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“I came by the rocks,” Alasdair said. “Yer father always kept his archers in the rocks. That much of him I could count on.”

Then his voice dropped. “My mother rode the Dunmore road alone in the dark to tell me where ye’d gone,” he said. “On a wee brown mare. She told me to bring ye home.”

“Yer mother?” Iona stared at him. “Alone? In the dark, with men in dun on every hill? Alasdair, she could have been killed.”

Then she saw it, the thin cold hands on the reins, the grey hair coming down, and her eyes filled so fast she could not see him.

“That night in my chamber I never finished it,” he said. “I’ll finish it now. From the day at the stream I’ve loved ye. Every day of this, and every fight. Ye’re my wife, Iona. I’ll never let ye go, no’ to the King, no’ to any laird with rings on his fingers. Come home with me.”

She was sobbing again before he had finished, and this time she did not try to stop. She stepped in and put her arms around him, carefully, on the side that was not bleeding, and pressed her wet face to his chest. His heart was going hard and uneven under her cheek. His arms came around her and tightened until it hurt, as if somebody might come down out of the rocks and lift her away from him again.

“I love ye,” she said into his torn shirt. “I love ye, ye great stubborn fool. I love ye so much I cannae breathe for it. I said it to yer mother, and I never once had the courage to say it to you, and I sat tied in that doorway all night thinking ye’d die before ye heard it.” She drew back far enough to see him, and gripped his torn shirt in both fists. “So ye’ll have it now, and every day after, till ye’re sick of the sound of it. Ye cannae leave me, Alasdair. No’ on this hill. No’ ever. And if ye ever ride off and leave me behind a wall again, I’ll come after ye on foot.”

Something moved in his face, raw and unguarded. He took her jaw in his bloody hand and kissed her, hard, and then gently, and she tasted salt and did not know whose it was.

When he drew back he swayed, and she took his weight before he fell. She pulled his arm across her shoulders and set her own arm around his waist, below the wound, and his blood soaked warm through her sleeve and ran down over her hands.

“Ye’re heavy, MacVey,” she said.

“Ye married a MacVey, lass,” Alasdair said. “We come heavy.”

“I’ll carry ye anyway,” Iona said. “I’ve done harder things in this glen.”

“Name one,” Alasdair said.

“Married ye,” Iona said, and felt him laugh against her, and heard the laugh catch on the pain.

Gavin went ahead of them to bring up the horses. Dougal and the three old men of her escort were gathering their swords out of the heather, and the younger of her two lads was crying and laughing at once with his arm around Dougal’s neck. Up in the rocks nothing moved. The men in dun were gone over the top and away, and there was nobody left on that hill to carry the feud a single step further.

Somewhere behind them the soft breathing in the heather had stopped. She had known it while Alasdair was speaking.

At the lip of the hollow she stopped and looked back, once. He lay on his side by the hut, smaller than she had ever seen him, his grey head in the heather. Her father. Whatever he had been, he was the only father she had ever had. Her throat closed, and the tears came again, quiet this time, and Alasdair stood and held her and let them come.

Then she turned her back on the hollow and walked her husband up out of it with his blood on her hands and his arm locked around her, and the sun came over the shoulder of the hill and found them both.

Epilogue

Iona stood at the font, the old stone basin of holy water where the priest would christen her son, with the boy in her arms and every MacVey in the glen at her back, and she was so happy that it frightened her.

The chapel was packed to the door. Men stood bareheaded along both walls, and lads hung in the open window. Women who had once spat at her shadow stood in the front row, weeping already.

Iona wore the pale blue silk that had been Lady Mairead’s bridal gown. Lady Mairead had laced it at her back that morning and said nothing at all, which from Lady Mairead was better than a speech.

The baby had bellowed through the whole of the priest’s Latin. He had her hair, a soft red fuzz that would not lie flat, and his father’s temper, and he had only stopped when Alasdair gave him a finger to hold. Now he slept against the silk with his mouth open, still holding on.

Alasdair stood at her shoulder in his dark coat, close enough that she could feel the heat of him through her sleeve. He had been looking at her instead of the priest all through the Latin.

“The priest will take ye for a heathen, MacVey,” she said under her breath.

“Let him,” Alasdair said. “I’ve a wife in my mother’s silk and a son with a grip like a smith. I’ll look where I please.”

The priest cleared his throat at them. “And by what name,” he asked, “is this child to be known?”

Iona looked across the font at Lady Mairead.

The lady stood with Agnes at her elbow. They had not told her. Iona had wanted to tell her over breakfast. Alasdair had wanted her to hear it here, before all their people, and they had fought about it loudly, in bed and out of it, until Iona gave way because he had asked with his whole heart in his face.

“Gregor,” Alasdair said, and his voice carried to the back wall. “Gregor MacVey, for his grandfather.”