“Aye, well, the Douglas will find her. We’ve Aikens on our land, come to that, so the name alone will help. Folks will tell Archie much that they would not have told the Colvilles. We’ll find them, sweetheart.”
“I’d like to keep Kit here until we do,” Sibylla said. “Aye, sure,” he murmured. “I’ve a strong feeling that the place will seem a bit empty, anyway, until we have bairns of our own. I expect your father and my mother to make a match of it and keep Rosalie and Alice with them at Akermoor.”
“Do you mind if that happens?”
“Nay,” he said. “Your father finally admitted that the dispute was his fault, because he was already married to your mother when he met mine. It seems hard to imagine my mother stirring such passion in any man, but he swears he had only to see her to lose his wits over her.”
“She was married then, too,” Sibylla said. “She told me your father caught them together and knocked my father down.”
“Did she?” He chuckled. “Sir Malcolm did not tell me that. He said only that he and my father had had a falling out, that it was all his own fault, and that she had been furious with him for making her the focus of such attention. I’d not be surprised if she played that part so convincingly that she persuaded herself it was true.”
“Until they met again, at all events,” Sibylla said. “If they do marry, I expect she will much enjoy setting the household at Akermoor to rights, for all that Father believes it runs smoothly now.”
“Aye, she will,” he said. “I have great respect for her, but I do look forward to making decisions about Elishaw without always wondering what she will say.”
A small silence ensued.
At last, Sibylla said, “Do you fear that I may be too much like her?”
His arm tightened around her and then he raised himself on his elbow and leaned over her. “Nay, sweetheart, I don’t fear you. At first, I did think you might be like her. But I can talk with you, and even when we disagree, we soon seem to find common ground. The fact is that when I am with you, I like myself and I want to know what you think and hear what you will say.”
“I often find myself wondering what you will think or say about things, too,” she said. “But we can make each other fiercely angry, too.”
“Aye, you’re gey lucky you had an army to protect you today, but after the way I infuriated you in Edinburgh . . .”
“I’m content now,” she said. “I’m not sure why I was so angry then, come to that. It all just seemed to boil over and spill out when you took the blanket off me and I saw where we were. It felt as if I were watching it happen, listening to some other woman snarl at you.”
“Aye, well, mayhap we both lost our wits, sweetheart.” He bent then and kissed her on the lips, gently.
“That’s the fifth time you’ve called me sweetheart tonight,” she said.
“Do you count such things?”
“Nay, but you had never done so before. You said only that I’d make you a suitable wife, just as your mother had said to me.”
“I can see that you mean to plague me with that. You should remember instead that I also told you I wanted you for my wife more than I’d ever wanted anything else. Do you know why I was so angry today?”
“Aye, sure, because I rode like a harridan into the midst of the Douglas army. I didn’t know what else to do. I feared they’d kill you for conspiring with the Percys.”
“And I thought you would kill yourself. If you had, sweetheart, I’d have wanted to die, too. Sithee, you have become precious to me. I never knew I could care so much, could love someone so much. But I have only to see you—”
“Kiss me, Simon. You talk too much, and I want you to make me feel as only you can make me feel.”
“I vow, my heart, I can make you feel much more.” “Braggart. Prove it.”
He did.
Epilogue
Selkirk, October 1391
I, Annabel, take thee, Malcolm, to my wedded husband . . .”
“That’s me grandame!” the three-year-old heir to Buccleuch and Rankilburn, who stood beside Sibylla, said clearly into the pause.
As the bride continued with her vows, Sibylla looked down at her husband’s beaming nephew, smiled back at him, and raised a finger to her lips.
Wat Scott, on his other side, bent and whispered in his son’s ear.
Robbie Scott nodded once, listened, then nodded again, whereupon Wat lifted him up and held him so he could see better. Sibylla smiled again when she saw the little boy put a hand over his mouth as if to remind himself to keep still.