Until You

Epilogue

They were not married the next day, but rather a month later, on the eighteenth of October, St. Luke’s Day. The ceremony took place not at Friarsgate or at Claven’s Carn, but rather in the hills between both estates where the border between England and Scotland was acknowledged to be by both parties. The bride stood on the English side of that border. The bridegroom stood in Scotland. Both were smiling as they joined hands across that border. It was a perfect autumn day. The sky above was a clear, strong blue, and the bright sun was warm on their shoulders. The hills were dressed in russet and gold, and the air about them was soft, but there was no breeze.

The simple ceremony was performed by Prior Richard Bolton and Father Mata. The invited guests were few: Maybel, Edmund, Tom Bolton, Philippa, Banon, and Bessie Meredith, little John Hepburn. And when the formalities were over and done with, the laird of Claven’s Carn took his bride up on his horse and invited them all back to his keep for the celebration. There in the hall, as the day waned, his clansmen and clanswomen raised toast after toast to the newly wed couple, the pipes wailed, and there was much dancing. John Hepburn spent most of that afternoon curled in his new stepmother’s lap. Rosamund frequently caressed the little boy’s dark hair, wondering if the child she now carried would be dark-haired, too.

And eight months later Rosamund discovered that he was, when Alexander Hepburn was born into the world to the delight of his three half-sisters and his half-brother. He was christened at Friarsgate Church by Father Mata, Edmund and Tom standing as his godfathers and Maybel as his godmother. And watching, Philippa Meredith could but consider if this was the last of her mother’s children she would see born, for in ten more short months she was to go to court and join the queen’s household. In ten months she would see her friend Cecily FitzHugh again. She would be twelve years old. Old enough to be considered a possible match for the right young man. She wondered if that young man would be Giles FitzHugh, or perhaps another, someone she had yet to meet. Someone she did not even know. Someone with whom she would fall madly in love. As her mother had with Patrick Leslie.

“I cannot wait!” Philippa said softly to herself. “I cannot wait!” And she smiled as she contemplated her life to come.