“You are extending peace?” she asked.
“I am extending stability,” he corrected quietly. “Peace is what follows if we are fortunate.”
She rose then, coming around the table to stand beside him. Her hand rested lightly on his shoulder as she read the last lines over his arm.
His script was strong and deliberate. No groveling. No accusation. Simply an invitation.
“You have changed,” she said softly.
He tilted his head slightly. “Have I?”
“Yes.”
“How so?”
“You look outward now,” she said. “Not only inward.”
He covered her hand with his. “And ye,” he said, “nay longer look as though ye are planning to escape.”
She laughed quietly. “Perhaps I was once,” she admitted.
He rose then, pushing his chair back and offering her his arm without ceremony. “Walk with me,” he said.
They left the sealed letters on the table to be picked up by the messenger, and wandered deeper into the gardens. Rows of late cabbages swelled beneath broad leaves. Pumpkins sat heavy on the vine. Apple trees bowed with fruit.
“It will be a fine harvest,” Lilliana observed.
“Aye,” Kayden agreed. “We will make it a gathering to remember.”
She looked up at him. “What shall we include?”
“Music,” he said at once. “Dancing. Ale enough to drown Cameron.”
She laughed. “And perhaps,” she added thoughtfully, “a tour of the gardens. Let the villagers see what grows here. Let them know that it belongs to them too.”
He nodded. “We will make it so.”
They reached the far wall overlooking the valley below. Smoke curled lazily from the chimneys in the distance.
Lilliana rested both hands on the stone.
“Do you ever think,” she asked quietly, “how close all of this came to ruin?”
“Aye,” he said honestly.
“And does it frighten you?”
“It reminds me that nothing holds unless we hold it together.”
She slipped her hand into his. “Then we shall hold it together,” she said firmly.
He turned towards her, studying her face. It was no longer uncertain, no longer searching, but sure.
“Ye are a McGill now,” he murmured.
“And you,” she replied, “are mine.”
He smiled slowly at that.
