Her father was clever. “Do you hear me? Emma has done you no harm, Father.”

  “Come closer to me, Daughter,” he called out, “and I will not kill her.”

  Rose took a step forward. She heard Emma whimper.

  “Closer, Rose!”

  She could only see a small part of his face. The rest was hidden behind the wall of the stable.

  Emma’s remaining two guards hadn’t moved but her father shot one down with an arrow anyway. The last guard took off after him, his sword raised high. But her father was quicker and before the guard reached him, an arrow in the eye took his life.

  “You are evil,” Rose cried, unable to look away from the dead men. “Why did you have Neill kill my mother and Jonetta?”

  Her father stepped out from behind the wall. His bow was raised, and his arrow nocked and ready to fly at Emma.

  “Your mother was going to meet her lover in Lockerbie. She wanted to bring you, but I would not let her. I knew she was never going to return.”

  Because if she escaped him, she would never return? Or because he knew she would die before the end of the night?

  “I let her take Jonetta, so she was not alone,” he continued with a satisfied smile. “’Twas also a perfect way to exact punishment on your mother and Estrid, since your mother would not let me kill her after the fire, for leaving you alone.”

  “You killed them for something Neill had done at your command six years earlier,” Rose said with horror and sadness. She held her belly that was twisting and knotting. She was going to be ill.

  She heard a commotion at the doors to the manor house. She saw Tristan, and the captain, and her uncle with his remaining men.

  She held up her palm to stop their advance. Then she stepped in front of Emma. Her father threw her a smirk. “You were saying about my mother?” she addressed her father.

  “Was I?” his smirk hardened. “She was a slut. Just ask my brother.” He smiled when Uncle Richard paled and gave her another penitent look. “I wanted to get her away from him before he killed her.”

  “Forget them, Rose,” her father commanded, dragging back her attention. “This has always been about you, Daughter. After Neill killed them and set them on fire, I knew one thing for certain. Your brother was too dangerous and could not be around you. What if he turned on you…or me?

  “I told everyone at the castle that once the gates were shut no one could leave, so if they wanted to go, they should leave when they could. Almost everyone left.”

  Rose shook her head “I have been alone all these years because you wanted to keep a killer you created from me.”

  Her father nodded. “He knew what you mean to me, Rose. He wanted to take you away from me. I could not let him do that. That is why I could not let you marry just any lord. Your husband had to be able to protect you from Neill. That was my first requirement.”

  “But you fell in love with a man who was sent to kill me.” He peered over to Tristan and smiled slightly. “There were many times when I feared for my soul. I could not imagine who would have hired MacPherson, but the fact was, he was coming to kill me. I did not imagine my brother was guilty of sending him, but it all makes perfect sense now.”

  He pulled the bow taut and changed his aim. It took him no time at all to hit her uncle but before he could nock another arrow, Tristan was moving.

  Rose refused to call out or to look. Her father, though she still loved him, had chosen his path. She ran to her uncle lying on the ground with an arrow in his shoulder.

  Her father was scrambling to get his last arrow nocked when Tristan called out to him, walking toward him. “Come on!”

  Rose could tell her husband was furious in the way his muscles danced over his jaw—and the roiling seas in his eyes.

  Tristan reached him first and smacked the bow and arrow out of his hands. He leaned in and said something to her father, but the earl refused. Tristan shrugged his strong shoulders and then hauled back and punched the earl in the face, breaking his jaw.

  The earl screamed and held his hands over his face.

  “Where is Jones?” Tristan demanded.

  Her father glared at him and pointed to the stables. The captain sprinted there and went around the side. He returned a few moments later, shaking his head. “He is badly hurt. Stabbed in the belly, but he’s a tough bastard and I think he will live.”

  Tristan set his pained gaze on Rose, but she held him to his promise not to kill her father.

  For the space of a breath, no one was looking at Thomas Callanach. That was all the time it took for him to rip a small dagger from a fold in his cloak and turn toward Tristan.

  Captain Harper pulled a dagger from his belt and hurled it at the earl a moment before Dumfries flung his knife into Tristan’s back. Harper’s dagger met its target and sank into the earl’s eye.

  Rose didn’t scream. She placed her hands over her mouth and turned to the captain.

  “Rose,” he paused, looking at a loss for words. He tried anyway. “Forgive me. I wish I did not have to—”

  “Forgive you for saving Tristan’s life?” She was horrified that she felt a little relief. Her father would have rotted in a prison or he could have gone free again like he had the first time. He would have definitely come for her. The captain saved her life. It was heartbreaking that he had to do so against her father.

  They waited at the manor house until her father and Neill were buried and Mr. Jones could travel.

  Rose took a few moments to pray over her father and to bid him farewell. She wasn’t sure how long she should pray for his soul. His deeds were evil.

  She kept her head against Tristan’s chest as they finally turned for their horses. “My home is gone. Where shall we go?”

  “Wherever you desire, love.”

  Her heart warmed and she was thankful for having such a man in her life now, after the last two disasters. She looked up at him and let him see her love. “I have always wanted to be free and unafraid. It sounds like ’tis time for me to go to Invergarry with you.”

  He spoke into her hair. He was smiling. She could hear it in his voice. “’Tis a simple life.”

  “I want simple. I’m so ready for quiet I could scream.” She flashed him a playful smile and pushed her hair off her face.

  His deeply expressive gaze told her things his mouth didn’t know how to say—like she’d captured his heart. All of it. He was hers. “We will leave now.”

  She nodded happily. What was holding her back? Nothing!

  “Tristan?”

  “Aye, love?”

  “I will finally have a family.”

  “Aye,” he laughed, “likely more than ye will want.”

  “What if they do not like me?” Hadn’t some in her own home disliked her?

  “They will love ye, lass.”

  They would love her. And he would love her.

  Oh, if she had to do it all over again, she would if he was at the end of it. But now was not the time to think of endings, but beginnings.

  The road before them was open. They had a long trip ahead of them.

  She could not wait to begin.

  Epilogue

  A sennight later…

  Autumn frost settled on the rolling hills surrounding the enormous stronghold in the distance.

  Rose drew in her breath at the power and protection emanating from the MacPherson stronghold. She didn’t know what to call what she was looking at. A large town within a walled enclosure locked and guarded by over fifty men patrolling the battlements? She guessed a stronghold it was. From what she could see in the center sprang up not a castle, but a fortress of three manor houses belonging to the three MacPherson brothers. Cainnech, Torin, and Nicholas.

  She turned to her husband. “You look as taken by the sight of it as I am.”

  “I havena seen it in ten years.” He smiled. “Every time I return, ’tis bigger.”

  “Why is it so fortified?” she asked. “Have the MacPhersons need of so much protection?”

  Tristan shrugged his shoulders. “Likely, nae. But my father and his brothers were just young boys when the English rode through their village, took their cottage, and killed their parents. The soldiers took the lads. Only Uncle Torin managed to escape them. My father, the oldest at seven, was recruited into the English army and lived fer many years on the battlefield. Uncle Torin survived by livin’ in the forest, and then in the castles of the most influential by infiltrating their armies from the inside and bringin’ down more strongholds than any man alive. The babe of the three, two-year-old Uncle Nicky, was sold fer a stone into slavery. Their lives were forever changed because their home, their village, was poorly protected. When they reunited, they vowed never to be so vulnerable again. Their bairns wouldna suffer as they had.”

  He pointed to the hills outside the walls on both the south and west sides of the house. The north and the east were surrounded by a forest. Rose wasn’t surprised to find trees here.

  There were large cottages, four on the left side and three on the right. Scattered like little clouds, sheep grazed with coos in numbers she could not count.

  “We will live in a house like those—bigger, smaller, whatever ye want, love.”

  It was always whatever she wanted. Tristan did everything he could to make her happy. If she wanted him to choose, he did that, too.

  “Where have you learned how to make me so happy? Who taught you to try? Your uncle, Torin?”

  “Nae,” he told her. “My father. He is the fiercest man I know. When I left here ten years ago, he was still terrorizin’ anyone who came through those gates. He doesna like strangers.”

  He smiled at the captain and Mary. “Ye need not fret. If I vouch fer ye, and ye are not tryin’ to court my sister, who is already married, ye will be accepted, as will Jones and his wife when they arrive.”

  The captain looked confused. Rose smiled behind her hand.

  “But when it comes to my mother,” Tristan continued. “my father is as harmless as a puppy dog.” Tristan laughed…but then stopped, perhaps realizing that he wasn’t so different from his father when it came to love.

  Rose already loved it here. The brothers had created a haven for their kin. She wouldn’t live behind the wall but on the open hills, alone with her husband and six other shepherds.

  Tristan’s cousin, Elias, was the seventh shepherd, but he had found his life in a small village near London while the Black Death ravaged England.

  Rose and her husband would live in Elias’ house until theirs was built. She could take her horse and ride to the stronghold anytime she wished and would always be let in.

  They grew closer and already a few guards on the battlements recognized him and left their stations for a moment. By the time Rose and her group reached the gate, another man appeared and leaned over the edge of the battlements. Was it his father? It had to be, for he shouted to open the gate while they were still a hundred feet away. He was as handsome as his son, and older. It was clear by his gray hair intermingled with the rest and filled out on his temples in broad strikes. Even from her vantage point, Rose could feel the power of his gaze.

  The gates creaked as they were opened. She could hear a man’s voice calling out. “’Tis Tristan! Tristan is home.” Rose could feel the charged air. She looked at her husband. He had nothing but glorious smiles for the man who was hurrying from the battlements to see him. Others were leaving their homes, including the manor houses, and running toward them. His kin were about to be upon her. She wasn’t afraid. No. She welcomed the thought of having a family. She would do whatever she could to please them and make her own way among them.

  His father reached him first. He had beautiful sapphire blue eyes that appeared dark gray against his braided hair.

  Tristan dismounted and remained upright when Cainnech MacPherson collided into him, his arms open wide.

  “It has been a long time, Tristan,” his father’s deep voice fell softly over her ears.

  “Aye, Father, but I am home now.”

  “To stay?” his father asked with hope filling his eyes.

  “Tristan?” a woman shouted, coming from an enormous garden on the side of the western hills. “My son!”

  “Aye, Mother, ’tis me,” Tristan called back.

  His mother approached, holding her skirts about her ankles. When she reached him, she cupped his cheek in her hand. Her large emerald eyes filled with tears. “Tristan, I feared I would never see you again.”

  This was she, Rose thought with a worshipful smile, the woman who fought the Scots from the trees.

  “Fergive me fer stayin’ away fer so long, Mother,” he said with his eyes rivaling hers when he gathered her in his arms.

  “Do we have ye to thank fer bringin’ him home?” Cainnech called out to her.

  Rose smiled and shook her head no after she dismounted and stood toe to toe with the man who raised the man she was in love with. “’Twas your prayers that brought him home.”

  “What is this I hear?” said an older man with a bald head and a tender gaze, wearing robes from neck to feet. “A lass who trusts God to answer prayers?”

  “Father Timothy.”

  Rose didn’t realize she’d spoken his name out loud until he smiled and melted her heart over her bones.

  “Tristan, my boy,” he cried when Tristan gathered him into his crushing embrace.

  “Everyone!” Tristan called out after a teary reunion with the priest. “This is my wife, Rose.”

  They all looked at him first, and then her, stunned.

  “How in the world did you ever accomplish that?” asked another lass with raven hair plaited down her back and blue eyes as intent as her father’s. There were five children gathered around her, the youngest was cradled on her hip.

  “Fer her ’twas easy, El,” Tristan answered the lass.

  El. This was Elysande, his sister. Tristan had told her of his sister on their journey here. Her beauty nearly made Rose want to turn around and go back to the ashes. But the children stopped her from leaving. She hadn’t seen children close up since she, too, was a child. Her eyes misted with tears yet again.

  “Hmm,” his sister mocked her brother gently with raised brows and half a smile. “Fergive me, Rose,” she said softly. “’Tis just hard to believe that hard-hearted Tristan would marry. Is it love?”

  Rose had to smile. Everyone (having grown to seventeen in number) was waiting for her answer.

  “Aye, ’tis love,” Tristan said before Rose could.

  “Aye,” she agreed, letting him take her hand and looking at him.

  After the shock wore off, everyone cheered. The first was his sister. Then Tristan told them of the Black Death in Scotland.

  They locked the gates of the stronghold.

  Rose thought that being inside would be difficult for her, but it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. There were over five hundred people living at the stronghold and the gates were expanding every year. There were large cottages and small cottages branching out from the three main manor houses. Parapets led to every house, every cottage. Everything was connected within.

  They passed carpenters and tanners and smiths. There was a church and a gatehouse and vendors of every kind, and chickens and pigs roaming free. This was a fully functional market town meant only for its inhabitants.

  More women came to sit with her while they supped. They asked her questions about her life and she told them a little. There was so much, after all.

  “Tristan cares only for fighting,” warned a lovely woman with red hair and dark eyes. With her was a younger version of herself in her daughter. Tristan’s uncle, Nicholas, introduced them as his wife, Julianna, and their daughter, Adela. Rose met everyone, including Uncle Torin with whom Tristan rightly guessed she would hit it off.

  Torin was handsome and Braya, his petite wife, was positively lovely with white mixed into her pale blonde hair. It was no surprise that their sons were beautiful. Even Tristan nodded when he saw Rose staring at them.

  “And ye havena met their son, Galeren, yet,” Tristan said, coming up behind her.

  “Galeren?”

  “Aye. I remember before I left everyone called him Galeren the Bonnie. But it didna spoil him. He was always self-disciplined and never rash. I’m told he is due to arrive home from Ayrshire any day now.”

  “Does he live in Ayrshire?” she asked.

  Tristan nodded. “He lives at Dundonald Castle in service to Robert Stewart, the High Steward of Scotland.”

  “He made a vow of chastity six years ago,” Cainnech MacPherson told them, joining them. “As part of Robert’s Highland Elite. Did ye know?”

  “Aye,” Tristan told him. “Father Timothy penned it to me. But I have to admit, as far as the chastity went, I found it hard to believe then, and I still do. Galeren has his choice of any lass—”

  “He does not.” Rose gave him a little pinch, to which Tristan scowled, and his father nodded and laughed, as if he knew how it felt to be pinched so.

  Rose decided she liked Aleysia MacPherson even more if she was brave enough to pinch such a fearsome man as Cainnech MacPherson.

  After a loud supper, louder than any supper she’d ever attended, some of them sat in a large solar with warm whisky and a warmer hearth. Rose finally had a chance to speak to Tristan’s mother without singing or arguing Highlanders in the background. She listened, marveling at the tale of how this lady of the MacPherson stronghold snatched her husband from the ashes of death—even if she tried to kill him numerous times.

  Rose told her a little about her life but when her throat and eyes began to burn, she would say nothing more. She would not weep in front of this warrior.

  “We can speak of it another time, if you wish,” Aleysia comforted her with a soft pat on Rose’s knee. “Tell me instead,” she said with a curious gleam in her stunning green eyes, so much like her son’s, “how you and my son met and how you managed to capture his heart.”

  That, Rose didn’t mind talking about. In fact, since falling in love with Tristan, she found herself missing her mother more. So, what she couldn’t tell her mother, she told Tristan’s. She told her about being infected in Crawford, assuring her that she had been quite well for some time now. “I almost did perish though. I would have if not for your son.” She told her about being tossed on a pile of dead people and waited, too ill to move, to be set on fire.