“Which one, lass?” Kieran grinned. “I’ve promised ye a great many things. I’ve made ye my wifethreetimes now.”
Eilidh smiled in return.
He wasn’t wrong.
After handfasting twice—once in Sydney and once in the gardens of Kilmeny Hall—Kieran had wanted to say their vows before God, as well.
“Never again will anyone doubt that I’m your husband,” he had sworn.
She agreed wholeheartedly.
Therefore two months after their handfasting at Kilmeny, they stood before a vicar—the marriage banns having been read three weeks in a row beforehand—and pledged their vows before God.
“I am decidedly your wife, thrice over,” Eilidh laughed. “I was referring to the promise of what usually comesaftermarriage.”
Kieran wiggled his eyebrows at her, gaze going hungry and eager. “What are ye proposing, wife?”
She laughed harder. “You’re impossible.”
“Handsome,” he corrected. “Ye meant tae say I’m handsome and irresistible, and ye cannae keep your hands off my person.”
“Yes, well, that may be true.” She took his hand and placed it over her flat stomach. “What do you think? Should we attempt this again?”
Nearly a year had passed without any hint of pregnancy. They had both begun to worry that perhaps Eilidh’s prior miscarriage had damaged her in some way. Alex said that infertility was possible after losing a child as she had.
Eilidh and Kieran had weathered the lack of a child together, moving on with their plans regardless.
But now . . .
Kieran froze, his hand atop her still flat stomach, expression almost comically shocked.
“Are ye . . .” He stopped. Swallowed. “Are ye saying what I think ye are, lass?”
Eilidh nodded, partially mortified to realize her eyes had filled with tears. “But we promised we would stop sailing once a bairn came along, and I know how much ye love being at sea . . .”
“Ah, lass.” Kieran grinned, his own eyes suspiciously bright. “I have only ever wanted tae be where yourself and our children are. I’m truly going tae be a father? In earnest?”
She nodded again, her smile so wide it hurt her cheeks.
He whooped, a roaring burst of sound.
Kieran swept Eilidh into his arms, spinning her around, before returning her feet to the decking and bestowing a long, lusty kiss to her lips.
The sort of kiss that curled her toes and set their fellow sailors to calling lewd jests and assured Eilidh that she was, indeed, the luckiest woman alive.
Six years later
“He always wins,” Alex was saying. “Every time. Every year.”
“Och, your competitive side is showing again, Alex,” Andrew snorted.
“Besides, Ewan cannae help winning,” Kieran said. “He’s the winningest person I’ve ever known.”
“I don’t thinkwinningestis a word, Kieran,” Rafe pointed out, most unhelpfully, per Kieran’s point of view.
They were seated on the back lawn of Andrew’s estate, Muirford House, for their annual gathering of the Brotherhood of the Black Tartan.
Initially, they had met in March on the anniversary of Jamie’s abduction. But as their families had grown, it made more sense to gather in late summer, when the sun was high in the sky and the warm days allowed the children to expend excess energy chasing one another around the gardens.
