Groa shook her head. “Nay, ’tis more than that. Ye are helping the father as well as the daughter. The ice in his heart isstarting to melt. And when it does, I would be proud to call ye sister and someday, Lady MacNabb.”
Astounded, Fenella said the first thing that popped into her head. “Gavan?—”
“Has been gone so long he may have married another, or, well, I dinna wish to dwell on other possibilities to explain his absence. The two of ye were too young to understand that love and marriage are built on respect and trust and responsibility for each other. Keenan is here. Now. And he sees only ye. Think on that.”
“I…Groa, ye ken what the clan will say. That I have traded one brother for another. I’ll be seen as nay better than any of the lasses who’ve tried to trip him into their beds these last months.”
“They willna. The family will make sure ye are seen as the reason his daughter still lives, and that he is coming back to himself and to us. Ye must consider my words. I dinna ken what will happen if ye were to back away from him now.”
Fenella did hear her. Groa’s words shocked her, yet the more she considered them, the more the idea appealed. Keenan would come back to himself. She would continue to help him. His daughter needed him. The clan needed him.
Perhaps, given Gavan’s long absence and lack of contact with her or anyone else in his family, so did she. Keenan had given her a place to fit in, to be accepted, and to be useful, whether he intended to or not. Whether he realized it or not. Perhaps now, it was up to her to make him see how the change Groa claimed she’d wrought in him had also changed her. And how the two of them, nay, the three with his daughter, could go forward together and make a real home and family. And someday, perhaps, fall in love.
The next time she and Groa attended Keenan with his daughter, when the bairn began to cry, Groa stepped forwardand took her from her brother. “I’ll take her to the wet nurse,” Groa announced and left them alone.
Fenella knew what she was up to, but she went along with it, hoping to see what effect she might have on Keenan in private. When he lifted his gaze to meet hers and the corners of his lips quivered upward, she held back a gasp and gave him a small smile of her own.
“Thank ye,” he said, his voice soft, almost too low to hear.
“For what? I’ve done naught?—”
“Ye’ve done more than ye ken, Fenella. I heard what ye did the night Aimil…” He choked to a stop and took a breath, then continued. “Ye have saved my wee lass and given me the time I needed with her to…to?—”
She put a hand on his shoulder. It was the only touch she was accustomed to giving him, but she felt he needed it, perhaps nearly as much as she did in this moment. “Dinna say it, Keenan. Yer family, the whole clan, have done what they can to help ye. Ye are getting better. I see it. Groa sees it. I hope ye see it, too.”
He reached up and covered her hand with his own, then smiled again, softly, but this time a touch ruefully. “I do. ’Tis past time for me to begin to live again. To care for my daughter—with yer help and that of my family. I’ve let grief consume me for too long.”
“Or just long enough to let yer heart begin to heal,” Fenella assured him as he squeezed her hand and let his drop away.
His gaze shifted to the far distance. “I canna see her face any longer.” He met her gaze, and the pain in his eyes made her chest ache. “What if I forget her? I never want to.”
“Ye willna,” she told him as firmly as she could around the lump in her throat. “She will always be part of ye. As she should. Yer time together may have been too short, but she gave ye the greatest gift before she left ye. Ye will see her again in yer daughter as she grows into a young woman.”
He nodded; his gaze lost again in a distance only he could see.
Fenella allowed herself to hope, without guilt, that his distant vision included her.
HEART OF HOPE
This story follows my Highland Talents series prequel,HEART OF STONE. If you haven’t read it, or haven’t read it in a while, now would be a great time to put a bookmark here and go read it. Then continue with this story, and you’ll have the arc of Keenan and Fenella’s love match brought to a satisfying end.
In this story, though a wedding is expected, the road to true love never does run smoothly, or, sometimes, at all. But there will be a happy ending!
It’s a romance, after all.
SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS, AUTUMN 1502
“Ithought this day would never come,” Fenella MacNabb confided to Gavan as she smoothed the skirt of the dress she would soon be married in.
“And I never doubted that it would,” he told her. She lifted a hand and he adjusted the polished steel tray that served as a mirror to show her more of her reflection. “Ye mean too much to the clan for this wedding no’ to take place,” he added.
“That means more to me than ye ken, especially coming from ye,” she told him, looking at him rather than her blurry image. She appreciated the sentiment, and that it came from Gavan. “I’m glad to have ye as a brother,” she added, hand over her heart. “And that we were able to settle our differences these long months past.” Then she nodded for him to put the tray aside.
“I am, too. Ye have been so good for Keenan. Ye have cared for Máirín and for her father for more than a year. ’Tis time to tie the knot.”
“He needed someone.” She paused as Gavan crossed his arms and gave her a stern look, brows lowered. “Verra well, he needed me. And I am honored to be the one he chose.” She gave him a knowing smile. “Marsali has been good for ye, too.”
A knock at the door announced Marsali’s arrival, her favorite deerhound Corrie on her heels. “Ye sent for me? Ah, Fenella, look at ye! Ye look wonderful! I love the embroidery ye added to the neckline of your kirtle. Ah, look! Are those bluebells? Corrie, sit down over there. Fenella doesna need yer hair on her dress.”
