Three months later…
The stillroom was warm and close, smelling of drying valerian and crushed juniper and the sharp green scent of yarrow hanging in bundles from the low beams. The healer did not look up when Sìle entered, her hands moving steadily over the herbs spread across the table, sorting with the practiced efficiency of someone who had been doing this work since before Sìle was born.
“Sit,” she said, gesturing toward the stool near the window without turning around.
Sìle sat, her hands folded in her lap, though folded was perhaps too calm a word for what they were doing.
“Ye kent I was coming,” she said.
“I’ve had eyes fer sixty years.” Nell set her work aside and turned, wiping her hands on her apron, and studied Sìle’s face with the unhurried thoroughness of someone reading a map. “Ye’ve been turning yer nose up at the morning pottage fer a week. Ye went pale when the roasting boar came through the hall two nights ago. I’ve been expecting ye since Tuesday.”
“I thought it was the heat,” Sìle said. “Or the harvest preparations. There has been so much tae manage.”
“Aye, there has.” The healer stepped closer and pressed careful fingers against the side of her neck, feeling her pulse with her eyes closed, humming low in her throat. Then she moved her hands and pressed them gently against Sìle’s middle. She was quiet for a long moment before she straightened. “Somewhere between ten and twelve weeks, by me reckoning.”
The words landed with a weight that Sìle had been half expecting and was entirely unprepared for.
“Are ye certain?” she gasped, though it was not really a question.
“I have been daeing this fer thirty-one years and I have never once been wrong about this particular thing.” The healer moved to the shelf and took down a small wooden vial, uncorking it and holding it out. “Drink this before bed each night. It will settle the sickness by morning. Ye’ll want eat more red meat and dark greens, but I’ll speak tae cook meself on that. Ye’ll want rest, proper rest now, nae the hours ye’ve been managing since the wedding. Ye cannae continue with the same routine ye have been keeping fer the past three months.”
Sìle took the vial. Her fingers were not entirely steady around it.
“Daes anyone else ken about me baby?” she said.
“Only what I’ve observed meself, and I’ve told nae one.” The healer looked at her with the particular warmth of a woman who had sat with enough people in this room to know what this moment cost and what it gave in equal measure.
Sìle took the vial, her fingers trembling. “Torin… he daesnae suspect. He thinks I’m merely tired from the harvest preparations.”
The old woman let out a dry, rattling cackle. “The man can track a deer through a winter storm and spot a MacDougall spy from a mile off, but he’s clueless when it comes tae the magic in his own bed. He’ll nae suspect a thing until ye tell him plain.” She leaned in, her eyes softening. “He’s a good man, Sìle. But a warrior’s heart is a fragile thing when it comes tae a bairn. Go on then. He’ll want tae hear it from ye. Go and tell him, lass. Taenight, if ye can.”
Sìle stood, pressing the vial into her pocket, and looked at the window for a moment at the afternoon light coming through it, ordinary and golden and completely indifferent to what had just changed inside this small warm room.
A bairn. Torin’s bairn.
She thought of his face when she told him, and she was out the door before she had finished the thought.
She did not tell him at breakfast because Fergus was there, in the middle of a story about a disputed boundary line that showed no signs of ending, and Torin was listening with the expression he wore when he was half listening and half working through something else entirely, and the moment was wrong.
She did not tell him in the corridor outside the Great Hall because Bryce appeared from the opposite direction with a question about the eastern patrol schedule and Torin stopped to answer it with the full attention he gave everything, and she stood beside him and watched his profile and thought about the way his face was going to change when she said the words and decided she needed more than a corridor.
She passed the council chamber door mid-morning and heard his voice inside, low and measured, going through something with his captains, and she slowed without meaning to and stood in the corridor for a moment with her hand near the latch and her heart doing something completely unreasonable.
She walked on.
By afternoon she had decided she was going to need the right place and the right hour, and she knew exactly where both of those were, and she went to find him with that purpose and the vial in her pocket and three months of unknowing finally resolved into something she could hold.
He was in the lower bailey when she found him, his hair windblown and his shoulders carrying the end of a long day, and he turned when she called his name and the exhaustion seemed to leave his frame the moment his eyes found her face.
“Sìle.” He crossed to her. “I was coming tae find ye. The men are settled and the gates are barred.”
She reached up and brushed a smudge of dust from his jaw, and his hand came up and caught hers there, and he pressed his mouth to her palm, his lips warm against the skin. Her thumb ran gently over the faint scar where the dagger had caught him months ago.
“Leave the rest for tomorrow,” she said, her fingers curling briefly against his face before she lowered her hand and took his instead. “I want ye tae come with me.”
He looked at her. She could see him reading her face the way he always read her face, assembling the pieces, and she kept her expression composed and gave him nothing yet, because she was saving it.
“Where?” he said.
She tilted her head toward the stair that led upward.
“The roof,” she said. “Where the air is clear and the stars are beginning tae wake.”
Torin’s brow quirked, a slow, predatory grin spreading across his face. “The roof, is it? I wonder what might be nudging the lady Macleod in that direction.”
She tugged on his hand. “Move yer weary bones, MacLeod. I’ve a mind fer the view.”
They climbed the winding stone turnpike, their boots echoing against the cold rock. Every few steps, Torin would squeeze her hand, his thumb tracing the back of her knuckles. The air grew thinner and colder as they rose, until finally, they pushed through the heavy door and stepped out onto the wide, flat expanse of the castle’s highest tower.
The Highland sky had gone deep and clear above them, stars pressing through the dark in their thousands, and the cold off the hills was the clean, sharp kind that made everything feel more real rather than less.
Sìle had given the instruction and a heavy fur had been laid near the ramparts.
“Come lie with me.” They lay down together the way they had the first time, her back against his chest, his arm beneath her head, and for a moment neither of them spoke and the castle breathed quietly below them and the stars held their positions above.
“D’ye remember,” Torin said, his voice low near her ear, “the first night we lay here? I told meself I’d brought ye up because ye needed somewhere quiet after the fright ye’d had.” He paused. “That was only partly true.”
“What was the other part?” she asked.
“I wasnae ready tae stop being near ye and I hadnae admitted that yet.” He was quiet for a moment. “I sat here for two hours after ye fell asleep telling meself it was courtesy.”
“It was nae courtesy,” she said.
“Nay,” he agreed. “It was nae.”
She turned onto her side to face him, and the starlight caught the lines of his face, the jaw she had memorized and the eyes she had spent months learning to read.
“Is something wrong, lass?” he said. “Ye’ve been different today. I noticed it this morning and I’ve been watching ye since.”
“Naething is wrong,” she said, and reached for his hand.
She took it and moved it carefully, pressing his palm flat against her middle, and felt him go completely still.
“The healer saw me today,” she said.
He did not breathe.
“Torin.” She pressed his hand a little firmer. “I am with bairn.”
The silence that followed was not empty but entirely full, the way a room feels when something enormous has just entered it and everyone is still deciding how to stand in relation to it.
“A bairn,” he said. The word came out rough and quiet and nothing like his usual voice.
“A bairn,” she said.
He stared at her for a long moment with an expression she had never seen from him before, unguarded in a way that went deeper than anything she had managed to draw out of him yet, and then he pulled her toward him and pressed his forehead hard against hers and she felt him shaking, just once, very slightly, before he brought himself back.
“Mo ghràidh,” he said, against her temple. “By God, Sìle.”
“I kent ye would say something eloquent,” she said, and felt him laugh against her hair, low and warm and entirely genuine.
He pulled back to look at her face and whatever he found there made something settle in his expression, large and certain and entirely at peace.
“A son?” he said. “Or a daughter?”
“We willnae ken fer many months yet,” she said, a tear of pure, unadulterated joy slipping down her cheek. She watched his face, and paused when he leaned forward to kiss away her tear.
“But son or daughter, they’re here. Our first, Torin. The one we thought we’d never see that day in the courtyard. ”
“A bairn,” he repeated, his voice thick. “By the stones, Sìle… I’m going tae be a faither.”
“The best the Highlands have ever seen,” she promised.
He kissed her then, and it was soft, lingering, and tasted of salt and starlight.
“I was so afeared,” he whispered against her lips. “That day when Raghnall threw the steel… I saw me whole life vanish. And now, ye give me this?”
“We gave it tae each other,” she reminded him.
Torin let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. He rolled onto her, not with his usual weight, but with a terrifyingly gentle care, his hands framing her face.
“Catriona,” he said, after a moment. “If it is a girl.”
She had not expected that name and she felt the weight of it move through her, understanding what he was offering and what it had taken to offer it.
“I think that is a beautiful choice,” she said quietly.
He nodded once. “And if it is a boy, I would call him Iosag.”
“Yer faither’s name,” she said.
“He was a poor laird and a worse faither,” Torin said, “but he was me faither. I think a man can be given a name that was handled badly and dae something better with it.”
She reached up and pressed her hand once against his jaw.
He pulled her close, and they stayed wrapped in each other’s arms as the moon climbed higher, the vast silence of the mountains a witness to their joy. Torin kept his hand anchored on her stomach, his thumb moving in small, possessive circles as if he could already protect the tiny life within.
“He’ll have tae be a MacLeod through and through,” Torin mused, his voice sounding more like the man who led armies again. “I’ll teach him the blade before he can walk.”
“And if it’s a lass?” Sìle asked, arching a brow. “Will ye teach her the blade too?”
Torin paused, a look of mock-terror crossing his face. “A daughter with yer fire and me temper? Heaven help the Highlands. I’ll have tae bar the gates and never let her out.”
“Ye’ll dae nae such thing,” Sìle laughed, leaning her head against his shoulder. “She’ll be a lady of the castle, just as I am. Strong and wise.”
“Aye,” Torin said softly, his teasing fading into something more profound. “She’ll be exactly like her maither. And I’ll be the luckiest man ever tae draw breath.” He pulled her closer, his chin resting on the top of her head.
As the first hint of grey began tae touch the eastern horizon, the castle remained quiet. No alarms sounded. No weapons rose. There was only the steady, rhythmic breathing of a laird and his lady, and the tiny, unspoken promise of the new life that would one day inherit the heather and the steel.
“And a son with me temper will have every woman in the Highlands exasperated with him before he can ride.”
“He will learn,” she said. “His faither did.”
She felt him go quiet at that, and then his arm tightened around her in the way it did when he had no adequate answer and had decided his arms would have to speak instead.
They did not go back inside.
The cold was considerable and neither of them mentioned it, and the stars went on above them in their thousands and the castle slept below and Torin kept his hand where it was and neither of them moved toward the stair.
“Are ye afeared?” he said, after a long quiet. “Truly.”
“A little,” she said, and felt him waiting for the rest of it. “The world is a hard place, Torin. Even behind good walls.”
“Nae fer them,” he said, and his voice had dropped into something low and absolute, the voice he used when he had already decided something and the deciding was final. “I have spent me life building these walls and raising these men and learning every approach tae this land. Whatever comes tae this glen will have tae come through me first, and I promise ye, Sìle, it will find that considerably harder than it expects.”
“I ken it will,” she said.
“The only thing they will ever fear,” he said, and she could hear the smile entering his voice, “is their mother’s expression when they have stayed out past dark.”
She laughed, a real one, surprised out of her, and she felt him press his mouth to the top of her head.
They lay quietly after that, his hand still over her middle, his thumb moving in slow and absent circles, and the Highland night deepened around them and the stars held their cold and ancient positions above.
“It first knew I was in trouble when we were at the loch. But this is where it started,” he said. “Fer me. This rooftop, that first night. I sat here with ye asleep against me arm and I understood that I was in a great deal of trouble and had been fer several days already.” A pause. “I told meself I would manage it.”
“Did ye?” she said.
“Evidently nae,” he said, with a dry and comfortable certainty. “Though I made an admirable effort.”
“Ye did,” she said. “I watched ye making it.”
His hand pressed a little warmer against her.
Above them a star crossed the dark and was gone before either of them could point at it, and the hills sat steady on every side of the castle, and the wind moved through the glen below with the long, patient sound of something that had been doing this since before the castle was built and intended to keep doing it long after.
“Go tae sleep, mo ghràidh,” he murmured. “I will watch the stars fer both of us taenight.”
She closed her eyes, and felt the solid warmth of him at her back and his hand anchored over their future, and below them the castle breathed in its quiet, and above them the sky went on without end, and she was exactly where she had chosen to be.
If you haven't already, feel free to leave an honest review here!
