When she finally did rise the next morning, it was to find herself alone in the house. She washed and dressed quickly and dashed outside to find them. Silence met her ears.
“Elias?” she called out. “Charlie?” They wouldn’t just leave her.
She didn’t panic, knowing that Elias would die before he left her. And he wasn’t dead. He’d fought off the deadly pestilence. He wasn’t going to go down easily. She wasn’t worried about Charlie either. He was very much like his new father. He’d fought the same illness and lived.
They must have gone to the village. But what was so important that Elias would wake the children and take them there?
She decided to find out.
She didn’t get far when she saw Father Benedict outside, trimming the bushes around the church. “Father, ’tis good to see you well this morning,” she greeted happily. “Have you by any chance seen Elias and the children?”
He smiled like he knew something she didn’t and beckoned her forward. “Come, child.”
“Come where?” She laughed softly, not understanding what he was up to.
She followed him to the church and entered the small, front foyer behind him.
He snapped his fingers and Annabelle sprang from her stool. Lily smiled at her and was about to ask where the others were when her friend’s child, now her daughter, asked Lily to bring her head closer. She held in her hands a circlet of rosemary and pine interwoven with tiny white lilies and placed it over Lily’s brow.
“Elias made it for you.” The little girl smiled at her and then took her hand and led her inside. “Come,” she beckoned Lily onward.
They turned the bend and Lily stopped to gasp and take in what was happening. She gazed upon dozens of candlelit faces, all turned toward the entrance, toward her.
She saw Estrid and Eleanor, Alan and his wife, everyone left in the village...and woven amongst them, she saw Joan and Clare, Agnes, Walter and Brother Simon. She saw them all, smiling at her.
She looked up the aisle and saw Elias waiting there for her, especially handsome in his Highland plaid, his tousled waves, and his fearless, confident smile. Charlie stood at his side with little Eddie in his arms.
Lily wasn’t sure she could make it to the altar without the floodgates bursting open once again. This time with thankfulness for the man before her.
Annabelle led her to them then giggled with laughter and clung to his neck when Elias lifted her into his arms.
Father Benedict cleared his throat and Lily looked into Elias’ eyes. In the deepest pools of silvery-blue, she saw what she meant to him, what the children meant to him.
He told her in his vows to her and before God, but she already knew. He would go to the ends of the world for her. Surrounded by their children, he promised to love and cherish her and them until the day death took him. (Which wouldn’t be anytime soon if Lily could help it).
“I adore you and cherish you, Elias MacPherson,” she told him. “I promise before God and these witnesses to be for you and never against you and to be a good mother to all your bairns.”
Her heart pounded in her ears. Look what he had done for her! She could not wait to leave church and kiss him.
Father Benedict said a few more things, but it was the last thing he said that made Lily’s heart go even faster. “You may kiss her.”
She blinked. Richard hadn’t kissed her.
She blushed and felt her blood swooshing through her as Elias bent, with Annabelle in one arm, and drew her in. His kiss was quick but filled with both possession and passion.
When he let her go, the villagers cheered and she blushed even more.
Elias led her and the children to the church dining hall, which was decorated with sprigs of flowering rosemary in neat bunches on the two tables pushed together and covered in undyed linen.
“What is all this?” she looked up and asked her husband. “When was there time to—”
He shrugged his draped shoulders. “I had told the priest my plan last eve at supper and he enlisted the help of the others. I was awake most of the night, restless to do this fer ye. I even prepared dinner.”
She stopped and stared at him. “For all of us?”
“I cooked in the army, remember? Some nights, I cooked fer forty men. This is far less.”
He led her and the children to the table and then disappeared again with Estrid and Eleanor.