“It bears repeating.”
Jane looked at her steadily. “Ye went into a passage in the dark in yer nightclothes and hit a man twice yer size with a rock,” she said. “I’m the one who should be sayin’ thank you. Ye gave me something worth havin’ the bruise for.”
Lady Branwen looked at Isobel with her sharp old eyes. “Are ye ready for whatever comes next?” she said.
Isobel thought about standing in her father’s hall all those weeks ago, watching the Laird of Dunalasdair arrive, entirely certain her life as she had understood it was ending.
“Aye,” she said. “I have been for a while.”
Lady Branwen made a sound that might marked her satisfaction. “Good,” she said.
There was a loud knock on the door then, and as if she had called them forth just by thinking of the home that had once been her own, Isobel’s parents hurried into the room.
She had known they were coming; Alasdair had told her that morning, briefly, right after the council meeting adjourned. But seeing her father and mother walk through the door was something she had not prepared herself for entirely.
Her mother had many opinions on various topics and voiced them all at once, which felt familiar, warm, and exactly what Isobel needed without realizing she needed it. She held on and let herself be held, contemplating how long it had been since she had been in a room with her mother and not been managing something.
She did not need to manage anything right now. She did not need to manage anything.
Her father followed behind. He looked thinner. Older. The particular way a man looked when he had been frightened for a long time and had not quite stopped being frightened yet.
She went to him.
“Father,” she said.
He looked at her for a moment. He pressed his lips together in that way he had, the way men who had been raised not to feel things in public managed the feeling anyway. “Isobel,” he said. “You look well.”
“I am well,” she said.
“I heard what happened,” he said. “Last night.” His jaw tightened. “I heard it this mornin’. All of it.”
“I’m all right,” she said.
“You hit a man with a stone,” he said.
“He deserved it,” she said.
Her father looked at her for a long moment. Then he said, very quietly, “Our debts are cleared. Our name is restored. Alasdair announced it this morning before the whole council.”
“I know,” she said. “I was there.”
Something moved on his face. “I didn’t ask him to do that,” he said. “I want you to know I didn’t ask.”
“I know you didn’t,” she said.
“He did it because it was right,” her father said. “Not because it was owed.”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s who he is.”
Her father looked at her with the look of a man revising something he had thought he understood. He nodded once.
We are going to be all right. All of us. Eventually.
* * *
"I pledge to you the first bite of my meat and the first drink from my cup,” Isobel’s voice carried across the field. When she hadfirst arrived at Dunalasdair Castle, the plan had been to host the wedding ceremony in the kirk on the property. But then, after Isobel and Alasdair spent the afternoon in the field just outside the garden, she had asked Lady Branwen and Lady Sarah if the venue might be changed. Lady Sarah had guffawed loudly at the idea, but Lady Branwen had readily consented.
So now, Isobel stood next to Alasdair, holding both her hands in his own, reciting the traditional vows that the Scots, both Highlanders and Lowlanders, had uttered for ages.