While Tormod took Acton to pack, Tormod’s men returned Teague and Tira to their cot to gather the belongings they would carry with them.
The rest of the crowd surged to Fiona, offering condolences and apologies for how she had been treated, and to tell Erik how shocked they were at Acton’s betrayal.
Erik wasn’t sure how to extract them from the crush, but Fiona solved that. “I think Cook has a meal ready for all of us. Let us break our fast together, aye?”
“We love our new lady,” one of Cook’s young apprentices piped up.
“Aye, we do,” the other youngsters chorused. “And our laird.”
Ayes rang out again as Erik and Fiona led the way to Cook’s cot. Erik held Fiona’s hand, wishing never to release it. He’dnearly lost her yesterday. “I love ye, too, Lady Ross,” he leaned close and told her. “More than all of yer people put together. More than I ever believed it possible to love someone, I love ye.”
Fiona stopped and turned to him. In front of everyone, she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulled his head down, and kissed him.
Erik suspected the clan’s cheering could be heard across the firth at Rose.
EPILOGUE
SPRING 1411
Fiona found her husband in the small cot he had taken over as his solar where a larger central hall would soon be built attached to it. “Erik, we need to get away for a few days. Let’s go to Rose.”
“What?” Erik looked up from the ledger he had developed with one of the older fosters from Brodie, who’d been sent at Erik’s request for a lad good with numbers. Fiona was glad he had a tool that helped him track the changes they were making in the Ross village, as well as a planting schedule, expenses such as the ones she had incurred on her trip last fall to the market in Inverness, and so forth. Fortunately, she had kept notes on what she and Cook bought and what she’d paid out of her own funds, and that gave Erik a start on tracking many other things. Erik made sure the lad was trained as any other foster would be, but put his numerical and organizational talents to use. When he wasn’t practicing at arms, while the other lads were spending time with the smith or stable master or any of the other disciplines they now had in and around the Ross village, he was helping the Ross laird, who hoped his Brodie lad chose to remain. Fiona did, too.
Fiona perched on the edge of his worktable and crossed her arms. “Ye have been doing the work of three men. Ye are tired, and so am I. A lovely sail across the firth, a day or two of no one asking us questions or bringing us problems, of letting Mary pamper us, and the Rose cook feed us…we both will be the better for it.”
“Now?” He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. “’Tis time for the spring planting.”
“Which is happening as we speak, without ye tramping in the muddy fields watching how every seed falls to the ground. And ye are going to blind yerself spending hours staring at those columns of numbers ye and yer Brodie lad are so enamored with.” She moved behind him and began rubbing his shoulders and neck, easing the tension from them. After a few minutes, she felt his muscles unknot and his head fell back against her belly.
He sighed, and then turned and pulled her onto his lap. “Thank ye. But Fiona, now that the other clans are beginning to trust us, I dinna want anything to fail. We've worked so hard, and Ross finally stands with our neighbors instead of being seen as a danger to them all.”
“That willna change. Our people are making progress and seeing results they believe in. And they’re doing it with the help of our allies, who also see the progress we’ve made. We willna be missed for a few days.”
“Getting away does sound…enticing,” he said, and pulled her head down for a searing kiss.
Fiona didn’t want to tell Erik the real reason she wanted to visit Rose. She hated that she might get his hopes up for no reason, and dreaded seeing the disappointment in his expressive eyes. Those eyes had always mesmerized her, communicating things he could not say in the moment. She blamed the emotion in them for her agreeing to this marriage in the first place, and for protecting him by displaying a false streak of virgin’s bloodon a sheet when he was in a heated dispute with Laird Rose. And for standing by him through the last six months of changes in Ross. Good changes. Needed changes, things that Erik had been hell-bent on seeing accomplished. But changes that caused no end of problems and complications, even if, in the end, they turned out well.
Those deep blue eyes of his never failed to entice her, even when they were both tired and hungry and desperate for rest. They found comfort in each other. Which was why she was eager to visit Rose’s healer to confirm her suspicion. She was certain Cara, still learning to be the Ross healer, would not know enough to be certain, and as grateful as Fiona was for having a more experienced but junior healer in residence from Munro, she didn’t really know the woman. For this, she wanted a healer she had known all her life. A friend, and family member she had grown up with whom she could count on to support her, and if that was required, to comfort her.
And Lia would be there. She’d spent the last six months as the apprentice to the Rose healer. Fiona had an ulterior motive in seeing her. She wanted to know if Lia was confident enough in her newly acquired skills to come to Ross and become one of its healers. But mostly hers.
She needed a friend who was a lass. She had friends among the women of Ross, but none as deep and of such long duration as those she had left behind at Rose.
Erik was her friend, of course. She was lucky to have her husband as her best friend, though no man, even Erik, could replace a close female friend. In the middle of a clan full of people who seemed to adore her, with a husband who made no secret of his feelings for her, she was lonely.
Or she was daft and focused on what she missed instead of what she had. Either way, she wanted to go home. For a visit, not to stay. To spend a few days away from the endless responsibilityof being laird and lady, doing something different, and being herself, not Lady Ross. She had sold the house in Inverness to her baker friend before Yuletide, so they had no home there any more to retreat to, though she did know a healer and a midwife in town. Hamish might know of an empty house or hospitable inn, but contacting him and getting a response would take too long. She needed to know, to be certain, that their lives were going to change again—and for the better.
They could be in the Rose keep by tomorrow evening. And the next day, after a visit to the healer, Fiona would know.
And then, God willing, she could give Erik good news and let him enjoy it before they had to return to Ross and resume their responsibilities here. It seemed like the perfect plan. If only he would agree.
Erik watchedthe opposite shore of the Moray Firth approach as the sun lowered in the sky behind them, the light breeze blowing them closer to their destination across a calm sea. He took a deep breath, feeling the weight of all of Ross lifting from his shoulders. “Ye were right, my love,” he said and gave her a smile. “We needed this. I feel better already, and we’re not there yet.”
“Am I no’ usually right?” She grinned and elbowed him in his side, then stood from their bench near the front of the birlinn and grasped the side where it started to climb to the bow, and looked out at the beach, the cliff and the keep at its top. “’Tis lovely.”
“Aye, ye are.” He stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her middle. “Ye will always be the most beautiful lass in the world to me. Ye have been since the day I first saw ye.”
She turned in his arms, away from the view, to look up at him. “Those eyes of yers,” she said, and shook her head. “They’ve gotten me into more trouble than I could ever have imagined.”
