“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.
Rose was surprised to see Aleysia’s eyes misting over. The warrior sniffled and did nothing to stop it.
Aye, Rose liked her very much.
“He was like some legendary hero of old who rescued me from…so much.”
His mother blinked. “Oh, pardon? Tristan? Can you—” She spotted Braya and waved her over. “You will never believe this,” she told her, motioning for her to sit. “Rose, would you mind repeating what you just said to me?”
Rose felt like giggling. The was the storytelling, romantic Torin’s wife. Aleysia likely wanted to boast a little in her son’s knightly ways.
“Of course.” Rose gave them both her warmest smile. “I was saying how Tristan was like some legendary hero of old who rescued me from much.”
The two older women looked at each other. It was hard to imagine what they were thinking before Braya bolted to her feet and called her husband over.
Rose’s belly sank. What had she done?
She smiled at Tristan’s uncle, but her smile faded when she caught her husband’s eyes on the other side of the solar and he gave her a dark, menacing look.
“There is the Tristan we are used to,” his mother whispered, leaning in.
They quickly filled Torin in on his nephew’s knightly ways and, much to her horror, Tristan’s proud uncle called out, “Tristan, I knew there was a hero in ye, lad!”
This outburst brought Tristan’s father and the rest of his kin hurrying to her to hear the tale. With so many eager ears inclined to hear her praises for her husband, Rose was only too eager to feed them.
“He not only saved me, but he saved Eleanor from the governor who kidnapped her, and he—”
“Rose?”
Her husband didn’t shout or even sound angry. He’d come closer. He ignored his father and uncles and offered her a smile. “Are ye finished?”
She breathed a sigh of relief and shook her head, glad to be able to continue. “He saved Mary, Captain Harper’s wife. Did he not, Mary?”
The captain’s wife nodded her head enthusiastically. “Oh, aye. I had taken my last breath.”
Cheers arose and her husband snatched her wrist and pulled her away then laughed with her when they realized his kin had no idea they had stepped away.
They’d heard the guards outside, but Rose forgot about them until the doors to the solar opened and a man stood on the other side of the archway.
Rose knew it was Galeren, and she understood why he was called “the Bonnie”. The one who has been chaste for six years.
Of course, her husband was the most handsome man she knew. Galeren was simply…different with a mane of golden hair pulled back in a queue at his nape. His eyes were big, beautiful cuts of jade while he greeted his kin. His darker brows flared upward at the outside edges, reminding Rose of a breathtaking falcon.
“What has happened?” Braya asked after Torin made his son a drink. “Ye have somethin’ to tell me?”
Galeren gave her a curious look. “I still dinna know how ye do that. But, aye, I have somethin’ to tell ye.”
“What is it?” his parents asked.
“I had to go to St. Patrice’s nunnery in Bamburgh to escort the High Steward’s niece to Scotland.”
“But the Black Death—”
He held up his hand to stop his mother’s
