He brushed his finger down her cheek, raising chills all over her body. “The infection from my wound returned and I couldn’t.”
“He shouldn’t be here now,” Lochlan said as he stood at the foot of the stairs. “He’s still too weak to travel, but when he learned you were to marry Ryan, he refused to stay abed.”
Ewan tipped her chin up so that she had no choice but to look up at him and see the fire in his eyes that devoured her.
“Run away with me, Nora,” he breathed. “I’ll take you any place you want to go. England. France. Outremer. You name it and I’ll take you there.”
Tears fell down her cheeks his loving words. It was more than she could have asked for. “Any place?”
“Aye.”
“Then I wish to take you to bed...”
Shocked gasps filled the crowd.
“To heal!” she said irritably as she glared at them as a whole. She shook her head at them. “What good would he be if he dies of his wounds? Then I still end up married to Ryan. What good would that be?”
“I should be offended by that,” Ryan said as the crowd laughed. “But she’s said much worse to me than that over the years.”
He clapped Ewan on the back. “‘Tis just as well, I would have more than likely killed her within a year anyway, or run off with another. Peace be with the two of you, Ewan and Nora, and may the saints in their mercy bring early hearing loss to all the MacAllisters.”
Nora gaped at Ryan’s words.
“Nay,” Ewan said. “I want no deafness in my life to deprive me of the beauty of her voice.”
She smiled up at him, then threw herself into his arms.
Ewan staggered back and only Lochlan’s quick actions kept him from falling with her.“I’m sorry, Ewan,” she breathed. “I forgot.”
“I don’t mind.”
“So, do I need to retire from this?” the priest asked.
Ewan shook his head. “Nay, Father. You’ve a wedding to be about. I want no one to ever question my right to this lady again.”
“Ewan,” Lochlan growled. “You’ll pass out before it’s through.”
“Then toss some water on my face, prop me up and make sure I say ‘I do’ when I need to.”
Nora squeezed his hand as the priest began the ceremony.
Ewan listened to the priest while he stared in grateful relief at the woman before him.
He’d been terrified that they wouldn’t make it in time. His body throbbed and burned in protest, but he didn’t care.
Nora was his.
There was no way he would let her leave him. No way he would ever allow anyone else to come between them.
Luckily, he made it through the ceremony and mass, but Nora refused to partake of the feast that awaited them.
Instead she forced him up to her room and into her bed. Ewan sighed as he lay on the softness of her feather tick mattress and she fluttered about the room.
The walls of her room were painted soft pastels that were soothing and cheerful. Just like the lady herself.
Someone knocked on the door.
“Nora?”
