Blair even had a proper chapel. And it was before this holy, set-apart building that the unsmiling population of Town Blair was gathered, in stark contrast to the lively Carson group that had departed from the falls bridge.
The wedding party paused at the edge of the green, staring across the quietly grazing sheep, the wide, stone well. The sea breeze was only hinted at here, but the gulls wheeled overhead, their mournful calls sounding as if they were still under the impression that the crowd below was in attendance of a funeral. Beyond the seabirds’ haunting cries, though, the green of Town Blair was absolutely quiet.
The crowd before the chapel parted as if made of two waves, drawing back to reveal a set of shallow stone steps leading up to the closed door. Before those steps stood a quintet of people: four men and a woman.
One of them, Finley knew, must be Lachlan Blair.
Her horse moved forward suddenly, causing her to grab at the front of the saddle. Finley studied the faces as she drew near: the friar in his long, brown robe—no, that wasn’t him. The older man with his handsome gray plait—that was Marcas Blair, the new chief. The woman—long and angular and gray—must be the Blair’s wife. A younger man with wild red hair, his sweetly solemn face coming into focus. She supposed it could be him. But—
Finley felt her mouth drop open as the final man in the group became clear, his rich brown hair, which had been pulled into a queue beneath his shawl a week ago now flowed around his shoulders, his short beard neatly groomed around his full mouth, which she knew housed straight, white teeth when he grinned. His brown eyes, stern in one moment, sparking with mirth the next, were fixed somewhere over the crowd.
Good luck to your future husband…
Her horse came to a halt, and the pinch-faced Blair woman stepped forward, her hands clasped stingily at her waist as she approached Ina’s horse.
“Welcome to you, Ina Carson,” the woman said, although her monotone belied the sentiment.
“God’s blessing upon you, Mother Blair,” Ina replied, her voice soft and conveying a genuineness of sentiment behind her words. She handed down the cloth-wrapped bride cake, clasped reverently in both hands. “May the years bring much prosperity to both our beloved children, with the joy of many bairns to add to our shared wealth.”
The woman took the bread and did not return Ina’s smile. “He isna my child.” She gave a stiff nod and returned to her place before the chapel.
Finley’s gaze went once more to the steps as the gray-haired man stepped forward. Murdoch dismounted, and the two clan chiefs met with a loud clasp of hands. They stared into each other’s faces for what seemed to Finley to be half an eternity.
Marcas Blair spoke first. “Peace, Carson.”
“Aye,” Murdoch answered. “Peace. Today shall see a final end to our feud.”
The Blair nodded. “End to it. I welcome you and your people.” The chiefs parted, and Finley’s stomach did a neat flip as Marcas Blair turned his steely eyes up to her father. “Rory Carson, we are well met.”
Rory nodded. “Blair, I give my daughter in good faith.”
“And you shall take the one as much son to me as my other, and your people shall welcome him?”
Rory nodded. “Aye.” He reached up to the folds in his shawl and unclasped one of his brooches and then at last turned to Finley, offering it to her in his palm.
She looked from the silver brooch to her father’s eyes, noticing the different air about him. Today, he was not just her father, stooped, aging; he was a Carson elder, negotiating an historic treaty to a generations-old war.
“We’ll be back at home soon, lass,” he whispered. There he was—her father again. He gestured with his hand. “Take it.”
Finley took the warmed metal into her fist and turned in time to see Marcas Blair removing a brooch from his own, worn shawl. Finley held her breath as he walked toward the pair of young men.
