When he looked back at her, an unusual brightness misted his own eyes. “They are happy?” he asked, his deep voice low and gruff. “Your gift has shown you?”
“Aye, that, and my heart,” she said, pressing the back of her free hand against his beloved cheek.
Capturing it, Duncan placed a kiss on her palm. “That one-eyed varlet truly loves again?” he persisted as if he found the possibility hard to believe.
Linnet nodded. “He does. I am certain.”
“And she loves him?”
“Errr…” Suddenly tired, Linnet pulled her hands from his grasp and leaned back against the pillows. Lacing her fingers protectively over her stomach, she gave him a wan little smile. “I doubt she knows it yet, but, aye, she does.”
Duncan smiled. “Sakes, but I am ready to see that English loon again,” he vowed. “I shall bedevil him from here to the deepest, darkest bog in the land and back for being so bull-headed when we urged him to go to your sister’s aid.”
A snort came from somewhere in the shadows. “When will we see the lovesick fool again?”
Linnet’s smile widened upon recognizing the voice.
Fergus, Eilean Creag’s cantankerous, but much-loved seneschal.
“Ah, well…” Linnet shifted to peer into the gloom, looking for him.
“Humph.” Her husband’s brows snapped together as he, too, combed the smoke-hazed great hall, searching for the crusty old man. The only soul in all of Kintail who’d dare break his order of silence.
“Dinnae seek to skewer me with your stare, laddie.” The grizzle-headed steward thrust his bristly chin forward the instant Duncan’s stare found him. “I am weary of his frippery and gewgaws crowding my hall,” the graybeard fussed, excusing his daring with a nod toward the teetering piles of Sir Marmaduke’s possessions stacked just inside the hall’s arched entry.
A mountain of household items, weaponry, and, as Fergus had claimed, fanciful baubles and trinkets only one as romantically inclined at Sir Marmaduke Strongbow would appreciate.
A wealth of goods Duncan and his men had been transporting across Loch Duich, to Marmaduke’s as-yet-unoccupied Balkenzie, by the boatload, for weeks now.
And yet…
They still hadn’t made the slightest dent in the Sassunach knight’s accumulated belongings.
“’Tis time he returns and life gets back to normal in these parts,” Fergus grumbled, then flounced onto his side on the makeshift pallet he shared with his equally aged wife. The bony arm he flung over his head signaled he’d lose no more words on the subject.
And if there’d been any doubt, his particularly distinctive snores – high-pitched wheezy ones – soon heralded the end to his disruptions.
“So, lass,” Duncan murmured, turning back to his wife, “when will we see that lumbering oaf again? Is his return nigh? Is that what you meant when you said ‘today is the day’?”
“Nae,” Linnet answered, her eyes shining again. “I do not know when he will return. You should know by now that I cannot scry at will.”
Pausing, she sent a quick glance to the mounds of goods crowding the opposite end of the hall. “But I pray it will be in time for Yuletide at Balkenzie Castle as we are hoping.”
“Then what day is today?”
“Their wedding day,” she said, and Duncan didn’t doubt her for an instant. “Today is the day they will marry.”
Chapter 30
Her wedding day.
Caterine paused on the top landing of the outer stairs and stared down at the milling throng crowding Dunlaidir’s bailey. The unaccustomed activity warmed her heart even as she felt torn between exhilaration and ill-ease.
“They came, my lady,” Rhona enthused beside her,herexcitement barely contained. “Your people are all here, just as Sir Marmaduke said they’d be.”
Too moved to speak, Catherine reached for her friend’s hand and squeezed tight.
The good folk of Dunlaidir had indeed come, just as her soon-to-be-husband had predicted. And from what she could tell, they’d brought all their friends and family with them.
