by Nicole Locke
She tightened her lips. ‘Do you think you’re capable of that?’
He wanted to say no, but that would be a lie. ‘On our wedding night, I demanded you to undress so that I could consummate a marriage I had no intention of honouring.’
‘That’s not proof. In fact, I remember I made demands of my own.’
‘Because you’re fierce and intelligent. If you had been any other woman—’
‘You think if I had been weak, I would have just laid there on the bed for you? You can’t know women then. Remember, I wanted you before we were married, I wanted you that night.’
‘I seduced you and instead of honouring our marriage, I left. I left so that if there was a chance I needed to annul the marriage, I could take it.’
Wide green eyes no longer reflecting love or warmth. Just resignation on the truth of his words. ‘You were hurting; Paiden had just collapsed. You’re not Hamish.’
‘You can’t prove to me otherwise. Even before Paiden, I married you so that I’d make my own future. I married you because I wanted my own power and control. I didn’t care about the consequences or saving lives. I didn’t care.’
‘You wanted to talk to me alone. There was no reason for you to do so unless you wanted to see if we were compatible. If you didn’t care, you would have simply agreed to my father’s proposal.’ Her expression resolute, she continued, ‘It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t have married you if I didn’t see the man you truly are and, since we’re confessing it all, I wouldn’t have let you control me.’
So true. So fortunate he married this woman. Fortunate for him, but maybe not so for her. ‘I held a sword to your neck. I know your strength and it far outstrips mine. But still, I’m not worthy of it.’ He felt restless. In the past, when he found himself in these confrontations, he’d storm off, lean against a wall, pick a fight with Paiden. But here he sat near Ailsa and he was loath to move from her side. ‘My family isn’t worthy.’
‘Your family are the Lochmores. You have a mother and a father here.’
There wasn’t enough air to fill his lungs, and not enough words for him to convey the connections he shared with his wife. He felt as if they were as tangled as her gown’s laces. Impossible to unravel and still so very necessary.
‘Finley knows that I’m not his son,’ he said. ‘Whether he knows I’m Hamish’s or whether he’s talked to Helen about my birth, I don’t know. What I do know is that he loves my mother so very deeply that when she presented me to him, he claimed me.’
‘And that is why you’re worthy.’
‘Because a woman hated the man who raped her, so she denied him an heir by agreeing to give me away? Because I was stolen away in the middle of the night and given to a family who didn’t know quite what to do with me once they had me?
‘Helen, my mother, if you so insist, presented me to her own husband and pretended I was his. What does that make me? A lie.’
‘They love you. Your mother gave you the brooches. They’re significant, aren’t they? They were what you were expecting back at McCrieff Castle, not the necklace and the ring.’
‘They are very significant. When they weren’t in the chest sent to us after our wedding, I was certain our marriage would fail. These brooches that we wear now have been handed down for generations. They’re symbolic.’
‘And sentimental,’ she said reaching across their laps to take his hand. ‘I watched your parents and the love they had for them. So Helen waited to give them to you and me in front of all the clan. Your father didn’t stop her. They love you, they’ve claimed you. Your mother gave you to this clan. You’re a Lochmore.’
In that truth, and with Ailsa’s touch, he was defeated. Though deceit and lies surrounded them, there was still this connection with Ailsa, still this future that showed some hope. This marriage, and wife, he desperately wanted. The brooches they wore shouted to all the world their love and devotion for each other. There was hope.
Turning his hand so he now held hers, he gently pulled her across the bench to hold her that much tighter in his arms.
Ailsa welcomed her husband’s warmth and for a long time she simply welcomed this one moment between them. She told him everything in his life was something else and yet he appeared to be accepting it. Accepting her.
‘You believe me,’ she said quietly.
‘You asked me that before,’ he answered and she felt his words through his chest. ‘I believed in you even when I didn’t know you. You have too much honesty and truth about you, Ailsa, it’s startling and wondrous. I can’t understand it all. I do believe if you weren’t holding me right now, I’d spout words and feelings about my lack of deservedness. But I don’t think you’ll let me talk of that much longer.’
‘You do deserve it,’ she said. ‘You have my heart, Rory.’
She felt him shake his head. ‘You married me thinking I was the legitimate Lochmore heir. You gave your heart to a different man.’
‘I gave it to a man I barely knew, but I knew enough before I married you. Remember how observant I am. Merely a few hours in your company revealed to me your noble and honest heart. So it was very easy to give you mine.’
Slow steady heartbeats and breaths, she concentrated on that instead of the tension threading through him and, after a time, it eased. ‘You give me words of love when everything between us has fallen apart.’
‘Nothing is falling apart. I wouldn’t love a man who wasn’t deserving of it.’ She hesitated to talk more now there was peace between them, but it had to be said. ‘Now that a Lochmore and a McCrieff are wed, when our fathers die there is a chance for the clans to unite.’
He stiffened underneath her. ‘I won’t make promises I can’t keep.’
She tilted her head and he bowed his. ‘We’re married, you won’t talk of it?’
‘We shouldn’t. It’s treason with the Chiefs still living and, with the Great Feud, though we know other facts now, our clans won’t put much merit on our marriage.’ A muscle in his jaw tightened, released. ‘Has this been your purpose all along, Ailsa, to have the clans unite?’
‘I told you why I married you. I simply want to stop bloodshed. I will never forget Magnus or all the other injuries I and Rhona have healed over the years.’
‘Uniting our clans isn’t possible. After everything we’ve been through, you know that.’
She did, but something in her held on to that bright future. ‘And you? If you’re Chief you gain—’
‘No,’ he interrupted. ‘I’ve given up on control and power a long time ago, lass. Around the time you brandished your shears at me. Perhaps earlier than that, when I spied that hair of yours in the doorway.’
That moment was like that for her as well. ‘I like that doorway, I like our courtyard, but if we’re to stay together, I have accepted it won’t be at McCrieff Castle.’
‘Clever wife. You may be smarter than me as well.’
‘Now you admit it.’ She laughed softly.
‘I have thought on this, too. I know we need to return to your clan, but your clan is divided and, as long as I am a Lochmore, our children will be considered Lochmores. It wouldn’t be safe there. Even here, I am thinking of building tunnels to safeguard ourselves.’
She couldn’t think of their homes as not being safe, but since she met Rory it was the truth.
‘You wouldn’t mind living here, Ailsa? My father and Mother are older, Lochmore Castle is large. There are plenty of storerooms to hang herbs.’
She liked the image of that. ‘I think my father would expect me to be with you.’
‘Yes, but you’re not just a daughter of a Tanist, you’re also the McCrieff healer.’
‘I have trained Hannah and to some degree Mary. With more training, they will be enough when I am not there.’
Rory took her hand and placed it on the brooch still attached to his tunic. Th
e longer he did so, the more she felt the weight of the smaller, but identical one that was pinned to her breast. These pins were significant. Indicating they were both of the Lochmore clan, that they were married, that they were a pair never to be separated. For the rest of her life, she knew she’d wear that brooch.
‘We’re married, we’re...united. I can’t help, but...’ She just couldn’t say it.
‘Hope,’ he said. ‘I do, too, but outside this crypt, we can’t talk of it. It’s too dangerous.’
‘What do we do, then?’
‘In the meantime, we support both Lochmores and McCrieffs. When their purposes collide, we can intervene or remain silent. We can’t choose loyalties no matter how much we may agree or disagree.’
Else they’d tear their own marriage apart. ‘They won’t make us choose loyalties.’
‘There are many uncertainties ahead and I won’t make promises,’ Rory continued. ‘Yet I can promise you I’ll try to mend the divide between our families.’
That was what she saw that day in the courtyard. A man defying his enemies, his past, demanding a brighter future. That was who she fell in love with as he walked the village with her father, greeted and gave advice when needed.
Tears spiked her eyes, she swallowed hard and gripped her hand over his. ‘Even if this is only the beginning between us and even if it only stays the beginning between our clans, I’m humbled it’s us. I’m overjoyed to be here now, with you, at this beginning of the clans uniting no matter how long it will take. I’m beside myself that by Fates or God, I was fortunate enough to share this time with you.’ She drew in a breath. ‘I love you, Rory. I have for a very long time.’
‘Though I’ve known you for mere weeks?’
‘I knew the story of your birth,’ she said. ‘All these last years since Rhona’s death and being subjected to Hamish’s taunts, you were my glimmer of hope. Late at night, I liked knowing there was a boy out there who survived that man’s bitterness. In my dreams, I dreamed of you, Rory, and how grateful I was that you, by your very birth, spited him. That you, a mere babe, were a victory against him and all men like him.
‘In my dreams, Rory, I loved you even then. I think this is how it was meant to be.’
‘What is?’
‘Our wedding night, when you touched me, you said for me to let go. Because that was how it was meant to be.’
‘I didn’t mean those words the way—’
‘I know how you meant them, but I will interpret them differently now.’
‘You are clever, but to bring up that wedding night now? I still haven’t recovered from not touching you.’
He exhaled roughly and adjusted his body on the narrow bench. She made sure they didn’t lose the blanket or his hold on her. ‘You wanted me?’
‘Very much. But not as much as I do now. My love for you is too large for this body, Ailsa,’ he said. ‘Too considerable for this room, for this country, for the stars above us. And far, far too encompassing to merely be chained to my short life. I’m bursting with it and it only keeps expanding. I can only believe it’s larger than me and us. That it always existed across clans and time. It was here in the past and will be far beyond us in the future.’
She rested her head on his chest again and enjoyed that for every breath he took she felt it, too. Felt the strength of his body and of his heart. This man fought and won against his past. With her by his side, she was determined with the battles ahead he wouldn’t fight alone again.
‘You’ve gone quiet,’ he said. ‘Do you know what I’m saying? Am I saying enough?’
‘I didn’t know you could talk so directly,’ she said. He rubbed her back with his left hand. She felt his fingers as they started their drumming caress that she never wanted to end. ‘I rather like it. Are you seeing the benefits of my bluntness?’
‘Don’t be giving me a difficult time now. Not when I’m telling you I love you. If I could have known you existed like you did me, I would have loved you always, too.’
There wasn’t enough wonder in all the world. It was impossible that such fortune existed to bring this man into her life. How could she have guessed that this man would one day be hers? However, if he said one more word of love, she’d cry and wouldn’t stop. His love might be bursting out of him, but hers was as well and she had more words to say.
‘I like that you didn’t know I existed,’ she said. ‘I like that you know me now.’
‘Why?’
‘So I can keep surprising you.’ He huffed and she felt that laughter and surprise through her body as well. She loved the way he filled her world, her heart, simply by being alive.
‘You’re unexpected, my wife.’
‘That I am. Can we retire to our chambers now? I don’t mind our discussions, my husband, but I do mind where we keep having them.’
Another soft chuckle before he stood and she took his hand to help her rise. Slowly, he wrapped the blanket around her shoulders before tucking her within the cradle of his arm. As they ascended the stairs, he grabbed the lone torch which shone like a beacon.
‘Ailsa? I intend for us to keep surprising each other.’
‘Always,’ she promised.
Epilogue
by Janice Preston
Lochmore Castle—October 1849
Lady Flora McNeill stood on the front step of Lochmore Castle, her thoughts anchored in the past. The weather was mild for the time of year, warm enough for her to wear a simple shawl over her black gown. A soft breeze whispered across the inner bailey and she could hear the gentle shushing of the waves on the rocks below the castle, which was built on a high, rocky promontory.
She did not hear her husband of one year, Lachlan, come outside until two strong arms wrapped around her from behind. She leaned back into his hard body, glanced down and smiled as his hands caressed her swollen belly. Their first baby was due in January and they could not wait to be parents.
‘Well, Flora.’ Lachlan’s breath tickled her ear. ‘Today is the day you’ve been waiting for.’
Flora’s gaze flicked across the inner bailey to the old chapel, visible above the perimeter wall. In there, Ailsa Lochmore, née McCrieff, lay waiting to be reunited with her beloved husband, Rory. Dead for over five hundred years, they had been entombed together in the stone crypt under the old chapel until their double tomb had been desecrated during a raid on Lochmore Castle in the sixteenth century and Rory Lochmore’s remains had been spirited away. But the secret of why that particular body had been taken, and by whom, had gradually been lost in the mists of time until almost nobody knew what had happened, let alone remembered details of whose body was missing and, more importantly, why.
Flora would never forget the day when—aged twelve and in a fit of pique at her father for constantly dismissing her ideas because she was a mere girl—she had gone exploring in the forbidden Great Tower at her childhood home, Castle McCrieff. She could still feel the wave of grief, anger and aloneness that had battered her when she found the skeleton she now knew belonged to Rory Lochmore. She’d had a similar experience, just last year, when she discovered the empty tomb next to Ailsa’s, down in that cold, lonely crypt.
The desolation. The isolation. The longing.
‘I still cannot believe that Benneit finally managed to persuade Father to allow Rory to come home.’ Flora turned within the circle of Lachlan’s arms and smiled up into his dark eyes. ‘Or that the McCrieff lairds kept that secret all these years.’
The story had been passed down through generations of McCrieff Chiefs—mortal enemies of the Lochmore clan through most of those centuries—to the present incumbent, Flora’s father, Lord Aberwyld. It was only three months ago that Flora had finally summoned the courage to challenge her father about the identity of the skeleton hidden at the top of the Great Tower and the link between that and the empty tomb in the old chapel at Lochmore Castle, no
w her marital home. Father had admitted the skeleton was that of Rory Lochmore and that it had been stolen by members of the McCrieff clan during a raid but, true to character, he had stubbornly insisted Rory—sired by a McCrieff and not a Lochmore—must remain at Castle McCrieff.
‘Well, none of us would be any the wiser had you not found Rory in the first place, and then refused to take “no” for an answer.’ Lachlan dropped a kiss on Flora’s nose. ‘So it’s all thanks to you. I am proud of you for challenging your father...and continuing to challenge him.’
‘I could not ignore it—I knew when I first found Rory that I must do something to put things right, but I had no idea what that might be. It was only once I knew their story that I understood—Rory and Ailsa need to be together.’
Flora trusted her instincts. They had never let her down and that same sixth sense had driven her to keep insisting to her father that the lovers—for she knew instinctively that theirs had been a great passion—must be reunited.
It had taken the current Chief of the Lochmores—Benneit, Duke of Lochmore—to finally bring Father to his senses.
‘If what you tell us of Rory Lochmore’s paternity is true, Aberwyld,’ he had said, ‘then there is no justification for keeping his remains at Castle McCrieff. Think about it—is there not as much McCrieff blood running through the Lochmores as through the McCrieffs? We are, like it or not, one clan. And do not forget that Ailsa, too, was a McCrieff. You must do right by them.’
Father had huffed and puffed but, in the end, he’d had to concede that there was no reason to keep Rory and Ailsa apart in this modern day and age, not now that the centuries-old feud was firmly behind the two clans.
The distinctive rumble of wheels along the track that led up through ancient woodland to the castle alerted Flora to the approach of a vehicle.
‘They’re coming!’
Their friends and neighbours, Benneit and Joane—former owners of Lochmore Castle—were joining them for the reunion of Rory and Ailsa.
