Page 101 of A Highland Healer Captured
“Ye’ll need a big sack,” Mabel observed, patting Elise’s back when the babe let out a delighted squeal at the polished chandeliers.
“Ladies,” Astrid cut in, maternal command ascending to a pitch that could level a barn, “we have two hours to turn this hall from harvest to heaven.Move.”
“Aye,General,” they chorused, and the hall obeyed—laughing, bickering, bending, and, under Astrid’s relentless eye, becoming exactly what Skylar had not known she wanted until she had it.
She tied the last knot at the high table and looked down the aisle of rushes and light, where in a little while she would walk toward the man who had stolen her on a road and then given her back to herself.
“Sturdy and consequence,” she murmured, smoothing the ribbon. “It’ll do.”
Behind her, Astrid sniffed. “It’llshine.”
And for once, Skylar didn’t argue.
The day slid toward its appointed hour as if it had been waiting years for the cue. When the small bells over the gate chimed—someone’s bright idea of a wedding peal—the hall had transformed: barley and ivy woven into crowns; rowan and birch swept up the pillars like living ladders; beeswax candles honeying the air. The piper stood resolute under a non-feathered wreath and tested a tune that remembered both grief and glee.
Skylar’s gown was simple Highland wool, soft and clean with a fall that pleased her because it did not ask to be performed with. Astrid had insisted on a narrow band of gold at the waist—“so folk ken ye’re to be wed, nae off to gather nettles”—and had allowed the thistle braid to remain.
Hamish came to her as the hall began to hush, eyes bright behind their usual weather. He raised her hand and kissed the knuckles without bluster.
“Ye look like yer mother,” he said, which Skylar knew was his way of telling her she looked beautiful and terrifying.
“Then ye’d best stand straight,” Skylar said, “so I daenae scold ye for slouchin’.”
Hamish barked a laugh, then sobered. “Ye sure?”
“Aye,” she said, and because some things were simpler than even she made them. “I love him.”
Hamish nodded once, like a man sealing a bargain with himself. “Then I’ll see ye down the aisle.”
The doors opened with a flourish.
Christ the hall does look like a forest…
The murmur folded into a hush so clean she could hear the wicks hiss. Skylar’s heart knocked once, twice; she set her palm over it to keep it from leaping out and running ahead. And then they walked. Hamish steady as a cairn at her side, Astrid already frowning at a chair leg that would never notice, Scarlett and Mabel ahead, the children strewing late petals with zeal, and occasionally throwing them at one another.
Zander stood waiting at the far end, in a dark plaid that made his shoulders look unfair and his mouth softer than she’d ever seen it. The bandage beneath his linen shirt was hidden well, but she knew precisely where it lay and how her palm had pressed there last night. The thought made her trip on absolutely nothing.
Hamish’s elbow saved her with a gentle correction. “Aisles bite,” he growled, deadpan. “Watch yerself.”
She arrived. The air around Zander changed—the way air changes near a blacksmith’s forge when the bellows start to work: warmer, more intent, the sense that something is about to be shaped.
“Ye came,” he said, absurd as always and exactly right.
“Ye asked nicely,” she returned, and the smile that cut across his beard was a private thing in a public room.
The vows were old and spare: promises set like stones, the kind that keep their shape because weather has tested them. Zander bound her palm to his with the braided ribbon, thistle and gold—sturdy and consequence twined—while Hamish looked down his nose as if he’d invented knots.
Astrid had the look of a general hearing troops speak the lines she’d drilled into them. Scarlett dabbed at her eyes. Mabel smiled like a woman who had successfully kept one small boy from climbing a lectern. Campbell stood with his palms braced on Ollie and Connor’s shoulders like ballast; Kian held baby Elise, who tugged at his tartan and squealed any time the piper breathed.
“Before clan and kin,” the elder intoned, “before God and good barley, be husband and wife, and keep one another whole.”
“Aye,” they said together, and the ribbon held.
The hall breathed again. The piper found a tune that lifted the beams; the first cheer cracked and then multiplied, a storm of joy breaking against stone. Zander bent his head and kissed her with the restraint of a man who understood halls and mothers and how much mischief a piper could make out of a scandal; it was still enough to make her knees re-evaluate their job.
Grayson barreled into them a beat later, all elbows and grin. “I helped hang the barley,” he reported, proud as a squire with his first sword. “Mason says ye’ve married a menace.”
“I have,” Zander said gravely, eyes on Skylar. “The good kind.”
