Tempest Heart - Paula Quinn Page 0,95
looking at him.
After the shock wore off, everyone cheered. The first was his sister. Then Tristan told them of the Black Death in Scotland.
They locked the gates of the stronghold.
Rose thought that being inside would be difficult for her, but it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. There were over five hundred people living at the stronghold and the gates were expanding every year. There were large cottages and small cottages branching out from the three main manor houses. Parapets led to every house, every cottage. Everything was connected within.
They passed carpenters and tanners and smiths. There was a church and a gatehouse and vendors of every kind, and chickens and pigs roaming free. This was a fully functional market town meant only for its inhabitants.
More women came to sit with her while they supped. They asked her questions about her life and she told them a little. There was so much, after all.
“Tristan cares only for fighting,” warned a lovely woman with red hair and dark eyes. With her was a younger version of herself in her daughter. Tristan’s uncle, Nicholas, introduced them as his wife, Julianna, and their daughter, Adela. Rose met everyone, including Uncle Torin with whom Tristan rightly guessed she would hit it off.
Torin was handsome and Braya, his petite wife, was positively lovely with white mixed into her pale blonde hair. It was no surprise that their sons were beautiful. Even Tristan nodded when he saw Rose staring at them.
“And ye havena met their son, Galeren, yet,” Tristan said, coming up behind her.
“Galeren?”
“Aye. I remember before I left everyone called him Galeren the Bonnie. But it didna spoil him. He was always self-disciplined and never rash. I’m told he is due to arrive home from Ayrshire any day now.”
“Does he live in Ayrshire?” she asked.
Tristan nodded. “He lives at Dundonald Castle in service to Robert Stewart, the High Steward of Scotland.”
“He made a vow of chastity six years ago,” Cainnech MacPherson told them, joining them. “As part of Robert’s Highland Elite. Did ye know?”
“Aye,” Tristan told him. “Father Timothy penned it to me. But I have to admit, as far as the chastity went, I found it hard to believe then, and I still do. Galeren has his choice of any lass—”
“He does not.” Rose gave him a little pinch, to which Tristan scowled, and his father nodded and laughed, as if he knew how it felt to be pinched so.
Rose decided she liked Aleysia MacPherson even more if she was brave enough to pinch such a fearsome man as Cainnech MacPherson.
After a loud supper, louder than any supper she’d ever attended, some of them sat in a large solar with warm whisky and a warmer hearth. Rose finally had a chance to speak to Tristan’s mother without singing or arguing Highlanders in the background. She listened, marveling at the tale of how this lady of the MacPherson stronghold snatched her husband from the ashes of death—even if she tried to kill him numerous times.
Rose told her a little about her life but when her throat and eyes began to burn, she would say nothing more. She would not weep in front of this warrior.
“We can speak of it another time, if you wish,” Aleysia comforted her with a soft pat on Rose’s knee. “Tell me instead,” she said with a curious gleam in her stunning green eyes, so much like her son’s, “how you and my son met and how you managed to capture his heart.”
That, Rose didn’t mind talking about. In fact, since falling in love with Tristan, she found herself missing her mother more. So, what she couldn’t tell her mother, she told Tristan’s. She told her about being infected in Crawford, assuring her that she had been quite well for some time now. “I almost did perish though. I would have if not for your son.” She told her about being tossed on a pile of dead people and waited, too ill to move, to be set on fire.
Rose was surprised to see Aleysia’s eyes misting over. The warrior sniffled and did nothing to stop it.
Aye, Rose liked her very much.
“He was like some legendary hero of old who rescued me from…so much.”
His mother blinked. “Oh, pardon? Tristan? Can you—” She spotted Braya and waved her over. “You will never believe this,” she told her, motioning for her to sit. “Rose, would you mind repeating what you just said to me?”
Rose felt like giggling. The was the storytelling, romantic Torin’s wife. Aleysia likely