You need to eat. You’ll have no strength left to work the fool garden if you continue on this way.” Sallie stood at the entrance to the partially walled area, impatiently tapping her foot.
“I’ll eat after a bit. I’m no hungry just yet. Go on without me.” Mairi hadn’t been hungry for the last week. Food didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Ramos was gone.
“I’m telling Mother. We’ll see what you have to say then.” Sallie turned with a swish of fabric, almost running back to the castle.
Mairi shrugged and continued digging in the soft, wet soil, knowing her aunt would be out soon.
With Alycie gone from Dun Ard, the men had stopped work on the small chapel they’d been building for her. Rock walls had been started, but all that had been finished was a large archway at the front, with the walls on each side no more than a two-foot-high outline of the rectangle the building had been intended to be.
Mairi’s first morning back at Dun Ard, Rosalyn had held her through a round of tears and then pulled her from her room and brought her out to this spot.
“You need something to occupy yer time while you wait for yer man to return,” she’d said, dragging Mairi by the hand into the walled area. “I should know. I’ve had some experience in waiting for a man in my day.”
“It’s no the same. He isna returning. He willna be able to.” The tears had started again, as if they’d never dry up.
Rosalyn shook her head, and lifted a hand to stop all protests. “We’re no going to be thinking like that now. With the first snow melted, it’s a good time to turn the earth here to prepare this patch. You can use the stones they gathered for the walls to build yer plant beds. In the spring, you can take plants from my herb garden and begin one of yer own. It’ll give you focus for yer mind while you wait.”
It had been easier to do as her aunt asked than to argue. And after the third day, Mairi had found that being alone out here with her hands busy did relieve her mind somewhat. She was too tired at night to do more than bathe and fall into bed.
Meals were the hardest, when everyone attempted to keep the conversation light and avoid any mention of Ramos. It had come as a shock to her at last evening’s meal to notice Caden join them for the first time in a week. It was with guilt she realized her cousin must have been suffering his own loss through all of this. She hadn’t given a thought to Alycie since she’d been back.
Caden had thrown himself into a new project just as she had. Apparently Rosalyn felt physical labor was a cure for all ailments of the heart.
Caden was building a new bathhouse, saying that he had no choice; either build it or run the risk of losing all their servants to broken backs caused by carrying water for Mairi’s nightly baths.
She’d almost smiled at that.
She did smile now, thinking about it as she placed rocks around the last of the individual beds she planned.
The grin faded as her mind continued to race. Losing Ramos was the single most horrible thing she’d ever experienced, and the pain of that loss was compounded by her overriding burden of guilt. Guilt about what future damage she was responsible for causing by having changed history. She knew if she had it to do over again she wouldn’t hesitate to save Sallie’s life, but she worried constantly about the ultimate cost for what she had done.
Not knowing what that price would be, or who would have to pay it, filled her heart with dread. But that was nothing compared to her grief at having no way of knowing Ramos’s fate.
When she heard the crunch of steps on the gravel behind her, she didn’t bother to turn from her task. Instead she steeled herself for the lecture she would receive from her aunt for not eating again.
“I’m glad to see you’ve kept yourself busy, my sweet.”
Shock coursed through her body at the sound of the deep baritone voice, a voice she had thought never to hear again.
She turned slowly, afraid it was only her imagination playing tricks on her, that the voice she heard, the face she saw every night in her dreams wouldn’t actually be there when she looked.
“Ramos,” she breathed. Then, rising unsteadily to her feet, she yelled it. “Ramos!” She could think of nothing but crossing the small length of the garden and getting her hands on him before he disappeared. Her feet tangled in her skirts, pitching her forward over the pile of rocks she’d gathered, but she never touched the ground.
He was there, catching her before she could fall, pulling her close, kissing the top of her head, her cheek, her lips.
She leaned back to look up at him, the damnable tears starting again, washing down her face. “You came back to me.”
“I could do nothing else,” he answered as he gently brushed the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs.
“And what of yer father? Did you no find him?” Was his return only temporary?
“I followed Reynard to Cromarty. There he booked passage on a ship.”
Mairi’s stomach sank. Then he would go again. It was only a matter of time. “So, you lost his trail?”
“No. I reconsidered my destiny.” He smiled at her, pushing the hair that had come loose from her braid back behind her ear. “He was still in Cromarty when I left, waiting at the inn for his ship’s sailing date.”
Suddenly she found it hard to slow her breathing. “Then why…? I dinna understand.”
“I came back to see if you truly meant your words. If you’d honestly rather be with me here in this time than in your own time without me, I think that might not be such a bad thing.”
Her heart beat so hard, she could hear the pounding inside her head. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying”—he took her hand in his and kissed the back of it, dirt and all, then dropped to one knee—“I’d give all I have to spend the rest of my life with you, Mairi, if you’ll have me. I don’t care where or when, I only want to be with you. Will you marry me?”
“Screaming would be bad, right?” she asked through renewed tears. Dropping to her knees, she threw her arms around his neck, peppering little kisses along his jaw, stopping only long enough to whisper “Yes, oh yes” into his ear.
“Looks like you’ve got a crier on yer hands, man.”
Mairi looked up through the blur of her tears to see Caden grinning down at them, his arm around his mother’s shoulders. Sallie and Colin had joined them, smiling as well.
“Looks like,” Ramos responded, pulling Mairi close to kiss her.
She closed her eyes and melted in the warmth of his embrace, his kiss taking her completely away from the muddy ground where she knelt.
Hoots and laughter sounded all around her, and only when they’d grown muffled did she break from the kiss to look up at her relatives.
Rosalyn laughed and clapped her hands soundlessly, while her children around her appeared to have grown silent. Mairi couldn’t be sure because all sound was cut off by the shimmering green sphere that surrounded her and Ramos.
Lights sparkled, colors swirled, dancing around them and through them as the sensation of rapid movement overtook them. When the light show reached its peak, Mairi could have sworn she heard Pol’s voice.
“Bargain struck. Bargain fulfilled.”