Chapter Twenty-Nine
Mal suffered through another day and night in the dark gaol, listening to the scratch, scratch, scratch of some kind of rodent, either trying to get in or trying to get out. He hoped he didn’t wake up with a half-eaten face.
The next day, sometime in the late morning—Mal had been watching the way the sky turned bluer through the small sliver of open space—the door was flung wide. Mal threw up his arm to block the sudden rush of blinding light.
“You’re free to go,” the gaoler said.
Mal squinted at him. “I am?”
The man nodded.
Mal pushed himself up unsteadily and walked out into the world.
He didn’t have to go far before he saw Georgina waiting for him, in a white dress dotted with little flowers, looking like a breath of fresh air after every stifling hour he’d been locked away. Lachlan, Ewan, and Andrew were beside her.
His heart lifted as he walked toward them.
“I’m sorry it took so long,” Georgina said. “We couldn’t find the sheriff until this morning.”
“Rochester changed his mind?”
“He decided he could not accurately determine that you were the one who’d attempted to rob the carriage. A hundred pounds seemed to affect his memory.”
“You paid him?”
“My brother paid him,” she said. She watched him carefully, and he knew she was seeing what his reaction would be.
Truthfully, it made him a little uneasy, but Georgina loved her brother, and she trusted him, and he supposed, until he felt the same way, that would have to be enough. Because Mal wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was Arden. They would have to learn to coexist.
Maybe, as Georgina hoped, they could find common ground.
“I’ll have to thank him, then.”
She shook her head. “It’s not entirely given from the goodness of his heart.”
“Oh?”
“They want you to stay on as the schoolmaster.”
Mal blinked. “But they think I robbed a carriage—they shouldn’t let someone like that teach their—”
“Actually,” Lachlan cut in sheepishly, “I told them that I was the one who did it.” When Mal started to protest, he said, “I couldna let you take the blame for me! What kind of friend would I be?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“You’re not responsible for us, Mal. We protect each other,” Lachlan said.
Mal turned to Georgina. “What will happen to them if I take the position?”
“There’s an open spot at the quarry, and there’s an older couple whose son just left and they need help farming their land. No one will get left behind—we’ll make sure of it.”
Her words struck a chord, and his chest ached fiercely. “Well, Mal…” Georgina said. “Is it all right?”
He stepped up, so they were toe to toe, and then slid his hands to her waist, resting them there lightly.
For a long time, he’d thought he’d found his purpose. Stealing sheep. Defying the landlords. He’d thought he’d found his path, no matter what end it brought him to. But there was more than one way to bring change—it wasn’t all fire and explosions and blood and revolution. Each small drop caused a ripple, even in the vastest ocean.
The children who sat in that classroom today were the future of the Highlands. And they needed someone who believed in them.
And maybe some part of Mal needed them, too. Just as he needed Andrew, Lachlan, and Ewan.
His brothers.
Just as he needed Georgina.
The woman he loved.
He understood, in that moment, the true state of his shattered heart. He’d given a broken sliver to each one of them, Andrew and Ewan and Lachlan, and a sliver to each child who’d reminded him of himself, and he’d given the rest of the jagged pieces to Georgina, for her to keep safe for him, until there was nothing left for him.
But that was the way it should be.
What was the point of loving if you didn’t do it with everything you had?
“Aye, lass. It’s all right.”
He leaned down to kiss her, getting lost, for a moment, in her taste, in the softness of her lips.
And then he was interrupted, quite cruelly, by Georgina pushing him back, her nose wrinkled. “Perhaps you should bathe first.”
“It’s not me,” he said. “It’s the gaol.”
“Regardless,” she responded drily.
And he laughed, his heart feeling lighter than it had in months.
“I’ll go home”—Home! It was a word he would have to get used to again—“and bathe right away. As long as you agree to marry me.”
“Mal!” Ewan said, like he couldn’t believe he would ask such an important question in such an informal manner.
But Georgina was biting her lower lip, trying to keep from smiling and not quite managing it. “Oh, very well,” she said. She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, a rosy blush slowly suffusing her face, and Mal felt like he could laugh and laugh and never run out of joy.
Mal wanted to kiss her again, as soon as possible, but he was going to respect her wishes and bathe, when they were pressed together anyway by the unstoppable force of Ewan throwing his arms around both of them.
Mal was surprised when Andrew silently, stoically, joined in the awkward embrace.
And then they all glanced at Lachlan, who scowled at them fiercely.
“You’re an embarrassment. All of ye.”
But Georgina grabbed his wrist and yanked him into the hug, too. And they were in the midst of the most unwieldy group embrace Mal had ever been a part of when Lachlan grimaced and said, “You smell like a dead cat, Mal.”
“Fine. Fine,” he said. “Get off of me, then.”
“You ruined it!” Ewan complained to Lachlan as they turned onto the road.
“You ruined it first,” Lachlan said. “You interrupted their moment.”
Andrew trailed after them.
Mal watched them for a moment, both fond and exasperated—a combination of emotions that wasn’t so unusual where the other men were concerned—and then faced Georgina. She slipped her hand into his. Warmth radiated from the spot they touched, all through his body.
“Shall we go?” she asked.
His future, at some point, had shifted, had changed shape, until it was barely recognizable. It looked so different from how he’d once imagined it.
But different wasn’t a bad thing.
Sometimes, different was even better.
“Aye,” he said.
Together, they walked away from the shadows, and into the light.