“They are,” Fenella answered, grateful for Marsali’s thoughtfulness and Corrie’s obedience. “The bluebells represent ye, of course. I chose a flower or plant for each member of the family. I’m glad ye like it.”
“I dinna like it. I love it. And so will Lady MacNabb. Ye ken how sentimental she is about family.”
“Fenella was just telling me how glad she is to have me as a brother,” Gavan told Marsali with a grin.
“Me, too,” Marsali replied. “That he has ye for a sister, I mean, as well as a friend.”
Fenella grinned with them. Marsali knew their history. She’d had her nose rubbed in it when she first arrived at MacNabb with him. But she’d learned that Fenella was Gavan’s past, and that Marsali was the only future he wanted. She wasn’t jealous of the friendship they’d managed to retain through it all.
“Keenan is pacing in the bailey,” Marsali warned. “But he canna stop smiling.”
Fenella laughed, grateful for Marsali’s attempt to keep her mood light.
Gavan and Marsali had married months before, not long after he’d encountered her near her home in the moonlight in a ring of standing stones. She’d woven a love spell with a chain of bluebells that at first seemed not to work, but the spell and her deerhound Corrie seemed to conspire to bring them together—with some help from both their fathers.
Fenella, in the years Gavan had been away from the clan, had fallen for Keenan and his motherless daughter, Máirín. Caring for the babe led to caring for its father, and eventually broughtKeenan out of the cloud of grief over his wife’s sudden death that threatened to choke the life from him as well.
Now they were to be married. Fenella fought to contain her excitement and appear serene as they headed outdoors to the kirk steps, where by now Keenan would be waiting.
He greeted her with a chaste kiss on her cheek and took her hand. “Ye are always beautiful, my love,” he told her, “but especially today.”
“I am proud to become yer wife,” she said softly. “I love ye and ye ken I love Máirín, too.”
He nodded. “Perhaps more than ye love me.”
Fenella didn’t know what to say to that. His tone sounded serious, but he might be jesting, something he did so rarely, she might fail to recognize it. He saved her from a reply by turning her to face the priest. It was finally happening! She was marrying the man who had stolen her heart. She would be mother in truth to Máirín, the bairn she had raised from the day she was born from her dying mother’s womb.
She glanced aside. Keenan appeared calm, which was usual for him now that the worst of the fog of grief had finally left him. He was not given to displays of emotion. But he turned his head to her and smiled, lifting her heart. From any other man, that would seem faint praise, but from him, she knew he meant to tell her how overjoyed he was to be standing here with her.
The day could not be more perfect for their union to be solemnized, and for the clan to accept her as their future Lady. All her hopes and dreams, all her ambitions as a woman, a wife, and someone the clan looked up to, depended on this one, simple act. Marrying this man, caring for his daughter, and someday, she hoped, giving him a male heir to carry forward the MacNabb name, were everything to her.
While the priest spoke the words that would make her Keenan’s wife and he, her husband, her awareness stayed onthe man at her side. The back of his hand brushed hers, silently lending her a portion of his strength.
When the priest finished speaking, he turned to Keenan’s father for the length of MacNabb plaid to bind their hands together in the first part of the ceremony.
The old laird’s face reddened, and he gasped. He reached out to the priest as if handing him the cloth, then dropped to his knees and clutched his chest.
“Da!” Keenan’s cry broke the frozen stillness that gripped everyone as the laird fell. Gasps and cries of concern filled the air as Keenan knelt to lift his father to his feet. But the old laird’s eyes widened, then closed, and he collapsed into Keenan’s arms. Fenella reached out to aid him, but Keenan’s brothers gathered around him and helped him lay their father down on the step above where they were standing. The healer rushed forward and shooed the men out of her way. In moments, she stood and shook her head, her gaze downcast.
“The laird is dead,” she said quietly to his sons.
Fenella clenched her hands over her heart. This could not be happening.
“Do something!” Keenan demanded.
Fenella’s heart broke for the desperation in his voice. First his wife died suddenly at a time that should have been filled with joy, and now his father had done the same.
The healer shook her head again. “He’s gone, Laird MacNabb.”
Keenan stepped back, wide-eyed shock on his face as he registered her use of the title that, all his life, had belonged to his father.
The priest began last rites there on the steps. Keenan found his voice enough to tell his brothers to carry the old laird into the kirk for his last rites. They obeyed, walking slowly up the center aisle, their mother following them and her husband’s body, hersteps painfully slow, her head bowed, but her back straight and stiff until she took the seat in the first pew that the priest directed her to. Lacking a coffin, his sons laid him in front of the altar on the cold stone floor.
Keenan watched from outside, breathing deeply. He had disappeared into the numbness tightening his jaw and shoulders. Fenella had seen him do this before when he tried his hardest to gather himself. He needed that calm control now more than ever.
Of course, he hadn’t expected to hear the title addressed to him. Not today. Fenella reached for him, putting a comforting hand on his arm.
But he shrugged her off. “Stay here.”
