“You are sweet enough to do just fine without dessert every night.”
Marjory sighed, but nodded. “I likes it here better than home, anyways.”
“That is good, because this is our home now.”
“Here?” Marjory asked with a dubious look around the great hall.
Caelis leaned across the table and tugged Marjory’s braid. “Nay, mo breagha. Our home is to the south. Your mama meant Scotland.”
“Isn’t England in the south?” Eadan asked.
Marjory’s eyes narrowed. “I do not want to ride horses for days and days and days anymore.”
“The ride to the MacLeod holding is not so long as to England,” Caelis promised.
It was long enough, and he would learn that children Marjory’s age did not make a discernable distinction between a couple of days shy of a single sennight and two full weeks. Anything over a day was going to earn her disfavor.
“We are going to the island,” Eadan said to his sister. “We’ll have to ride horses for that.”
“How did you know about that?” Shona asked.
Had her son had another of his dreams?
“You said so. Our family is on the island.” Eadan looked at her as if he was worried she’d forgotten.
Shona found herself laughing. “I did say so. You are right.”
“We will leave for Balmoral Island tomorrow morn,” Caelis informed the Sinclair laird.
“We will go with you,” a big, dangerous-looking man who sat beside the laird’s daughter Ciara said.
Ciara looked at her husband with question. “I thought we were not making our monthly trip to the island until the new moon.”
“I have a mind to get to know Vegar’s English mate and the woman who would tame the MacLeod.”
“He is not laird yet,” Shona pointed out, but ’twas clear these fierce warriors saw Caelis’s place in the clan as foreordained.
“You doubt he will be?” the dark-haired warrior asked.
“Nay.”
The man nodded his approval of her agreement.
Ciara made a very unladylike sound of amusement. “Lady Heronshire, this is my husband, Eirik.”
“He is prince of the Éan,” Caelis said to Shona in her head.
Shona stood enough to give a half curtsy to the Chrechte royal. “It is an honor to meet you.”
The prince’s eyes narrowed. “There is no mockery in your scent.”
“Nor should there be.”
Eirik’s gaze flicked to Caelis. “The mating link has formed already?”
“It began six years ago,” Caelis affirmed.
Eirik’s nod was both approving and thoughtful this time. “Ciara said your former laird kept you from your true mate.”
“My own idiocy and misplaced loyalty did that.”
Shona had wanted nothing more than for the man to admit his culpability, but she did not enjoy the self-recrimination in his tone in the least little bit.
Patting his thigh, she said, “We have found our way back to each other and that is what matters.”
“I think certain members of the MacLeod will see things differently.”
Confusion washed over Shona. Was the prince warning of the opposition she would face returning to her former clan as the mate of a Faol?
“He is speaking of the Chrechte among the clan. A true mate is sacred and the fact that Uven withheld you from me gives me unquestionable right to challenge him as pack leader and laird.”
Casting a sidelong glance at the man she’d promised to marry, Shona considered his words. “My return to the Highlands was fortuitous, it would seem.”
“Aye, fortuitous indeed,” Prince Eirik agreed.
Ciara nodded, her expression the peaceful one Shona identified with spiritual counselors who truly sought to bring those who followed them closer to their Creator. “It is imperative that Uven be deposed as laird over the MacLeod and we thought we had found the answer in Caelis.”
“But?” Shona prompted, having heard the hesitation in the celi di’s voice.
“While the Scottish king will not involve himself in a clan matter so long as the one challenging for right to lead is a MacLeod, garnering the support of the clan is another thing entirely. Uven’s betrayal of Caelis and the proof of that betrayal found in both you and your children will be enough to sway most.”
“Both children?” Shona asked Caelis.
“The very fact that mo breagha does not carry my blood is an affront to our bond that can be laid squarely at Uven’s door.”
“What did you say, Da?” Marjory asked in her child’s mixture of English and Gaelic.
“I said you are my daughter.”
Marjory beamed up at the big warrior. “You are my da.”
“Aye.”
“My da, too,” Eadan claimed firmly.
“Absolutely,” Shona answered at the same time as Caelis said, “Aye,” in his deep warrior’s voice.
Happy with their agreement, Eadan went back to his food. Marjory, who ate small bites provided by Vegar, continued to play with her doll, once again content to ignore the adults around her.
Audrey had turned pensive as they talked and Shona grew worried.
“Is aught wrong, dear friend?” she asked in a side whisper.
Audrey looked at Shona and then Vegar and back to Shona. “What will become of us?”
Shona did not understand the question. Did Audrey mean her and Thomas? The Sinclair had promised to train Thomas in the ways of the Chrechte and Audrey was now married to Vegar.
Sudden melancholy overcame Shona as what these realities actually meant to her. Was she to lose the rest of her family as she had lost first her mother and then more recently her father?
“Caelis,” Shona said through their mating link, not sure what she expected her mate to do to help.
But the thought of losing both Audrey and Thomas was untenable.
“We will travel to Balmoral Island with them,” Vegar said to Audrey. “Afterward, I will go with Caelis to challenge Uven. I am to be his second.”
Audrey’s expression showed as much relief as Shona felt. They were not to be separated.
Despite her earlier words on the subject, Marjory was surprisingly content to get on a horse with Caelis so they could make the journey to the sacred caves for Audrey and Vegar’s mating ceremony. Her daughter resisted riding with Shona at all, however, and made something of a production of switching between Caelis’s and Vegar’s mounts.
Both warriors were infinitely patient, making sure that Eadan felt as welcome as his younger sister. The five-year-old spent as much time with the warriors on their mounts as on his own horse. And somehow, both men remained vigilant to surrounding dangers, even though the contingent riding toward the caves was large.
Thomas accompanied them, of course, as did the laird and his entire family, even the new babe. A full company of Chrechte soldiers surrounded them, including four wearing the MacLeod colors, ensuring that Audrey’s mating ceremony would be better attended than any wedding she might have had back in England.
Pleased for her friend, Shona was nevertheless confused.
She understood Prince Eirik and Ciara coming. Apparently as Vegar’s prince and celi di of the Faol, both would play part in the ceremony.
Neither Vegar, nor Audrey, however, was a member of the Sinclair clan. While Vegar was clearly welcome in the Sinclair keep, he had not sworn fealty to its laird.
So why had the man and his family come? For the Sinclair to take his small children—Chrechte or not—from the keep, even on his own land, was to put them at risk.
Shona would have asked Audrey if she knew the reasoning behind such unexpected witnesses to her mating ceremony, but the younger woman was clearly lost in her own muddle of nerves and bemusement.