Page 59 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

Scrch…scrch…scrch…

Caleb wiped the sweat off his brow with his sleeve as he pushed the sanding block. Recovered. Reset it and pushed it again.

Scrch…

“Will the babe like it, Da?”

Caleb smoothed a hand over the cradle he and wee Alexander were putting finishing touches on and dusted away the sawdust—a smoothed finish ready to be rubbed with oil.

Alexander, his lad of five years, conceived at Lughnasadh six years before, who’d come into the world with screaming lungs during the spring Beltane fires, leaned against his side.

He laid down the jar of crushed pumice they’d sprinkled onto the cradle flanks for the final sanding.

His arm came around his oldest son and squeezed him in return.

“Considering its big brother helped make it, the babe is certain to love it. Here.” He handed his chestnut-haired lad—the spitting image of his woman—the sharp engraver and turned the bottom over.

“A craftsman always carves his name into his work with pride.”

Alex smiled up at him.

“As I lay on Yule Night, alone in my longing…”

Distant singing could be heard rolling up the slope from the waters, muffled by the heavy snow lying in drifts against the willow fence.

“They’re coming!” called Peigi, leaning out a window.

He glanced up to see his songbird’s happy eyes dancing with excitement and her hair, braided over her crown like a country maiden, glowing more auburn today with the hearth fire crackling behind her in a welcoming glow.

The sweet scents of cinnamon and cloves wafted from the window straight to his nose.

“My songbird has been busy this morn, I can smell!” he called, cupping his hand around his mouth.

“Indeed, Gertie and I have just withdrawn the final tray of apple tarts!”

“Does mi lady need me to sample them and ensure they’re nay poisoned before we partake?” He waggled his brow in jest, his stomach always hopeful for whatever she baked, even as she threatened to rap his knuckles for sneaking morsels.

And these days, his waggle always earned him a giggle. He loved that he’d worked so bloody hard for it.

She laughed and shook her head as the apple of his eye climbed atop her stool and poked her head above the sill in front of her maw, ginger-blond waves and bright green eyes wide as she wiggled her fingers in a wave.

“Sakes, man, ye’re insufferable. Aye, come hither then.”

He chuckled and stood upright, rubbing the twinge that resided in his back from when he’d almost missed this all, almost succumbed to the whispering of the sidh

. He smiled. For it was a reminder to fight for what really mattered, not only when it mattered, but every day.

Moving around the cradle on the worktable strewn with tools, he banked the lantern, setting aside his sander. He dusted his hands and lumbered to his wife through the pathway he’d shoveled this morn. They’d only arrived from Freuchie the day before.

“And how are my bonny lasses?” he asked, cradling Esther’s wee head and pressing a kiss to it. Then his hand slipped across Peigi’s belly to pat the tiny bump he loved to play his flute to and kiss at night and as they lay skin to skin… He dusted a kiss to his woman’s lips.

“Yer lasses are ready for cousins.”

“And Niall?” He arched a brow.

She sighed. “The babe sleeps soundly, as is normal for him this time of day.”

Caleb harrumphed. “So he can be awake at the witching hour, playing with his untucked feet and demanding his mither’s breast,” he grumbled as she laughed about their almost one-year old son, named after the man who had once taken in a frightened boy of twelve and helped him survive.

Wee Niall had just been weaned a few months prior and was still protesting the decision.

The wassailing was growing louder.

“Uncl Sham is binging tweat!” Esther squealed and bounced on her stool.

Caleb’s hand slipped through the window to steady her as he bestowed a doting smile on his daughter, and he quickly took in Peigi’s humors to ensure she felt fine.

“Indeed, Uncle Seamus is bringing treats,” Peigi said.

“Do ye need to rest?” he murmured. “Need me to finish the cider for ye or knead the dough for the morrow? Have ye eaten this afternoon? Wish me to warm the morning stew for ye?”

“Sakes, man, nay fret so over me.” She blushed, her words exasperated but her lips a soft smile just for him.

She insisted she was fine, as she had while carrying every bairn.

She was so strong, so resilient, and yet, he’d never unsee how fragile she’d been carrying Alexander.

He would never vanquish from his mind her pale collapse, or the knot of dread it had pitted in his gut.

Blessedly with their fourth child, she was quite the opposite of sick, and often he saw her nibbling on fruits or pastry when she rested between tasks or sat at her writing desk, poring over the book of songs she was writing for their babes entitled Music of the Greenwood

.

She lifted a fresh tart to his mouth and Caleb sank his teeth into bliss as he moaned his pleasure, and grinned as she brushed the pastry flecks dusting onto his beard.

“The Laird Comyn has been hard at work as weel, I see.” She glanced to his craft through the open workshop door.

Alex, having stopped to frolic in a snow drift, joined them at the prospect of food.

“Have ye helped yer faither weel, darling?” she asked the boy.

Their son beamed. “He says I can bore the peg holes with the hand drill, Maw.”

Caleb scruffed his cap affectionately and thumbed over his shoulder at the worktable in the yard where a toy sat. “He built that toy horse mostly himself. Its head even has a lever to move up and down.”

She straightened Alex’s tartan cap that Caleb had just tousled. “Weel done, sweeting. Are ye ready to see yer cousins?”

Alexander’s soft brown eyes widened.

“They’re wassailing up the footpath as we speak,” she added.

The distant singing was growing louder as the Yuletide party arrived for the twelve days of Christmas.

“Da, may I?” his son begged him, folding his hands in prayer. “Please? Please? I havena tidied me tools yet but I want to see them so badl—”

“Go on.” Caleb tilted his head toward the shore on a grin. “Tidying will wait until the morrow.”

Peigi laughed and he closed his shed, barring it, then walked past their cows and sheep, cozy and lowing in their byres, to see the party in the distance, progressing up the lane as his son bounded through the snow.

He pushed through the door, into the aroma of holiday smells.

The cottage, adorned with fragrant pine boughs, was cozy and ready for their guests to gather around the hearth where a scythe and lyre blazon had been lovingly restored six years before.

Beside the door was a drum of wooden cups.

Outside, the yule log had been hauled to the bonfire pit and would soon be lit.

The ashen twigs were bound and ready for wee hands to use for wishes.

And gifts he’d made for his children sat beside the hearth, as did a basket of hand-carved trinkets he’d made for the others.

Wee Esther stared up at him with her bright green eyes, her strawberry ginger locks tamed beneath her knitted cap. She banged her wooden drum with the stick he’d polished on the lathe, and his woman feigned surprise, jumping exaggeratedly.

Esther giggled as Peigi whirled back and locked the oven, draping rags over each tray as Gertie helped to dress Esther in her wee mittens and scarf.

But when Peigi reached for the cauldron of mulled apple-brandy, he stole it from her on a frown.

“ No

hefting of cauldrons.”

He carried it steaming to the door for her.

She shook her head at him and hastened for her cloak above stairs.

“Ye ready?” He hoisted up his daughter of three years as Peigi returned downstairs with Niall swaddled in her arm.

She nodded and took his offered elbow.

They stepped beneath the window tracery of Taigh Spealaidh

.

His mither’s old cottage was now a two-story manor home where happy memories, past and present, vanquished the frightening ones that had transpired twenty years before and set in motion the fates.

“Unco Shamus! Unco Shamus!” Esther chirped upon his hip as she spied the party.

“That’s right, my darling.” Peigi smiled as they stood without. “Uncle Seamus. And Auntie Elizabeth, and Auntie Aileana and Uncle Jamie and all

yer cousins. And Uncle Jamie’s sister, Lady Brighde, and her husband, Laird—”

“Demin!”

Peigi frowned, but Caleb grunted with humor. Demon

of the Seas. His lass had once heard him speaking of the demon and now would never call Tormund MacLeod anything else.

“Tweet! Hope he bough tweet!” Esther again squealed her hope for treats as Caleb spun her around, much to the bairn’s delight.

“I hope he brought treats, too,” he said. It was the least Seamus owed him.

Snowflakes drifted down upon the glassy waters beyond.

Freuchie rose high in the distance, a sentinel against the winter sky.

His home, where he resided as laird, returned because of his enemy’s sister.

For as it turned out, Peigi had decided not to allow him to give up the castle, citing a loophole she would argue all the way to Court if she must: the bride tourney contract.

Seamus didn’t have the right to refuse the whole prize, nor did Caleb have the right to reject it.

And with the MacGregors in prison for the murder of Rubus Grant and Bale’s attempt to slay him and Seamus, witnessed by a hall of nobles and lairds, there was no longer much need to worry about reaving.

But his mother’s cottage was still their favorite place. In this simple life they’d created, it was the best of all worlds.

“ Lullaby, Lullaby, lay, lay, lullaby. As I lay on Yule night alone in my longing…

” sang his approaching kin.

His cousins and Jossy led villagers for the lighting of the yule log behind them.

Seamus tossed wee Alexander in the air, passing the lad to his Uncle James and to be kissed by all his aunts. And was that Uncle Niall he spied taking up the rear of this patchworked family he’d assembled out of the rubble of the past?

“Unco Shamus!” Wee Esther pointed and Caleb resigned himself to set her down to toddle into the snow. Of course Seamus

would be her favored uncle.

He shook wrists with his brethren, took the cups his songbird ladled with wassail, and passed them about as the bairns frolicked. He looked at this life they’d made. Basked in her peaceable smile. And gazed out at his parents’ graves where… Seamus Grant

had snuck a skull off a pike twenty years ago and buried it with the laird’s body in secret, shamed by his mother who had indeed softened him, keeping it secret.

His sire had rested in heaven all along.

“Music!” Aileana begged, to the delight of the ladies.

Peigi withdrew her lyre, gathering the bairns around the Yule log. He joined them, sitting down behind her, splaying his knees, and lifting his flute to his lips.

No need to chase the past anymore, when it had laid the path to this future.

The love doesn’t end here…