These matters were pressing, to be sure.
But they’d allowed him to forget that Ailsa—strong, confident, Ailsa who was too stubborn for her own good—had lost her father not a fortnight earlier.
Lost both her parents in as horrifying a scene as he could conjure.
Ewan wasn’t certain he’d be as unshakeable as Ailsa seemed to be, had he suffered the same tragedy. It was… practically unthinkable.
But he could not give in to the impulse to draw her to his chest, not here.
It turned out there was a whole bloody mess of things he couldn’t do here. It was a nuisance.
But duty was duty. He and Ailsa both knew it. They lived it.
So he pushed aside his roiling desire to be alone with her and guided her over to the head table, where a feast lay out before them. There was mutton, whole haunches of it, and freshly caught wild rabbit, garnished with herbs grown here in the Keep. Fat potatoes had burst from their skins when they’d been roasted over the fire, and the children gleefully watched globs of fresh-churned butter melt into the fluffy interiors. Plate after plate was passed around the clan—haggis, herring, endless varieties of roasted vegetables.
A sense of rightness settled over Ewan. He was no stranger to this feeling; it was one he experienced frequently whenever his people assembled, whenever he saw them happy and safe and living their lives.
He felt as confident as he ever had, just then. He would protect them… whatever came.
And Ailsa would be at his side.
For a while, he let himself just settle into the simple pleasure of the wedding feast. He ate, drank, laughed with James, who was seated at Ewan’s side.
“I would bid ye congratulations, Lady Ailsa,” James quipped over Ewan’s head, mischief on his face. “But I dare not. Yer husband is a great jealous beastie, ye ken.”
Ewan took a halfhearted, lazy swipe at his friend, who dodged it nimbly with a laugh. Ewan supposed that he deserved the man’s teasing after his absurdity a few nights prior.
Now, with Ailsa wearing his family’s crest about her neck, bearing his name, he was able to act more level-headed about the whole thing.
“Get gone with ye, then,” he told his friend indulgently. “Find yer own bride so that ye can quit pesterin’ mine.”
Ewan wasn’t certain, but he thought Ailsa blushed when he called her his bride.
Hewasdefinitelycertain of the flush that graced Vaila’s cheeks when James took this as an invitation to stand, approach the next Donaghey sister, and bow over her hand.
“Will ye grace me with this dance, then, my lady?” he asked.
His tone was sincere, but there was a hint of challenge in his eye. Ewan watched Vaila eye James, not certain if his new sister by marriage was about to actually strike his Captain of the Guard.
But whatever unspoken thing that passed between the two via their locked gazes made Vaila relax a bit.
“Aye,” she said at long last. “It would be a pleasure, Captain.”
The musicians had struck up a jaunty tune long ago—one never could stop a Scot from turning a feast into a dance, notthat Ewan would ever have tried—and James swept a laughing, flushed Vaila into the revelry.
“Do you suppose she’s had quite a lot to drink, then?” Ailsa asked him, frowning fondly after her sister and James.
There was something so simple about the moment, about Ailsa sharing her teasing little thoughts with him, that made it impossible for Ewan not to steal a quick, swift kiss.
There was no speed with which he could have done so without detection, however. The moment his lips touched his bride’s, a raucous cheer (as well as several ribald comments that Ewan chose to ignore, lest he have to pummel his warriors instead of enjoying his wedding feast) broke out.
Ailsa pulled back, cheeks aflame, but she was smiling and laughing.
“Come along,leannan,” he said, taking her hand and urging her to her feet. “Let’s dance, aye?”
And she followed him into the throng.
Ailsa felt her laughter turn into another form of breathlessness as her husband—herhusband!—pulled her into the mass of dancers, then placed his hands on her hips to expertly spin her on a turn about the room.
