The Hunter (Highland Guard #7)(119)

Even after five years of marriage, her heart still hitched on seeing him, as if part of her still couldn’t believe he could be hers. Despite her feelings, however, she’d learned long ago not to let him distract her. She folded her arms across her chest and stared at him. “It’s no use trying to hide him. I can see you, James.”

A little blond head peeked out from behind Ewen’s legs. She didn’t buy the innocent look on his face for one moment. “Hand it over, Jamie.”

“Hand what over, Mother?”

“The letter you took from my desk.” She bent down to the little boy’s level, trying to keep her stern expression in the face of a very wobbly lower lip. “It’s a very important letter, Jamie. I need it back for the king.”

He made a face, reached into his boot, and pulled out the now crumpled piece of parchment. “I don’t care about the stupid ol’ king. I don’t want you to work anymore today. I want you to come play with me.”

The mulish, disgruntled look on his face so resembled his father’s, she had to look up at Ewen. He just shrugged. “Don’t look at me.”

Janet sighed and drew her four-year-old son onto her lap. Would it ever get any easier? She tried to balance the work she did for the king as his “advisor” and de facto, if not exactly publicly acknowledged, lawman, but there were days—like today—when inevitably that balance tipped.

Now that the war had been won with England, Robert was anxious to have Scotland accepted as an independent kingdom, and she’d been hard at work preparing their arguments for the carefully worded letters that would be sent to the French king and pope, to whom they were also appealing to have the excommunication lifted that had been placed on Robert since he stabbed John “The Red” Comyn at Greyfriar’s Church four years ago. The Latin she’d once despaired of had come in handy.

“I thought you were going to play ball outside with Da today?” she said softly, stroking his head.

“We did. But then they got in the way. They always get in the way.”

Janet tried not to smile and looked at the squirming two-year-old girls tucked under their father’s arms. Unlike Jamie, they had dark hair like Ewen’s. “What did they do this time?” she asked her son.

“Mary threw the ball in the loch, and then Issy started to cry. I hate when she cries.”

Me, too, Janet thought, and she does an awful lot of it. She gazed up at Ewen for help.

“I’m trying,” he said. “But as you can see, I have my hands full. He slipped away from me.”

“I seem to recall someone saying this would be easy.”

“I was expecting one, not two,” he said. “I think it’s time for me to go back to war.”

“The war is over.”

“Don’t remind me,” he said with an exaggerated roll of the eyes. “I think I hear Stewart calling me.”

“Walter can wait,” Janet said. “Besides, he has a new bride to think of.” She still couldn’t believe that the noblewoman whose hand had appeased him was that of her niece Marjory Bruce—Robert and Isabella’s daughter. Marjory had been held in England for almost eight years, but had been released last year after the Battle of Bannockburn. “For whatever a man sows, he will also reap,” she reminded her husband.

He grinned wickedly. “The sowing was fun, it’s just the reaping I’m not so sure about.” He belied his words, however, by tickling and kissing the two little cherubs in his arms until they were wild with laughter.

“We were just coming to find you,” Ewen said when the girls had finally collapsed on the bed with exhaustion. “If you have a minute, there is something I want to show you.”

She looked up at him. After almost five years of marriage, she was attuned to every note in his voice—and she’d heard the thick emotion. “Is it done?” she asked breathily.

Their eyes met, and he nodded.

Wordlessly, she let him take her hand as he led her and their three children outside the old tower house.

“Don’t look yet,” he said, when she tried to glance up at the nearby hill.

Finally, he stopped. “All right, turn around.”

Janet sucked in her breath. The bright late-afternoon sun glistened off the freshly hewn stone, making the castle shimmer and shine like a newly minted jewel. It had four towers, one at each corner, encircled by a formidable wall. It was an impressive fortress by any standard, but that was not what made it important.

She slid her hand into that of the man who had turned her adventurous life as a courier into another kind of adventure. One of laughter and love and joy. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “She would have loved it.”

He looked at her and nodded, the emotion too much for him to speak. He’d finished his mother’s castle, and with it, he could at last be at peace with his past. For generations to come, the Lamonts of Ardlamont would fill this castle with love and laughter, giving his mother and father the legacy they deserved.

Hand in hand, with their children around them, Ewen led her into the keep, and into their future.