“I mean to protect ye for the rest of yer life,” he said. “To claim ye openly as me child. Nae because I must. Nae because it is convenient. Because it is what I want, if ye will have me.”
The pond went very still.
So did she.
Frederick did not rush the silence that followed. He let it stand. Let her feel the weight of what had been said without trying to ease it or adorn it. A child knew when grown people hid important things behind too many soft words.
Jamie’s mouth parted slightly. “As… truly?”
“Aye,” he said. “As truly.”
Her brows drew in, not with doubt exactly, but with the effort of understanding something larger than herself. “Even when I am troublesome?”
He almost laughed. “Especially then.”
“And if I do things wrong?”
“Ye will,” he said. “So will I.”
That seemed to help her more than perfect reassurance would have.
He finished the bracelet and held it out to her on his palm. The green knot sat at its center, small but sturdy, the woven grass wrapped tight enough to last a day or two if handled kindly.
“Will ye have it,” he asked, “and me with it.”
Jamie did not answer in words.
She launched herself at him with enough force that he had to shift back on one knee to keep them both from toppling into the bank. Her arms went hard around his neck. The bracelet bent awkwardly between them until he caught it and lifted it clear at the last second.
Frederick laughed then, properly laughed, the sound leaving him before he could temper it into something quieter or more dignified. He wrapped one arm around her and held her close, her whole small body vibrating with fierce, uncontained joy.
“Aye, Da,” she whispered into his shoulder. “Thank ye so much!”
He closed his eyes once, only for a moment, and let himself feel the truth of the child in his arms and the answering certainty it stirred in him.
When he finally drew back, he kept both hands at her shoulders and held her at arm’s length just far enough to see her face. She was beaming, eyes bright, cheeks flushed, grass and all.
“Come, lass,” he said, fitting the bracelet gently around her wrist. “Let us head back up to the castle to meet yer maither.”
Jamie looked down at the bracelet with something like awe, then thrust her hand into his without hesitation.
They walked back together that way, hand in hand, the keep rising ahead of them in the late afternoon light.
24
“Hold still.”
“Iamholding still.”
“Ye are swaying.”
“Iambreathing.”
“That is nae the same thing.”
Iona tried not to laugh as Caitlin circled her for what had to be the fourth time that morning, smoothing a fold here, adjusting a ribbon there, stepping back only to move in again as though the success of the day rested entirely upon whether one strand of her hair lay properly beside her cheek.
The chamber had been transformed overnight. Fresh flowers rested in bowls along the table. A soft length of greenery hadbeen fixed around the window frame, and the scent of crushed herbs mingled with clean linen and candle wax. Erin sat near the hearth as though she had not been ordered into the role of witness and keeper of peace at the same time. Her expression suggested she would have preferred one and been saddled with both.