Shortly after that, a maid arrived to tell them it was time, that everyone was assembled down in the Keep’s small chapel. Ailsa clutched Vaila’s hand in hers as they descended.
Laird Buchanan awaited them outside the chapel doors. He opened the door for Mairi and Ailsa’s sisters, who all slipped inside to where the clan was gathered, but the Laird himself paused, looking uncharacteristically bashful.
“I know ye would rather have yer da or yer brother here with ye today, lass,” he said gruffly. “And I, too, wish they were here to give ye away. But I thought I might serve as a substitute, if ye’d like.”
Ailsa felt a rush of warmth and gratitude course through her. She’d heard her father speak at length of Laird Buchanan’s prowess as a leader. She knew he was fair, firm, and fearsome when he needed to be.
But he was kind, too.
“I would be most honored, My Laird,” she said. Why were her eyes feeling damp again? Was there some sort of strange miasma in the air today?
“The honor is mine, my dear,” he said, offering his arm.
Together, they entered the chapel.
For all of Ewan’s apologies that the wedding would not be grand or well-attended, the sight of the room took Ailsa’s breath away. Surely, every flower in the county had been sourced to brighten the room, the blooms providing a light, delicate fragrance that hung over the air. And it seemed as though the entire clan had turned out, all wearing their best, to watch the wedding. They looked at Ailsa with approval, with pride. Those looks made her feel as though her heart might burst.
These would be her people now, too. And she would guard them as fiercely as she did the Donagheys. The part that struck her the most, however, was her groom.
Ewan stood at the altar, looking every inch the Laird’s heir in his Buchanan plaid, draped and pinned to perfection. His blue gaze on her was steady, his hands clasped behind his back. There was reassurance in those eyes. Promise.
It would be well, she thought suddenly. He would make sure of it.
When she placed her hands in his, his grip was sure. It felt like a promise.
Suddenly, Ailsa felt her doubts fade. Perhaps she and Ewan didn’t know much about one another. Perhaps their pasts made things complicated between them.
But they both honored duty. And that alone would bind them enough to do what had to be done.
She held on to that thought, letting it give her comfort as the priest began to speak of duty and family and legacy. And when he turned to matters of love—the ones she couldn’t bear to think about—she turned to Ewan for comfort, for reassurance.
He never wavered. He held her gaze with his own, cradled her hands in his grip.
“O, Eternal God,” the priest began, “Creator and Preserver of all mankind, Giver of all spiritual grace, the Author of everlasting life; Send thy blessing upon these thy servants, this man and this woman, whom we bless in thy Name…”
Ailsa listened to the familiar words of the wedding ceremony, the ones that she’d never really thought about until now. She’d gone to church all her life, of course; they’d always had at least one priest in residence at Castle Dubh-Gheal, and frequently had several. But Ailsa had always looked for her faith less in pews and hymnals and more in the way the sea looked when you stood on the edge of the cliff near her home, the way the light danced over the water. She had felt divinity in the wind whipping through her hair as she rode Geal, or in the pounding of thunder and rain on the Keep’s roof while she was warm and safe inside with her family.
She did not dismiss those things now; she could never forswear something that was so acutely a part of her being. But she opened space inside her for this form of worship, too; the kind made by centuries of words being spoken, the same every time, the kind made when people who cared for you came out, pausing their work and their lives to see two beings combined into one.
She glanced down at her hands in Ewan’s, the movement causing a tendril of hair to slip loose from her pins. She ignored it, focusing on what their joined hands meant.
This union was not just about politics or power. It wasn’t only about getting her home back, about keeping her family safe.
It was a bond between them, one that could never be broken. It was a union.
And though she’d not yet spoken aloud the vows that would legally bind them, she made a promise in her heart.
I will do my best to honor ye,she promised Ewan.I will open my heart. I will try, with all that I am, for all of my days, to recognize what ye have done for me here.
“Ewan Buchanan,” the priest said, and Ailsa looked up at Ewan. This was the last time she would look at him without him being her husband. “Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her honor and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”
Ewan pulled one of his hands away from hers just long enough to tuck the loose tendril of hair back behind her ear. She felt the graze of his fingers against her cheek like the stroke of a flame; the path he’d taken left a trail of sparks in its wake.
“I will,” he swore, his voice a low, rumbling burr.
“And you, Ailsa Donaghey,” the priest went on.
And this is the last time I shall answer to that name, she realized with the tiniest pang of grief as the priest repeated the questions that would bind her to Ewan forevermore.
