The soft fullness of her breasts, and something very small and decidedly hard.
Hard, and jabbing ever deeper into his own chest, the closer she pressed herself into him.
Pulling back, he glanced down, the hot tears he’d tried so valiantly to hide, spilling free the instant he spied the small, hard object…
His ruby signet ring.
The heirloom hung about her neck on the fine, golden chain he’d mean to give her for it.
The ring she’d claimed she wouldn’t wear until she was able to give him her heart.
Hisheart slammed against his ribs and his throat tightened. His men, for once, had the decency to turn away.
His lady, her own cheeks wet with tears, spoke her mind. “I found the chain in the ante-room, half-buried in the floor rushes,” she explained, cradling his face as she did so, pushing up on her toes to kiss his scar.
Smiling through tears, she turned her blue gaze on him – the open gaze of a woman who never lied. “And, yes, my lord, I wear the ring because you hold my heart,” she told him. “Fully, irrevocably, for all our days and beyond.”
And Sir Marmaduke believed her.
But later, after they’d all re-mounted and resumed their homeward journey, traveling once more in therightdirection, he cast a grateful glance heavenward and thanked the saints all the same.
Epilogue
Balkenzie Castle
Western Highlands at Yuletide
Afierce winter gale tore across Loch Duich, whipping its slate-gray surface and lashing at Balkenzie’s stout walls with a ferocity seldom seen even in these wilder reaches of the Highlands.
But the night’s fury couldn’t dampen Sir Marmaduke’s high spirits as he surveyed the castle’s gaily festooned great hall. Many revelers had come to celebrate Yule.
And welcome him back to Kintail.
Home.
His own, and his sweet lady wife’s.
At last.
And so the black night raging outside Balkenzie’s snug walls did not bother him, nor steal a teensy bit of the joy from his heart.
And neither would the dark-frowning countenance of his best friend and liege, Duncan MacKenzie. Pointedly ignoring the festivities, the handsome Highland laird glowered at the Yule log rather than joining Marmaduke and the other carousers in spreading good cheer.
“How much longer do you think she will need?” He asked Marmaduke for the hundredth time.
“You ask me?” Lounging against the edge of a trestle table, Marmaduke shrugged. “However long the good Lord wills she must, I’d wager,” he said, and lifted his cup of spiced wine in calm salute.
His cheek earned him another glare. “You can wipe that smirk off your face,” Duncan groused. “I have every right to be concerned.”
“No one doubts that, my friend,” Marmaduke conceded, sipping his hippocras. “Though I do sometimes wonder how the lady tolerates your bluster.”
He slid a glance at the empty four-poster bed still crowding the middle of his hall. “I do commend you for allowing her to birth the child abovestairs rather than…there.”
To Marmaduke’s amazement, his old friend had the decency to look contrite.
But only for a moment.
“She disregarded all good sense and persisted in traipsing about despite her frail state,” he argued. “I had no choice but to keep her where she could be watched over at all times.”
