Page 69 of So Close To Heaven
His words struck her still. She hadn’t expected such certainty from him, so blunt and absolute. For a moment she could only stare, overwhelmed by the beauty of it.
She blinked rapidly, undone by his words. And she knew then in that moment, what she’d suspected for some time, that she was in love with him.
“I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve that kind of faith,” she whispered, her voice unsteady, “but I’m thankful for it. I feel the same. Iknowyou, Alaric. And it’s enough. It’s more than enough.”
By the time the sun dipped low, casting long golden shafts across the hills, the road bent sharply, and Braalach came into view.
Ivy drew in a sharp breath. The keep stood high on a rise, its high gray walls crowned with towers, banners snapping in the wind. The castle was tall, reaching up toward the expanse of open sky, and the loch in the foreground spread wide and gleaming at its feet. Beyond, the hills rolled away in every direction, vast and unbroken, as though the world itself opened here.
It stole Ivy’s breath.
Beside her, Alaric straightened in the saddle, pride unmistakable in the set of his jaw. “Home, lass,” he said quietly. “At last.”
Something in Ivy shifted, deep and certain. The moment her eyes settled on it, she felt it—the same ache in her chest she had carried as a girl when she believed she’d touched the edge of heaven.
“Alaric,” she breathed, her voice trembling. “This—oh, my gosh, I just got goosebumps.” A laugh broke out of her, half-sigh, half-wonder. “When I was a kid at my grandparents’ house, I used to run barefoot through the soybean fields. The sky stretched on forever, no end anywhere I looked. The sun was warm, and the air smelled of earth and growing things. Back then, I thought that was as close to heaven as anyone could ever get.” Her lips parted as she shook her head slowly, unable to look away from the keep—home. “But just now—just looking at Braalach—I had that same feeling again. That vastness. That anything was possible. I...I was wrong back then.” She swallowed, clutching Lily closer, her eyes shining. “This, here—with you, with Lily.Thisis as close to heaven as I’ll ever get.”
Epilogue
1315
One year after Bannockburn
The courtyard rang with the sound of children—shouts, laughter, the heavy thud of boots too large for small feet. Ivy stood in the arch of the doorway, her arms folded, watching with a smile that deepened the creases at the corners of her eyes.
Alaric was at the center of the chaos, as he always was when the children tumbled out of doors. He shed his mantle of laird as easily as his cloak, striding after his sons with mock ferocity. Eight-year-old Duncan squealed as his father’s hand closed around him and lifted him bodily from the ground, swinging him up and onto a broad shoulder. Beside him, six-year-old Malcolm shrieked with delight and charged in to rescue his brother, a wooden sword clutched tight in his small hand.
Alaric bellowed in mock outrage, staggering back as Malcolm thumped at him, then let Duncan slide down to wrestle free. As entertained as she was warmed by the sight, Ivy shook her head—two boys bred for endless energy and mischief, matched only by their father’s patience, and the boyish enthusiasm that made him such a great father.
Near the steps, Lily sat with her little sister Elspeth, carefully twisting her long strawberry blonde hair into two long braids. At ten, Lily had the long-limbed grace of girlhood, and her face was still soft with a child’s openness. Elspeth, four years old, fidgeted, her small feet restless against the stone, though she bore her sister’s attentions with a long-suffering sigh.
Ivy’s gaze lingered on Lily. For the longest time, it had been just the three of them—herself, Alaric, and Lily. The two miscarriages that came after Lily had left Ivy raw, yet they had bound Alaric to Lily all the tighter. He had never once let thegirl believe she was anything but wholly his. And Ivy knew they would never tell her otherwise—not the truth of her birth, not the secret of Ivy’s strange journey through time. That knowledge lived only in the hearts of four: Ivy, Alaric, Claire, and Ciaran.
Ivy stepped down into the courtyard. Lily glanced up to catch her mother’s eye, her smile bright. Ivy returned it, tenderness swelling in her chest, as she sat with the girls. Elspeth glanced up, her face wrinkled against the sun, and then casually laid her arm across Ivy’s lap.
Alaric spotted her then. He was on all fours at the moment, with Malcolm on his back, and Duncan pulling at his leg—can’t let the dragon reach the steps.
Her husband grinned, boyish in the moment, grimacing a wee bit as Malcolm bounced heartily atop him, trying to slow down the dragon. “Ye’ve come to save me, love?”
She laughed, shaking her head. “I doubt there’s saving you from those two.”
“They’ll make ye bluidy again, Da,” Lily predicted, her eyes on her task, referring to the nosebleed Duncan had caused just last week, in a similar circumstance.
“We’re headed out for the bilberries in a moment,” Ivy called out. “Do you boys want to come? Or are you happy slaying the dragon?”
Before they might have answered, Alaric found a surge of strength and fought off theknights. While still on his knees, he dumped Malcolm off his back, and then was able to rise to his feet, doing so in exaggerated fashion, in slow-motion with his arms flexed and while roaring. Ivy knew what would come next, had seen it dozens of times. Duncan and Malcolm clambered to their feet, each latching onto their father’s strong arms. Obligingly, Alaric flexed even harder, growled louder, and raised his arms until the boys’ feet rose off the ground.
“Dragon wins again,” he said, walking the boys over to the steps. He winked at Ivy, “I ken we’ll all get to the bilberries.” He lowered his arms, depositing the boys just in front of Ivy and her daughters. He muttered then, “Jesu, it’s got to be kinder to my bones than this.”
Five minutes later, they headed outside the gates, toward the berry patches up near the ridge, close to the graveyard where Alaric’s parents, Gwen and her son, and other MacKinlays were buried.
Alaris walked ahead, Elspeth on his shoulders now, Lily holding his hand, skipping at his side, telling him about today’s lesson.
“Mama told me a story today about a girl named Joan who led armies. Agirl, and she wore armor, and the men followed her. She was called the Maid of Orléans, and she fought the English and never ran from them.”
“A fine warrior, by the sound of her,” Alaric allowed.
“Da, at one point, she traveled over three thousand miles in less than two years!” Lily exclaimed. “I want to be a warrior just like the Maid of Orléans.”
