The Laird’s Wicked Desire - Extended Epilogue

The Laird’s Wicked Desire – Extended Epilogue

Two months later…

The chapel that had held nothing but two candles and a nervous proposal two months past now overflowed with more people than its old stone walls had likely seen in a generation.

Roddy stood near the altar in a fresh doublet that Edwyn had needled him into, tugging at the collar for the third time in as many minutes until Edwyn, standing beside him, reached over and swatted his hand away entirely.

“Leave it be. Ye look like a fulfilled laird fer once instead of a man who’s spent the morning mucking out his own stables.”

“I did muck out me own stables this morning.”

“Aye, and I told ye nae tae, on account of it being yer wedding day, and ye did it anyway, which tells me marriage isnae likely tae change ye half so much as Muire seems tae think it will.”

“She kens exactly what she’s marrying.”

“Daes she, though?” Edwyn’s mouth twitched. “Because from where I’m standing, ye look considerably more nervous than ye did riding intae Eideard’s camp.”

“That’s different.”

“Nae so much, if ye ask me.”

“Aye. Eideard didnae have the whole of Mackenzie territory watching tae see if I’d trip over me own feet.”

The Great Hall’s doors stood open at the chapel’s far end, merchant families crowded in behind the assembled clan leaders, faces Roddy recognized from council meetings sitting easily beside faces he only knew from ledgers Muire had shown him. Traders from the southern routes, families who’d sheltered under his roof through the worst of the poisoning crisis, all of them craning for a better look at the doors.

Mòr sat in the front row. Ferchar, seated two rows back, had already begun arguing with the merchant beside him about whether the ale for the feast afterward had been watered down. It struck Roddy as reassuringly, thoroughly normal for a day that felt, in every other respect, entirely unlike any other he’d lived through.

Then the doors at the back of the chapel opened fully, and every other thought in Roddy’s head went quiet at once.

Muire stood at the threshold with her hand tucked into her father’s arm, Tamhas thinner still than he’d been before the harbor fire but standing straight and steady beside her, color returned properly to his face for the first time since Roddy had cut him free of that wagon wheel.

Her gown was simple, nothing like the elaborate silks Roddy suspected some lairds’ daughters wore to their own weddings, but it suited her exactly. The deep green of it catching the light from the high chapel windows, her hair loose the way he liked it best, one small braid pinned back from her face.

She caught his eye across the length of the chapel and, instead of the composed, demure expression Roddy half expected of a bride on her wedding day, she lifted one eyebrow at him, the same look she’d given him over the rim of a bathtub.

Roddy felt his own mouth pull into a smile, something he had no effort to control any longer.

The walk down the aisle took considerably longer than the actual distance warranted, Tamhas moving carefully, still favoring one side more than the other. He waved off every offer of assistance from the guests nearest the aisle with the same stubborn impatience Roddy had come to recognize as a family trait shared fully by his daughter.

When they finally reached the altar, Tamhas didn’t immediately release her arm.

“Ye ken,” he said, loud enough for at least the front three rows to hear plainly, “I could still change me mind at this exact moment, if the mood struck me.”

“Da.”

“I’m simply saying it’s still technically possible.”

“Tamhas,” Roddy said, “if ye mean tae renegotiate yer blessing in front of half the clan councils of the western coast, I’d ask ye dae it quickly, as I believe the priest has somewhere else tae be by sundown.”

That pulled a genuine laugh from the gathered crowd, and Tamhas’s mouth twitched into something that gave up the pretense of stern fatherly reluctance entirely.

“Take her, then,” he said, finally releasing Muire’s arm and stepping back. “Ye’ve more than earned it, whatever trouble the two of ye brought each other along the way.”

“I intend tae spend the rest of me life making certain it was worth the trouble.”

“See that ye dae.”

Muire stepped up beside him, and Roddy took her hand, the same gesture he’d made in front of his guard on that hillside, in front of her father in the healer’s chamber, now finally, properly, in front of everyone who mattered at all.

The priest’s words passed in a blur. Roddy only half attended, his eyes fixed more on Muire’s face than on the man speaking them, and he answered when prompted with a voice steadier than he expected of himself, given how unsteady the rest of him felt standing there.

“Dae ye, Roddy Mackenzie, take this woman—”

“Aye.” He didn’t wait for the rest of the question, and the priest, after a brief pause, simply continued on with a small, tired smile that suggested this wasn’t the first impatient groom he’d married in this chapel.

When Muire’s turn came, she paused a half-second longer than he had, just long enough to catch his eye and let something pass between them that needed no priest’s blessing to make it true. She gave her own answer with the same flat, unhesitating certainty.

“Aye.”

The chapel erupted the moment the priest pronounced them wed, Edwyn’s voice rising loudest of all in a cheer that had considerably more relief in it than decorum. Ferchar began shouting something about the feast being ready whenever the newlywed couple cared to stop kissing.

Roddy hadn’t actually kissed her yet, but he remedied that oversight immediately, drawing Muire in close enough that the rest of the chapel fell away for the length of it.

“Ye did that on purpose,” she murmured against his mouth, “answering before he’d even finished asking.”

“I’ve waited long enough fer it. I dinnae see the sense in waiting fer the priest tae finish his sentence as well.”

“Ye’re a terribly impatient man, Roddy Mackenzie.”

“Aye. I’ve been accused of worse.”

She laughed and let him lead her back down the aisle through the crowd of well-wishers, past Mòr’s knowing smile and Edwyn’s loud, entirely undignified cheering. Past her father standing straighter than he had in weeks, watching them go with an expression that had finally, fully let go of whatever worry he’d carried since the night his daughter first ran from a burning harbor into a stranger’s protection.

Outside the chapel, the whole of Mackenzie land spread out under a clear afternoon sky, merchant families and clan leaders already spilling toward the hall where the feast waited.

Roddy stood for one long moment at the chapel doors with his wife’s hand in his, feeling happy and fulfilled. It was the life he always wanted. No blade at anyone’s throat, no scout riding hard through the gates with worse news, nothing at all waiting to be carried alone.

“Well, Laird Mackenzie,” Muire said, tipping her face up to his. “What now?”

“Now,” Roddy said, “we go and see if Ferchar’s managed tae ruin the ale before we’ve even had a proper glass of it.”

She laughed, and they walked together into the noise and warmth of the hall, hand in hand, with nothing left ahead of them but the ordinary, hard-won business of a life they meant to build together, one stubborn argument at a time.