“Ye werena grateful for the healer’s efforts. What changed?”
“I was wrong. I saw…I felt some of how she helped ye. I saw Craig’s countenance as he assisted her with Magnus’s crushed leg. Her gift is real. So is yers. And this clan will be grateful for the lives she’s saved today, just as they’ll be grateful when they find out about the lives ye saved helping the rescuers, and for what ye can do when it comes time to rebuild the hall.”
“I dinna ken what to do. I’ve always had to hide…to protect myself.”
“Ye had yer reasons, aye, but they no longer apply. Ye have naught to fear. But if it will make ye feel better, I have an idea. Will ye handfast with me?”
Shona seemed to consider it, closing her eyelids and tilting her head to the side. Angus held his breath. “There’s naught I want more than for ye to become my wife, Shona,” he urged. “To spend the rest of my life with ye at my side. But if ye canna accept that now, as things stand…”
“After a year and a day, if I am no’ well…if the clan abhors me…and if we’ve no’ had abairnon the way, I’ll release ye.”
Angus’s heart soared. If she agreed to this, he’d never let her leave him. “I willna wish to be released. I’ll handfast with ye now, if that’s all ye will agree to. And because we’ve nay priest to hand,” he added with a chuckle, then became serious again. “Because I love ye, I will marry ye properly, in the kirk, as soon as we can travel to the Lathan’s Aerie.”
“We’ll take a year and a day, Angus. I mean it. If I’m no’ better by then, ye must find a lass who can be a proper wife to ye.”
“That lass is ye, and nay other, my heart.” Sitting up, he reached for his spare plaid and pulled it onto the bed and into her hands. “Here, we’ll do this now.”
He helped her sit, then wound a length of the woolen fabric around her arm. When the fabric also wrapped his, he took her hand and swaddled both of theirs together, though doing so one-handed took some effort. Shona was giggling by the time he had them bound together to his satisfaction. Extra yards of fabric draped over their laps and onto the floor.
“We are bound,” he announced, “for a year and a day, as ye wish. But I wish for more, and I willna be denied. Ye are my wife, from this moment, forever.”
“Ye are my husband, for as long as ye wish to be, but for a year and a day, at least,” she answered, suddenly serious.
“That’s done then,” Angus announced and began unwinding the plaid.
“No’ so fast, my laird husband,” Shona told him, placing her free hand over their bound ones. “There’s the small matter of the consummation to discuss.”
“Ye wish to put it off? Aye, a few days rest might be wise…”
“Nay. I wish to finish what we started. Though Colin and my uncle can no longer conspire to send ye away, I fear what the Council will do. Ye have already given me more happiness than I thought I would ever know. Now we have pledged to each other, I truly want my year with ye. I dinna want anyone to be able to prevent us from having at least that time together.”
“Lass, ye make sense, ye do. Even so, and it pains me to say it, we should wait until ye feel better.” Angus stroked the side of her face, and continued, “Or…at least until the healer says ye may.”
“I ken ye have great faith in her,” Shona told him, her face suddenly lighting with an impish grin, “no matter how lately ye have acquired it. I ken what I can and canna do.” Then she sobered. “If we are to be truly married, we must do this now.”
