The Pirate Laird’s Sinful Bride – Extended Epilogue
Four months later…
Lilias stood at the window of the east wing solar and was profoundly sick into a basin.
Catriona held her hair back without comment, which was either professional discretion or the resignation of a woman who’d drawn her own conclusions three mornings ago and was waiting for her lady to catch up.
Lilias straightened, wiped her mouth with the cloth Catriona handed her, and looked at the view she’d chosen this room for, the kitchen garden below, the last of the winter herbs still holding on against the cold, the sea visible in the distance beyond the castle walls.
“It’s the third morning,” Catriona said, not making it a question.
“I’m aware of that.”
“And the bread at supper last night.”
“I’m aware of that too.”
“And the way ye turned green when Marta brought the salted fish through the hall yesterday.”
Lilias looked at her. Catriona looked back with the composed patience of a woman holding all the cards but was content to wait.
“I ken what it is,” Lilias said.
“I assumed ye did.”
“I’ve kenned fer about a week.”
Lilias sat down on the low bench by the window and looked at the kitchen garden and felt the full weight of it settle through her, not heavy exactly, not frightening exactly, something more complicated than either. She pressed her palm flat against her stomach, the way she’d been doing in quiet moments since she’d first suspected, the small private gesture of a woman coming to terms with something enormous in the only increments available.
She was going to have a child.
Ailean’s child.
She thought about the stone floor and the cut on his thigh and the look on his face on their wedding night when he’d said not ever, if it comes to that. She thought about what this would mean for him, what it would cost him to hear it, the old guilt he carried so quietly and so constantly that she sometimes forgot it was there until something reminded her.
She wasn’t going to be able to protect him from this one.
But she knew him now. She knew the man underneath the laird’s face and the controlled distance and the careful fear, the man who’d sat with her in kitchens at two in the morning and laughed at his brother’s grave and said I love you on a cliff road like it was the most obvious thing in the world. She knew what he was made of when things required something of him.
He was going to be all right. She was going to make certain of it.
“Tell nay one,” she said to Catriona.
“Obviously,” Catriona said, already moving to take the basin away.
The morning passed with the normal business of the castle, which had returned to its settled rhythm in the months since the festival. The Crown’s representative had come and gone, the investigation completed with the clan’s testimony confirming everything, and the Fraser name was cleaner now than it had been since before Ewan died. Kincaid’s alliance was formalized on paper and the winter convoys were running without incident along the coastal passage she’d charted from the watchtower. Gordon had stopped calling emergency council meetings, which was the clearest indicator of all, that things had stabilized.
She managed the morning well enough. The nausea came in waves and she’d learned its rhythms. The bread helped, the cold air helped, sitting very still in a room that smelled of anything other than salted fish helped considerably. By midmorning she was at her desk with the household ledger and a cup of something warm Catriona had prepared that smelled of ginger, and she felt approximately functional.
Ailean found her there just before noon.
He came in from the training yard, which she could tell from the state of him, coat off and sleeves rolled and carrying the alertness he had after a morning of physical work, his hair loose at his collar and his cheeks carrying the cold of the yard. He was entirely and inconveniently attractive. Five months of marriage had done nothing whatsoever to diminish that.
He looked at her with the quick read he gave her whenever he came into a room she was already in, the check that confirmed she was well before he said anything.
“Ye look pale,” he said.
“I’m always pale.”
“Paler than usual.” He crossed to the desk and looked at her more carefully. “Are ye well?”
She looked at him and decided that there was no version of this conversation she wanted to have sideways.
“Sit down,” she said.
He sat, which told her he’d already read something in her face. He pulled the chair close and looked at her with his forearms on his knees and gave her his full attention.
She held his gaze.
“I’m with child,” she said.
The silence that followed had weight.
She watched it move across his face, the sequence of it. Something opened in his eyes and then something older and more complicated moved through behind it, and she saw it and didn’t look away because looking away was not something she intended to do.
“How long,” he said. His voice came out level, which cost him something. She could see that it did.
“About eight weeks, I think.” She kept her voice steady. “Catriona suspects the same.”
He looked at her hands on the desk, then at her face, and she watched him work through it the way he worked through everything that frightened him, quietly and without showing how much it cost.
“Ailean,” she said.
He looked up.
“I ken what ye’re thinking.” She held his gaze without flinching. “Ye’re thinking about yer maither. Ye’re thinking about everything ye’ve carried since the night ye were born, about the cost of it, about what it means tae bind a woman tae that risk.” She kept her voice gentle and direct because he deserved both. “I need ye tae hear me when I tell ye that I’m nae frightened. And I need ye tae ken that that whatever happens, whatever comes next, this is something we are daeing together. Nae something ye’ve done tae me.”
The muscles in his jaw worked. He looked at the window, then back at her, and she saw the moment the old fear met the man he’d become and found it had less room than it used to.
“I ken,” he said, quiet and rough and meaning it.
“Dae ye?” She tilted her head. “Because ye’re daeing the jaw thing.”
He looked at her. “The jaw thing.”
“The tightening. Ye dae it when ye’re holding something ye haven’t decided whether tae say yet.” She raised an eyebrow. “Say it.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then, low and very honest: “I’m terrified.”
“I ken,” she said. “That’s allowed.”
“It daesnae feel allowed.”
“It is anyway.” She reached across the desk and covered his hand with hers and felt him turn his palm up the way he always did. It was the immediate instinctive response that she loved. “Ye’re going tae be a faither, Ailean. And ye’re going tae be extraordinary at it, because ye are extraordinary at everything ye decide tae dae properly, and ye’re going tae decide tae dae this properly.”
He looked at her for a long moment.
“Ye sound very certain,” he said.
“I’m always certain,” she said. “It’s one of me better qualities.”
The corner of his mouth moved, the almost-smile becoming the full version, the one that changed his whole face.
“Extraordinary,” he repeated.
“I said it and I meant it.” She squeezed his hand. “Ye’re going tae be wonderful.”
He looked at their hands and then at her face and she watched the fear and the love settle into each.
“A child,” he said. Like he was saying it properly for the first time.
“Aye,” she said. “A child.”
He stood, which she hadn’t expected, and came around the desk and crouched in front of her chair so they were at the same level, his hands finding her waist. He looked at her face and then, slowly, moved one hand from her waist and pressed it flat against her stomach, gentle and deliberate, saying everything he hadn’t yet found words for.
She covered his hand with hers.
They stayed like that for a moment in the quiet of the solar with the winter light coming through the window and the kitchen garden below and the sea visible in the distance, and she felt the full settled weight of it, the child and the man and the castle and the coast and everything they’d built from a wedding that was never supposed to be theirs.
“I’m going tae need a bigger ledger,” she said.
He looked up at her.
“Fer the preparations,” she said. “There are a considerable number of things tae organize.”
He laughed, low and genuine and slightly helpless, for he had stopped being surprised by it himself. She felt it against her hands and thought that this was the sound she was going to carry for the rest of her life and not once mind the weight of it.
He rose and pulled her up with him and she let him. He held her with both arms and his chin at her temple and his heart steady against her chest, and she pressed her face to his shoulder and felt the warmth of him.
Outside, the winter sea moved against the coast of Fraser land.
Inside, Lilias stood in the arms of her husband and thought she was looking forward to filling the pages of the ledger.
The End.
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