Epilogue

“Are you frightened?” Gertrude asked as she smoothed Edwina’s hair over her shoulders. “After all, you are marrying a man you barely know. I was well acquainted with my Marcus, yet I remember I nearly threw up before my wedding.”

Edwina met her own eyes in the wavy glass, which was one of her prized possessions. “Frightened” did not describe her emotions. Anxious, eager, and half dizzy with desire, aye, but she felt no fear.

She would lie in the arms of her love this night.

“And are you sure you want to wear your hair down?” Gertrude pressed. “You look beautiful, but I could give you an elaborate weave of braids, all piled up, if you like.”

“Down,” Edwina breathed. She wanted to go to her husband with all her defenses lowered and her heart in her hands. She wanted him to see her as the woman she was.

Her father entered the chamber behind Gertrude, big, bluff, and intrusively male.

“I wish to speak with my daughter before the ceremony, Gertie,” he said kindly. “Run along now.”

Gertrude went, after squeezing Edwina’s fingers. Edwina turned to face her father.

“Well, child,” he said, “are you certain about this?”

Edwina drew a deep breath, fighting her rampant excitement. “You have not come to forbid the union, Father? You bade me make my choice; so I have done.”

Cedric gazed at her; she could not read the expression in his eyes. “Ten lords a-leaping for your favor, and you choose the fool.”

“No fool, he.”

“And no titled bridegroom, either. I so wanted that for you, daughter.”

“Aye, Father, but I find Thorstan is a lord after all—that of my heart. And,” she added cunningly, “he did save my honor, if not my life.”

“A former mercenary,” Cedric pretended to lament, though now Edwina could see the twinkle in his eye.

“A strong man, just like you.”

“Good thing he did not murder Lord Julian; that is all we would need. Your Thorstan knows how to pull a stroke, I will say that for him.”

“Then bless me with a kiss, Father, and let us go to him.”

The great hall, when they reached it, seethed with guests and glowed with candlelight. Edwina’s mother, already in tears, hurried to meet them.

“So romantic, Edwina. A Christmas wedding after all.”

An aisle had been formed between the standing guests. Edwina clasped her mother’s hands and gazed down it, her eyes searching for one man, but she saw only the priest awaiting her.

“Come, daughter.”

She started down the aisle on her father’s arm, her feet seeming to float above the flagstones. The onlookers shifted as she passed them and suddenly…

She saw him standing quietly and waiting for her beside the priest.

Waiting for her, aye, and oh, how very handsome he looked with his spine straight and his brown hair all shining and—from whence had come that fine suit of clothes he wore?

She caught a glimpse of Alfred standing with him, serving as groomsman, and had her answer. Her fool came to her still in costume. But beneath it all, his was the truest heart she had ever known. She had encountered that honest, true heart when first he coaxed her to smile for him, when they danced together in the night, when he kissed her. And now she claimed it for her own.

She and Cedric paused before the altar. Edwina longed to extend her hands to Thorstan, but her father held on to them, turned, and addressed the crowd.

“My good friends, this is a day of which I have dreamed. I bade my daughter make a choice, and in so doing she has taught her old father a lesson. For she takes a self-made man, one who has earned his own way in the world by dint of courage, determination, and”—he grinned widely—“a touch of deception, just as I did. Which proves like needs like, and in the end the heart knows where it is at home.”

He placed Edwina’s hands in Thorstan’s, which felt warm and strong. Edwina looked into Thorstan’s eyes and saw that despite the sober occasion and his air of quiet dignity they danced with the merry humor she wished to see every day for the rest of her life.

The priest spoke the words, though Edwina barely heard them. She must have given the proper responses, for Thorstan smiled at her and his hands tightened on hers as his gladness became her own. She saw his lips move also, and thought about kissing them later, in the dark.

Abruptly, the main door of the great hall flew open, turning every head in the room. A man stood there, a weedy, trail-stained fellow whom Edwina recognized, after a stunned moment, as none other than Kenweth, the missing lord.

He gazed about in earnest confusion, focused on Cedric, and asked plaintively, “I think I had an invitation, though I seem to have lost it. But I came anyway. Am I too late?”

Thorstan began to laugh, and Edwina also. Hands still clasped, and surely joined, they turned to face their future, together.

A word about the author...

Born and raised in Western New York, Laura Strickland has been an avid reader and writer since childhood. Embracing her mother's heritage, she pursued a lifelong interest in Celtic lore, legend and music, all reflected in her writing.

She has made pilgrimages to both Newfoundland and Scotland in the company of her daughter, but is usually happiest at home not far from Lake Ontario, with her husband and her "fur" child, a rescue dog.

She practices gratitude every day and is delighted to be published by The Wild Rose Press, Inc.