EPILOGUE
“Euan is so grateful ye postponed yer wedding until he was able to stand with Calum as his best man,” Muireall told Ella a week later.
“It wasna a difficult decision. He’s Calum’s best friend, as ye are mine. We needed both of ye with us as we take this step.”
“Still, ye didna have to do it, and I’m grateful for Euan’s sake. Ye are good friends to both of us.”
“And havena ye been the same to Calum and me?”
Muireall laughed at that. “Aye, ye have a point. Ach, ye are such a bonnie bride. I canna wait for Calum to see ye.”
Ella smoothed her simple blue dress, the Munro plaid she’d brought from home pinned at her right shoulder. It hung along her torso front and back. After the priest blessed their union, Calum would drape the Brodie tartan over her left shoulder and across her heart. Muireall would tie it at her waist on the other side, celebrating her new ties to Brodie and to him, but leaving the Munro plaid in place under it to acknowledge the clan she came from.
Friends from Rose and other nearby clans were here to show their support. No one from Ross had been invited, though. Ella appreciated the thought behind that.
Someone knocked on the chamber door. Muireall went to answer it while Ella turned her back. If it was Calum, he should not see her before she reached the kirk. After a low murmur of conversation, Muireall closed the door.
“’Twas Kenneth,” she said as Ella turned to face her. “They’re ready for us at the kirk. Are ye ready?”
Ella smiled, anticipation lifting her spirits, making her more excited than she’d felt in months, save perhaps, for the day Calum finally gave her his heart and asked for her hand. “I am. I canna wait to become Calum’s wife.”
Muireall opened the door and gestured Ella through it. “’Twillna be long now.”
The walk down the steps to the great hall, then outside and around the keep’s towers through the bailey to the clan’s wee kirk seemed to take forever. Ella took deep breaths, trying to slow her heart’s frantic beating, and to notice everything around her. The blue of the sky, the tang of salt in the breeze from the Moray Firth. She recalled all the things Calum had noted as she’d walked with him in the bailey the first day he’d been allowed outside while his eyes were still covered. That day seemed eons ago. They’d been through so much. And now, it was all about to come together into the life and the family she’d dreamed of. That they’d both longed for, even when they couldn’t admit it to themselves, much less to each other.
Finally the kirk came into view, a crowd gathered before it made up of friends and family. And on the steps, Father Innis, Calum and Euan. Annie and Cat, Iain and Georgie stood watching her and Muireall approach from just below the steps.
Both men had smiles of anticipation on their faces, Calum’s brighter and broader than she’d ever seen him wear. She had no doubt the smile she gave him was just as bright, just as happy, and just as eager for their marriage to take place. Even Muireall’s brother grinned at her, excitement lighting his eyes.
She mounted the steps and Calum held out his hand, reaching for her. Everything around her disappeared save for him, eager to touch her, to wed her.
“Ye are the bonniest bride in all of Scotland,” he told her, pulling her up beside him and bending to kiss her hand. “I’m a lucky man.”
Euan’s chuckle broke the bubble that seemed to surround her and Calum. “I’m glad ye finally saw what was right in front of yer eyes, Calum.”
Ella groaned, unsure how Calum would react to that unsubtle reminder of his injury, but he chuckled, so she laughed, too.
“It took me too long,” Calum said, his expression turning serious as he regarded her, “and nearly cost me everything. But Ella, I must ask ye again if ye are certain ye want a man like me when ye could have yer pick of any man in Brodie? Or anywhere else, for that matter. Iain was right about that. We will only do this if it is what ye truly want.”
“I want ye, Calum, to be my husband for the rest of my life. For all of our lives.” Her thoughts tumbled for a moment to the marriage she had escaped. Calum was not the same as Thomas Ross. She did not want to inject the Ross name into this moment. “The past doesna matter. The future does. Ye are everything to me.”
“And ye are everything to me. Despite how that realization scared me and made me do foolish things, I finally learned that I am more afraid of living without ye.”
“Dinna fash, love. Ye willna. My life starts now, with the man I see before me, and the future ye show me.”
“Then let us begin,” Calum said and turned with her to face the priest.
She didn’t hear most of what Father Innis said. She replied, making her vows only with Calum’s help, his hand holding hers giving it a little squeeze when it was time for her to speak.Finally, the priest declared them man and wife. After Calum draped the Brodie tartan over her left shoulder and across her heart, he took her in his arms and kissed her in front of all their well-wishers. Once the cheering died down, they entered the kirk for the wedding blessing before returning to the great hall for the celebration Iain and Annie arranged for them.
The clan’s laird and lady offered their congratulations first. “We’re so happy for ye both,” Annie said.
Calum met Iain’s gaze. “Were ye really expecting a betrothal offer for Ella to arrive soon?”
Iain smiled. “I lied.”
Before this day, Calum might have taken offense. Another lie. And not a small one, like the many he’d observed when he discovered everyone but him knew about the Janet ruse. Iain risked much. Ella might have taken him at his word and asked for a match away from Brodie. Calum might have done something rash. Right now, he couldn’t think what, except that surely Euan would have been involved and there would have been trouble for all of them. But now, healed and blissfully married, he found he could say, “I am very glad ye did,” and mean every word of it.
Annie grabbed him and kissed his cheek. “Ye were stubborn, Calum, but worth the trouble. Still, Ella has her work cut out for her, living with ye.”
