Page 42 of A Highland Healer Captured (Scottish Daddies #3)

S kylar stood in the great hall beneath a bower of late-autumn greenery, a sprig of rowan tucked behind one ear like a talisman against her own mother. Astrid Dunlop, Lady MacLennan, held two ribbons at arm’s length as if deciding which snake to fling at her daughter.

“The thistle ribbon,” Astrid declared, “says sturdy peasant with notions. The gold says proper bride of consequence. Choose with the wisdom God gave ye, Skylar.”

“The thistle one, then,” Skylar said sweetly, “since I’d hate to look like a consequence.”

Astrid’s sigh could have swept a chimney. “Ye provoke me on purpose.”

“Only a little.” Skylar reached to test the thistle-weave; it felt honest in her hand, like something that had touched rain. “Besides, gold will catch the firelight and blind half the hall.”

“Gold shows ye have standards,” Astrid returned, pinning Skylar with that mother-look that had toppled more than one Dunlop sister. “Speaking of standards?—”

“Here it comes,” Skylar murmured to the rowan sprig.

“—we’ve still nae settled the matter of yer disappearing the night ye did,” Astrid sailed on, as if she’d been simply waiting for a conversational gap to shove a cart through. “I maintain I was right.”

“In what universe,” Skylar asked, folding ribbon over ribbon, “does that statement end well for ye?”

“In the one where a maither kens her daughter better than the daughter kens herself,” Astrid fired back. “I said ye were courting disaster, gallivantin’ about with salves and stubbornness. And lo! A disaster. Ye were kidnapped! Heaven graces ye that it was a laird and nae some penniless brigand!”

“A laird who asked for me hand two weeks later,” Skylar said, too warm not to smile. “Which, by the by, is precisely the sort of consequence ye like.”

Astrid sniffed. “Outcome does nae justify method. Ye could’ve been?—”

“Eaten by wolves?” Skylar suggested. “Snatched by sprites? Whisked off by a man with a jaw like a siege wall and a son like a lamb?”

Astrid’s brows knit, but the corner of her mouth twitched. “Ye mock me, Skylar. But ye could have very well been killed. And ye ken it!”

“Aye,” Skylar said. “I mock ye because I love ye.”

Astrid tried to hand her the gold ribbon in a last-ditch stand. Skylar took both. “We’ll braid them,” she said. “Sturdy and consequence. Like ye and yer faither.”

Astrid pursed her lips at the flattery and pretended it had not landed. “And about that night,” she said, recovering. “We were in the middle of a reasonable discussion about yer future. Ye raised yer voice.”

“Ye raised yer expectations,” Skylar countered, winding the ribbons together. “And I, tragically, stayed myself.”

Astrid crossed her arms. “Ye said a thing I’ve never heard from a child of mine.”

Skylar squinted at the ceiling, recalling. “Was it ‘I’ll nae be bartered like a fine ewe’? Or ‘I’d rather be useful than ornamental’? Or?—”

“‘I’ll choose me life,’” Astrid quoted, a crack of thunder softening even as it sounded. “Ye said it like an oath.”

Skylar’s fingers slowed. She tied off the braid and glanced up. “Aye. And it turns out—rare miracle—I chose rightly.”

Astrid made a face that suggested she was trying not to admit she’d been out-argued. “Still,” she said, too briskly, “ye could’ve wrote to me and told me ye were in love.”

Skylar choked on a laugh. “Maither, I didnae ken I was in love. I thought I was furious. Then confounded. Then… aye.” Heat rose where she wished it wouldn’t. “The rest sorted itself.”

Astrid’s eyes sharpened, delighted by the hint of blush. “Och-ho. So that’s how it is.”

“Maither,” Skylar warned.

“Fine,” Astrid said, fighting a grin and failing. “Back to ribbons and chairs. These two benches need garlands, and the piper insists he’ll nae sit under a goose-feather wreath because last year he sneezed through the marches.”

“A tragedy,” Skylar deadpanned.

“A public one,” Astrid replied, but she had softened. She lifted a hand, thumb brushing the faint scar at Skylar’s cheekbone. “I was terrified, lass.”

“I ken,” Skylar mumbled. “So was I. Then he kissed me, and I forgot how to breathe.”

Astrid stopped as if the floor had changed angle. “Pardon?”

Skylar bit her lip. “Nothin’.”

“Saints preserve me from daughters,” Astrid muttered, but her eyes shone. “Right. We’re done sparrin’ for now. Go try the wreath with the ivy. If it makes me think of funerals, we’re burning it.”

Skylar was about to obey when the hall doors banged wide and a gust of laughter swept in before the women it belonged to.

Scarlett—radiant and quick, tartan pinned like she’d invented the wearing of it—strode forward with Mabel at her side, curls pinned badly and beautifully, cheeks apple-pink from the walk up the lane.

“Ye have the hall lookin’ like a forest,” Scarlett called, arms already open.

“Better than a church,” Mabel added, scooping baby Elise higher on one hip. The infant blinked at the greenery as if measuring which leaves might taste best.

“Or a funeral—” Skylar said under her breath before changing her tone quickly. “Scar!” Skylar flung herself into her eldest sister’s hug, then into Mabel’s, careful not to squish Elise. “Ye’re early.”

“So are geese,” Mabel said, kissing Skylar’s cheek. “We honk the loudest.”

“Where are the men?” Astrid demanded, counting heads and computing chaos.

“At yer ale,” Scarlett said cheerfully. “Kian promised he’d only sample, nae drain.”

“A promise is just a challenge with embroidery,” Astrid replied, but her face split into fondness as Ollie—a tow-headed blur—darted past her legs, Connor in hot pursuit. “Nay running in the?—”

“—hall,” all three Dunlop sisters chorused, to no effect at all.

“They’ll sleep hard tonight,” Scarlett said, utterly unrepentant. “Where d’ye want me?”

“Anywhere ye’ll be seen,” Astrid said. “Sets the tone. And daenae let the piper near feathers.”

Scarlett’s eyes danced. “Skylar, is it true Zander’s carving that mad perch in the elm for Grayson before the feast?”

“Aye,” Skylar said, warmth rising at his name. “He promised the lad months ago. He keeps promises.”

Mabel’s smile tilted sly. “All of them?”

“Aye,” Skylar said, refusing to be baited and failing. “Even the ones I didnae ask him to make.”

Astrid clapped once, command back at full wattage. “Enough wool-gatherin’. Scarlett, chairs. Mabel, candles. Skylar, come tell me again why ye think a wreath of barley is appropriate in a hall. Ye’ll have mice.”

“It’s a harvest wedding,” Skylar protested, gathering the braided ribbons and starting toward the high table. “If mice come, I’ll marry them off too and send them on.”

“God save me,” Astrid sighed. “I’ve birthed a jester.”

“Ye birthed three,” Scarlett called, “and wed two of us to men who deserved the trouble.”

“Which reminds me,” Astrid shot back, “where are those men now ?”

“Fetching barrels,” Mabel said, and the hall answered with the deep roll of casks and Kian’s laugh booming like a friendly avalanche. Campbell’s voice followed, coaxing Ollie down from a trestle table he had no business climbing.

Skylar breathed it in: the clatter and quarrel that meant home, the thick braid of voices she knew in her bones. For all Astrid’s needling, there was grace in being needled by a woman who would fight God to keep you breathing.

Astrid caught her looking and softened again. “I’ll stop fussin’ soon,” she said, lying like a mother.

“Ye can fuss all ye like,” Skylar said, looping the thistle-and-gold braid over the chair that would hold her as a wife. “It sounds like love.”

Astrid’s mouth trembled, and in self-defense she pointed. “That bow is crooked.”

“It’s perfectly—” Skylar began.

The doors banged again

A soft murmur fell over the hall and then swelled, surprised and pleased. Ariella slipped through the threshold, dark hair braided, chin tilted like a lass who had taught herself not to be bowed by a room. She looked thinner, stronger, and annoyed with her own pulse for quickening in public.

“Ari,” Skylar breathed, relief and mischief blooming at once.

Astrid arched a brow as only she could. “We’ll put her to work,” she said briskly, swallowing whatever else the sight stirred in her.

“After I hug her,” Skylar said, already moving.

“And after I get a look at her,” Scarlett declared, sweeping in behind. “If any man’s come sayin’ he’s claimed her, I’ll send him home in a sack.”

“Ye’ll need a big sack,” Mabel observed, patting Elise’s back when the babe let out a delighted squeal at the polished chandeliers.

“Ladies,” Astrid cut in, maternal command ascending to a pitch that could level a barn, “we have two hours to turn this hall from harvest to heaven. Move .”

“Aye, General ,” they chorused, and the hall obeyed—laughing, bickering, bending, and, under Astrid’s relentless eye, becoming exactly what Skylar had not known she wanted until she had it.

She tied the last knot at the high table and looked down the aisle of rushes and light, where in a little while she would walk toward the man who had stolen her on a road and then given her back to herself.

“Sturdy and consequence,” she murmured, smoothing the ribbon. “It’ll do.”

Behind her, Astrid sniffed. “It’ll shine .”

And for once, Skylar didn’t argue.

The day slid toward its appointed hour as if it had been waiting years for the cue.

When the small bells over the gate chimed—someone’s bright idea of a wedding peal—the hall had transformed: barley and ivy woven into crowns; rowan and birch swept up the pillars like living ladders; beeswax candles honeying the air.

The piper stood resolute under a non- feathered wreath and tested a tune that remembered both grief and glee.

Skylar’s gown was simple Highland wool, soft and clean with a fall that pleased her because it did not ask to be performed with. Astrid had insisted on a narrow band of gold at the waist—“so folk ken ye’re to be wed, nae off to gather nettles”—and had allowed the thistle braid to remain.