‘Whatever the future holds,’ he repeated, trailing kisses across her face. ‘I think we can be sure that it will be anything but dull.’
She held him off a little.
‘We will face it together, my love,’ she told him, gazing up into his face. ‘And that is what matters.’
Epilogue
‘There.’ Grant raised his arm and pointed ‘There is Ardvarrick.’
They had crested a low hill and, by standing up in her stirrups, Madeleine could see below her the shore of a sea loch. Cattle and sheep grazed peacefully on sloping fields and a collection of dwellings were clustered around a natural harbour, where a tall ship was tied up at the jetty. She followed Grant’s outstretched hand to see a large gabled house, the creamy lime-harled walls standing out against the dark green of the wooded hillside behind it.
‘Oh, it is beautiful,’ she exclaimed. ‘I had been expecting something austere and more...grey.’
‘A stone castle, perhaps? I am sorry to disappoint you.’
She reached across and caught his arm. ‘I am not disappointed. Not at all. Quite the contrary!’
With a laugh Grant pulled her closer, leaning over to kiss her on the mouth.
‘Very well. Shall we go on?’
Madeleine looked again at the house, basking in the summer sun. This was Grant’s world, his family. She was the stranger, a Frenchwoman arriving in her man’s raiment. How would she go on, what would they think of her? Part of her wanted to turn and run but, glancing up at Grant’s face, she saw the love shining from his eyes and it warmed her.
She smiled. ‘Yes. If you please.’
* * *
It did not take them long to reach the house and as they stopped on the drive a servant came bounding out, a beaming smile on his face.
‘Master Grant, ’tis yourself returned at last! Welcome home, sir.’
‘Thank you, Leith.’ Grant dismounted. ‘Where are my parents?’
‘They are presently in the garden, the south front. I’ll away and—’
‘No. No need. We will go to them.’
Giving the reins to the butler, he took Madeleine’s hand and led her around the side of the house to where a series of terraces led down to a lawn surrounded by colourful flower borders. A dark-haired gentleman was sitting on the lawn, a book in his hand, while a lady in a green gown and a straw bonnet was collecting flowers in a basket.
As they started down the second set of shallow steps the lady turned and saw them. She hesitated for a moment then, with a cry of delight, scissors and basket were cast aside. She picked up her skirts and flew across the lawn.
Her bonnet slipped off as she ran and from the abundance of red hair now displayed Madeleine knew this must be Ailsa, Grant’s mother. She released his hand and watched as he ran forward to catch the lady as she threw herself into his arms.
‘Oh, Grant... Grant, is it really you?’
There was no mistaking the love between the two, but Madeleine was watching the gentleman, who had risen from his chair and was walking slowly towards them. His lean face was so like his son’s there could be no mistaking that this was Logan Rathmore, but there was no reading the expression in his dark eyes.
‘So you have returned.’
Grant gave his mother another kiss and gently released her.
‘Aye, Father. I am returned.’
The Laird’s serious features relaxed and in a single step he crossed the distance between them and hugged his son.
‘Thank God.’
They clung to each other for a long moment. No words were spoken, but none were needed.
‘And you have brought a companion.’ Ailsa’s soft voice broke the long silence. ‘Will ye not introduce the young man, my son?’
‘Ah.’ Grant realised that Madeleine was still standing on the steps, watching the proceedings with an anxious gaze. ‘May I present to you Madeleine, formerly Mademoiselle d’Evremont but now Mrs Grant Rathmore. She is my wife, my friend.’ He bent a speaking look upon his mother. ‘And she is my heart, Mama.’
Ailsa did not let him down. Her face broke into a smile and she hurried towards Madeleine, her arms outstretched.
‘You are most welcome, Madeleine, my dear. Mercy, what a lot we will have to talk about!’ She caught Maddie’s hands and gently led her towards the two men. ‘Logan, my love, we have a daughter at last! Are we not blessed?’
Allowing herself to be pulled into the family group, Madeleine glanced nervously at the Laird. Standing so close, she could see faint traces of grey in the dark hair and the lines about his eyes and mouth were more pronounced, but there was only kindness in his smile as he leaned in to kiss her cheek.
‘We are indeed. Welcome to Ardvarrick, my dear. Let us go in. We shall tell Leith to fetch up a bottle of our finest French wine. We have a great deal to celebrate!’
* * *
Any fears Madeleine had about her reception at Ardvarrick were soon put to flight. Ailsa and Logan were too relieved to see their son to stand on ceremony, so the four of them retired directly to the morning room, where wine and cakes were brought in while Grant and Madeleine told their story.
They were not finished by dinner time, so Ailsa ordered the meal to be delayed while they all went upstairs to change. She carried Madeleine off to her room to find her a gown, showing her so much kindness that Maddie was moved to express her gratitude.
‘Away with you,’ declared Ailsa, waving aside her thanks. ‘From everything I have heard so far, you deserve so much more for bringing our son back to us.’
‘No, no, ma’am, he saved me!’
Ailsa hugged her. ‘You are both very much in love,’ she said, smiling mistily. ‘You have saved one another, which is how it should be.’
* * *
They dined in style, amid much laughter and chatter, and by the time the ladies withdrew, Grant was in no doubt that the welcome he and Maddie had received was wholehearted and genuine. He refused his father’s offer of French brandy and chose instead to take a glass of whisky.
‘I believe I will join you,’ said Logan, pouring the amber liquid into two glasses. ‘And I will raise the glass in thanks that you are safe returned.’
‘And I give thanks for your warm welcome.’ They savoured the pungent spirit in silence, then Grant spoke again. ‘I cannot tell you how sorry I am, Father, for the way I left Ardvarrick...’
‘You have explained it all, my son. I do not hold it against you that you tried to protect your friends. I am only sorry for the people of Contullach.’
‘So, too, am I,’ replied Grant, frowning. ‘They do not deserve the retribution that will surely follow.’
‘We will do what we can for them, naturally,’ said Logan. ‘If this Colonel Sowton is as good as his word regarding your pardon and the assurance that Ardvarrick is safe, I shall be in a position to do something for young Reid and Graham. And to speak up for Cowie, too. Perhaps we might avoid a death sentence for him, although God knows he has done little to deserve any mercy.’
He drained his glass and set it down and Grant, wondering how Maddie was getting on without him, refused another drink, saying, ‘Shall we join the ladies?’
They walked arm in arm to the drawing room, where they found Ailsa and Madeleine sitting close together on the sofa, talking quietly.
Logan chuckled. ‘You see, my son, we need not have hurried. They have not missed us in the least. They appear to be getting along famously.’
‘We are,’ declared Ailsa, looking up at them. ‘We have discovered we have a great deal in common, including music and a love of books and...oh, a hundred little things. I vow I am delighted with my new daughter.’
Madeleine blushed and thanked her, laughing.
‘Well, my son,’ remarked Logan. ‘Do they not make a delightful picture? I believe we are very fortunate to have made such
good marriages.’
Grant looked at the two ladies smiling across at them, his mother a dainty redhead, Maddie no less petite but enchantingly dark, and he nodded.
‘Indeed we are, Father,’ he said, his heart swelling with love and happiness. ‘The luckiest men in the world!’
* * *
If you enjoyed this story, be sure to
read the first book in Sarah Mallory’s
Lairds of Ardvarrick miniseries
Forbidden to the Highland Laird
And whilst you’re waiting for the next book,
why not check out her other great reads
Pursued for the Viscount’s Vengeance
His Countess for a Week
The Mysterious Miss Fairchild
Keep reading for an excerpt from Kidnapped by the Viking by Caitlin Crews.
WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS BOOK FROM
Your romantic escape to the past.
Be seduced by the grandeur, drama and sumptuous detail of romances set in long-ago eras!
6 NEW BOOKS AVAILABLE EVERY MONTH!
Kidnapped by the Viking
by Caitlin Crews
Chapter One
“...she was deprived of all authority and taken into Wessex.”
—The Life of Aelfwynn,
Daughter of the only Lady of the Mercians
as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
918 AD
The Northman stood in the middle of the old road like a mountain of stone and dread, a giant blocking the way through the darkening wood.
At first Aelfwynn thought she was hallucinating him. It had been so many hours of cold, uncomfortable riding from the fortified burh of Tamworth where she had watched her mother, the much-beloved Lady of the Mercians, die six months ago. They had set off before first light, setting a brisk pace despite the season’s wintry fog. Aelfwynn had felt every muddy, frozen, treacherous bump too well this sad day, due in part to the tired old horse that was all her uncle had allotted her for the long, hard journey south into his grand kingdom of Wessex. But her heart was heavy, and that made every ache and pain seem the greater.
Her mind had danced away from what awaited her in the new, quiet life she would start at Wilton Abbey. Her heart had longed for what she left behind, what she’d lost, what could never be regained.
And then he had appeared like a nightmare.
A nightmare Aelfwynn had suffered through many times, both waking and sleeping, thanks to the many battles she had witnessed in her lifetime—or had not witnessed personally—yet was forced to wait in dire apprehension to see who would return and who would not. She was a grandchild of the great King Alfred of Wessex. She had been born of his eldest daughter Aethelflaed and was her royal mother’s only issue. Fighting off the many savages who rose against them in repeated attempts to take their lands and call themselves its rulers had consumed them all for as long as anyone could recall.
She blamed the relentless scourge of Northmen like this one—or the terrible Danes, or the bloody Norse—for the loss of her mother this past June and her elderly father seven years before. These hostile, warfaring men from the east, their havoc and their raids and their conquests, never truly stopped. Conquer them in the west and they rise again in the east, her mother had always said. Then north, then south. The only constant was bloodshed.
Always and ever the bloodshed, staining the very earth beneath Aelfwynn’s feet.
But blame and blood alike did naught to clear her path this evening.
This Northman was broad and tall, dressed in furs and wool that did nothing to conceal the truth of him. That he was a warrior was obvious in the way he held himself, a silent yet distinct threat. The snow that had been falling bleakly since the frigid midday settled on his wide shoulders, dusting his head and dark beard, but he appeared to notice neither that nor the rearing mounts of the two men of questionable strength her uncle had grudgingly spared for her.
Instead his gaze, a dark and powerful force, hit Aelfwynn like a blow, making her glad she had the hood of her own cloak to hide her in some small way. Though she knew that no bandit would mistake her for a commoner, even without the men guarding her on this journey. She rode a horse instead of walking, for one. And her clothes were too fine. Her cloak and the headdress beneath, wrapped around her head and neck, were wool—and she only hoped he could not see the finely wrought jeweled pins that held her headdress in place that would as good as shout out who she was to the whole of the kingdom.
“Stand down!” cried one of her uncle’s men.
A bit late, to Aelfwynn’s mind.
The Northman did not yield. He gave as much notice to the order as did the stark trees that lined the road.
“We travel under the banner of King Edward of Wessex,” cried the other. “Dare you court his displeasure?”
“And yet I see no king before me,” said the Northman, his voice a low, rough rumble that made Aelfwynn feel almost dizzy, so much so that her skittish old horse began to drift sideways, toward the forest where nothing good lurked.
Nothing good left anywhere, it seems, she thought with a touch of self-pity that shamed her even as it swelled in her, with a giant in the road. She corrected her mount and strove to cast off her own dark, unworthy thoughts, feeling the warrior’s gaze on her all the while.
Aelfwynn wanted nothing more than to shout him down, the way her men had tried—if in voices that betrayed the distinct lack of courage that had likely led her uncle to pick them for this distasteful task of very little glory. She wanted to follow up her orders with the dagger she carried, tucked beneath her clothes as she knew the Northman’s own weapons surely were too. But if she’d learned anything in the course of this long, grim year, it was how to hide. If she’d given in to her darker impulses, even once and no matter how good it might have felt, she would not have survived.
She had been raised in her father’s court, then served as her mother’s foremost companion during the seven years Aethelflaed had ruled after his death. A year ago she had been confident in her place. Her mother had feared nothing, no man and no army. Aethelflaed had taken on the Five Boroughs then held as part of the Danelaw, the agreed-upon territory of the invaders who had ferociously set siege to these lands for more than a hundred years. In the last year the Lady of Mercia had sacked Danish-held Derby, accepted the surrender of Leicester, and had been offered the loyalty of the Christian leaders of York—but had died before she could accept.
Leaving Aelfwynn to carry on in her stead.
But Aelfwynn had long since accepted that she was not her mother. She feared too much—and wore that fear too plainly. Men and armies alike, Danes and Northmen and Saxons and all who had swarmed around her, whispering in her ear about what Mercia must do to distinguish itself from its ally to the south—the Kingdom of Wessex, ruled by her uncle Edward, who considered himself less an ally and more the rightful king who had graciously permitted his sister to wield power at his pleasure.
A favor he did not intend to extend to his niece, particularly when her loyalty could not be as easily assured as that of his sister.
I could marry you to an ally, he had told her when he’d come to claim Tamworth, laying waste to what remained of Mercian dreams of independence and embodying all of Aelfwynn’s fears. But allies have a terrible habit of turning into foes, do they not?
Had Aelfwynn listened to those who whispered to her, had she acted on what they’d implored her to do or even spoken forthrightly in his presence as her mother would have done without a second thought, he would have treated her like one of those foes. No one would have blamed him.
Well did she know this. Her silence—the meekness she wrapped around her like a thick, woolen cloak no matter how she felt within or how the heaviness of it scratched at her skin—had saved her. It was why she was even now headed to live out her days at an abbey when her un
cle could far more easily have killed her.
No one would have blamed him for that, either.
This is mercy, niece, he had told her when he had rendered his decision, his gaze a glittering thing, not quite malice and yet nothing near affection, either. My gift to you, in memory of my sister.
Then, as now, Aelfwynn bowed her head when some small part of her longed to follow her fearless mother’s example and fight. Lead armies. Raze cities. Control kingdoms. Strike down her enemies and make them cower before her—but there had been only one Lady of the Mercians. Aelfwynn was all too aware she could only ever be a disappointment in comparison. She had been.
And not only because what she truly wanted was not these games of war, but peace.
Thus she did now, as she always had, using what few tools she had at her disposal. She made herself small and seemingly pious, her prayers a pretty melody in her best church Latin against the falling night.
“I have come for your lady,” the Northman told her uncle’s men, his voice neither pretty nor melodic and yet the effect was much the same. He still didn’t move, as if he truly was hewn from stone. “I have no quarrel with you. Yet rise against me or attempt to stop me here and I will paint the trees with your blood.”
His voice was so quiet and dark, his prayer a threat, that it made Aelfwynn’s very skin pull tight. A chill ran through her. Yet all she could do was what she had done since her mother died. Keep her head down and hope that once again, the forces she couldn’t possibly fight took pity on her instead. Whatever it took to stay alive.
The Northman sized up the men who flanked her, as if their weak characters were stamped up their faces. “If you leave now, no one will ever be the wiser.”
“The lady is for Wilton,” said one of the guards. Though it came out more a question than a statement. “She is bound for the nunnery by order of the king.”
Rescued by Her Highland Soldier Page 23
