Page 44 of So Close To Heaven (Far From Home #11)

One year after Bannockburn

The courtyard rang with the sound of children—shouts, laughter, the heavy thud of boots too large for small feet. Ivy stood in the arch of the doorway, her arms folded, watching with a smile that deepened the creases at the corners of her eyes.

Alaric was at the center of the chaos, as he always was when the children tumbled out of doors.

He shed his mantle of laird as easily as his cloak, striding after his sons with mock ferocity.

Eight-year-old Duncan squealed as his father’s hand closed around him and lifted him bodily from the ground, swinging him up and onto a broad shoulder.

Beside him, six-year-old Malcolm shrieked with delight and charged in to rescue his brother, a wooden sword clutched tight in his small hand.

Alaric bellowed in mock outrage, staggering back as Malcolm thumped at him, then let Duncan slide down to wrestle free.

As entertained as she was warmed by the sight, Ivy shook her head—two boys bred for endless energy and mischief, matched only by their father’s patience, and the boyish enthusiasm that made him such a great father.

Near the steps, Lily sat with her little sister Elspeth, carefully twisting her long strawberry blonde hair into two long braids.

At ten, Lily had the long-limbed grace of girlhood, and her face was still soft with a child’s openness.

Elspeth, four years old, fidgeted, her small feet restless against the stone, though she bore her sister’s attentions with a long-suffering sigh.

Ivy’s gaze lingered on Lily. For the longest time, it had been just the three of them—herself, Alaric, and Lily.

The two miscarriages that came after Lily had left Ivy raw, yet they had bound Alaric to Lily all the tighter.

He had never once let the girl believe she was anything but wholly his.

And Ivy knew they would never tell her otherwise—not the truth of her birth, not the secret of Ivy’s strange journey through time.

That knowledge lived only in the hearts of four: Ivy, Alaric, Claire, and Ciaran.

Ivy stepped down into the courtyard. Lily glanced up to catch her mother’s eye, her smile bright. Ivy returned it, tenderness swelling in her chest, as she sat with the girls. Elspeth glanced up, her face wrinkled against the sun, and then casually laid her arm across Ivy’s lap.

Alaric spotted her then. He was on all fours at the moment, with Malcolm on his back, and Duncan pulling at his leg—can’t let the dragon reach the steps.

Her husband grinned, boyish in the moment, grimacing a wee bit as Malcolm bounced heartily atop him, trying to slow down the dragon. “Ye’ve come to save me, love?”

She laughed, shaking her head. “I doubt there’s saving you from those two.”

“They’ll make ye bluidy again, Da,” Lily predicted, her eyes on her task, referring to the nosebleed Duncan had caused just last week, in a similar circumstance.

“We’re headed out for the bilberries in a moment,” Ivy called out. “Do you boys want to come? Or are you happy slaying the dragon?”

Before they might have answered, Alaric found a surge of strength and fought off the knights .

While still on his knees, he dumped Malcolm off his back, and then was able to rise to his feet, doing so in exaggerated fashion, in slow-motion with his arms flexed and while roaring.

Ivy knew what would come next, had seen it dozens of times.

Duncan and Malcolm clambered to their feet, each latching onto their father’s strong arms. Obligingly, Alaric flexed even harder, growled louder, and raised his arms until the boys’ feet rose off the ground.

“Dragon wins again,” he said, walking the boys over to the steps. He winked at Ivy, “I ken we’ll all get to the bilberries.” He lowered his arms, depositing the boys just in front of Ivy and her daughters. He muttered then, “ Jesu , it’s got to be kinder to my bones than this.”

Five minutes later, they headed outside the gates, toward the berry patches up near the ridge, close to the graveyard where Alaric’s parents, Gwen and her son, and other MacKinlays were buried.

Alaris walked ahead, Elspeth on his shoulders now, Lily holding his hand, skipping at his side, telling him about today’s lesson.

“Mama told me a story today about a girl named Joan who led armies. A girl , and she wore armor, and the men followed her. She was called the Maid of Orléans, and she fought the English and never ran from them.”

“A fine warrior, by the sound of her,” Alaric allowed.

“Da, at one point, she traveled over three thousand miles in less than two years!” Lily exclaimed. “I want to be a warrior just like the Maid of Orléans.”

“Aye, ye can be anything ye set your mind to, lass, whatever path ye choose.” Then his voice dropped, firmer, though no less warm. “But ye’ll walk that path here, close to Braalach. Far and wide is for others. My daughter’s place is at home.”

Seeming none the worse for having her wings clipped so neatly, Lily carried on, relaying more details about Joan of Arc’s triumphs.

So often, during her lessons with Lily and Elspeth, Ivy wished she could recall more—details, dates, and particulars.

She wracked her brain for fresh ideas, content worthy of their little classroom, even exchanging letters with Claire for inspiration.

Duncan and Malcolm had their own tutors, and Ivy was content to leave their schooling in other hands.

The boys’ education was steeped in numbers, land charters, the art of the sword, and the duties they would one day inherit—things Alaric insisted upon, and subjects Ivy could not pretend to master.

But with her daughters, she felt a fiercer calling, to give them what the century itself would have denied.

She walked behind Alaric and the girls, with Malcom’s hand in hers.

He’d not taken naps in years, but he did slump in the middle of the afternoon, and leaned heavily on his mother’s arm, his feet dragging.

Duncan, tireless wonder that he was, was running through the tall grass that flanked the path, chasing anything that moved as was his way.

Ivy let herself breathe in the sight. The scene—anytime the six of them were together—never got old.

She rarely thought of the twenty-first century, hadn’t in a long time now.

That world felt thin and far away, a time and place that, in truth, she’d not fought too hard to hang onto.

In the richness of this life—her children’s laughter, Alaric’s steady heart, the sure stones of Braalach—Ivy knew this was where she was supposed to be.

This was home. This was hers.

***

The keep slept, the stones hushed, save for the faint whistle of the wind outside the shutters.

He ought to have been sleeping, yet his mind wandered as it often did in the still hours.

Years of steel and blood had left their mark, not only on his body but on the darker corners of his spirit.

He had seen men fall, break, shatter, hopes undone, had felt the gnaw of doubt that even victory could not soothe.

War was hard, and aye, sometimes love—joy itself—was chased into a darker place.

Invariably, inevitably, Ivy snagged him from the depths, pulled him back toward her, toward their bairns.

She lay now on her stomach, the furs tangled about her hips, her back bare to him.

The fire’s glow caught along the curve of her shoulder, the sweep of her spine.

With his back against the headboard, he lifted a hand and traced idle patterns across her skin, the pad of his finger stirring gooseflesh in his wake.

It was a game between them, one begun long ago. He traced, he asked; she answered. Or sometimes she did the tracing, and the questions were hers.

“Ye have a favorite child?” he asked quietly, following the line of her shoulder blade.

Her voice was languid, thick with drowsiness and the sated glow of their lovemaking. “I do not. Do you?” A little laugh slipped out. “Would you admit it?”

“The questions are mine, and nae yers at this time,” he rumbled.

“Fine.” He saw the ghost of a smile touch her profile.

He drew a slow circle at the small of her back. “Ye have a favorite laird?”

“I might.” She gave a negligent shrug, her smile widening.

“Only truth while the finger traces the back,” he reminded her, echoing words she had once spoken years ago, when she first drew her fingertip across the scars that ridged his skin.

“Fine,” she sighed, feigning huffiness. “But he totally looks like a man who could—and possibly has—turned feelings into felonies. And sometimes—well, I hate to admit this—but sometimes he leaves in the morning and forgets to kiss me goodbye. And that hurts. Otherwise,” her voice softened, “he’s nearly perfect. ”

Alaric’s chest tightened, the jest turned truth, and he tucked the information away. He would not forget again.

He traced lower, his touch gentling. “Do ye ken we’d have even more bairns, if war dinna call me so oft?”

Her sleepy laugh answered him. “We’d need a bigger keep, I fear.”

Silence stretched easy between them. His finger slowed, stroking rather than drawing.

“Do ye ken ye’re closer to heaven now, love?” he asked at last.

She stirred, rolling onto her side to meet his gaze. In her eyes shone love, and perhaps a touch of wistfulness, that he had remembered what she’d once said.

“Alaric,” she whispered, lifting a hand to his cheek. “This life—here, with you, with the children, at Braalach—this is everything. This is heaven.”

He bent to kiss her, slow and deep.

And aye, so it was.

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The End