20
Sarah, Meehall, Nadia, and Ellie arrived at their Inverness inn room after a long ride full of questions about Ciaran and Baltair followed by disappointment that these young Highlanders wouldn’t ever be in the future.
"How many days did ye pay for this room?" Sarah asked Meehall as she got ready to put the bracer on and gestured for everyone to gather close and hug her so they wouldn't get left behind.
"'Tis paid for just two more days," he said, “sae if we are gaun'ae take longer than that tae get yer affairs in order before we return, I should gae doonstairs and pay for another, what? Another week? A month?" He looked at her with kindness, but it was strained.
She looked up into his soft blue eyes. "Nay, two more days wull be enough. I canna keep ye away from Alan, Keith, and Lyle any longer than that. Besides, I hae a generous man who wull let me gae see my parents at Christmas, aye?"
They were all huddled close together in the room at the inn, and Nadia and Ellie looked on with amusement.
"Aye," Meehall told her with indulgence, yet also with gratitude.
She kissed his chin. "Anything else we should get settled afore we gae back tae Celtic University and drop these two off?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Ye wull hae tae speak with Gertrude when we get tae Celtic, ye ken."
Sarah met Ellie and Nadia's enquiring stares before she looked back at Meehall and nodded resignedly. "Aye, and I am na looking forward tae that, na one bit, but I wull na make my friends break the news tae her. I wull face her myself."
Nadia and Ellie visibly relaxed and then put their arms around Sarah.
"Let's go then."
"We're ready."
Sarah put the bracer on, and the room swam as if under water until the furnishings changed into modern versions, including the television, which was still on.
“Oops,” she said, looking for the remote. “We should have turned the TV off before we left. I bet it annoyed the people in the next room. I wonder why the maid didn’t turn it off?” She found the remote and aimed it at the TV screen.
Wait. Sarah took another look at the date on the TV screen next to the news announcer. She hit the guide button to bring up the menu of channels and today’s date and time.
She turned and looked to see if Nadia and Ellie were picking up on this.
Their eyes and mouths were round.
Ellie said what they all were thinking. “We didn’t miss more than the one day of work after all!”
They took a cab to Celtic, in which Ellie cracked joke after joke about trivial things. Sarah could tell that her friend was trying to get over the trauma of being kidnapped, so she let her cope how she did best. After they escorted Nadia and Ellie back to their dorm rooms and shared a tearful goodbye with much hugging and many promises to stay in touch when Sarah came home for Christmases, Meehall went with Sarah to Gertrude’s office.
Sarah's knock was feeble.
Her boss called out from her desk in answer, just the same. "Come in, Sarah, and bring Meehall with you."
Sarah met Meehall's eyes.
He looked just as mystified as she felt.
"Maybe someone called her and told her we were here together," she whispered to him.
"Maybe." But he didn't look convinced.
Clinging tightly to Meehall's hand, Sarah went into her boss’s office and sat down in one of the two chairs that faced Gertrude's large desk. Now she thought about it, why did Gertrude have a desk almost as big as Chancellor Stanley's?
The older woman was smiling at her as she made the last notes on something on her laptop, then closed it. “Can I help ye, Sarah?"
Sarah cleared her throat.
Meehall squeezed her hand below the line of the desk were Gertrude couldn't see. His touch was reassuring and comforting.
She squeezed his hand back. "I'm going to start a new life with Meehall, and that life does not include working here." Without meeting Gertrude's eyes, she rushed on, anxious to get this over with. "I'm very grateful for the opportunity that you provided me here and for all that you have taught me. Please, tell Kelsey how grateful I am for her good word that put me here in the first place. I really hope not to appear ungrateful, I really do. But the life I’m about to start with Meehall just cannot include coming here. It would be too… Well, it would just be impossible for me to be with Meehall and yet come here to work. And so I bid you goodbye, right now, right this minute. I don’t care to take anything with me that's in my dorm room. I leave it all to Nadia and Ellie. I won’t need it where we’re going. Really. I'm anxious to be on my way, so this is goodbye, right here and right now."
Sarah finally ran out of things she felt she ought to say and dared to glance up at Gertrude.
The older woman was smiling at her. Beaming, really. "Och, my dear. We canna have ye go off without any ceremony of yer lovely new beginning in life. We will throw a party for ye, tae give ye a proper sendoff." Gertrude started to open up her laptop again, presumably to look up when she could use one of Celtic’s grand halls and to order engraved invitations, from the delighted look on her face.
Sarah's jaw dropped. What had gotten into her boss? She looked to Meehall for help.
Her man came to the rescue. "We need to be on our way day after tomorrow at the latest. The travel arrangements are all made and paid for, and I am needed back at… my place of business, urgently. So you see, there is no time for a sendoff."
Gertrude gave the two of them a matronly smile and nod, then picked up the phone and dialed, saying to them just as an aside, "O’ course. We'll have the party this verra night. Ye can leave right after it. We dinna want to keep ye any longer than ye want to stay.” She gave Sarah a particularly sweet smile. “You're going with the blessing o’ Celtic, dear."
Sarah didn't remember much of the party afterward. Kelsey had been there, and all her friends from the office, including Nadia and Ellie. In fact, Kelsey had gone out of her way to introduce herself to Nadia and Ellie, even shaking hands with them. Maybe Eoin and Meehall were wrong about Kelsey. She had given Sarah this incredibly useful backpack, and she was being nice to Sarah’s friends. Kelsey had her doctorate from Celtic and was a druid. She didn’t have to be nice to the clerks.
They’d all eaten cake and drank punch — and Scottish whiskey. No one had seemed at all surprised that Sarah was leaving. No one had objected one bit. It had been extremely odd, but it was done and over with, and now she was going to start her new life with Meehall.
"Almost there," he said calmly on their way back to Stanley’s office to use the bracer. "Will you be wanting to call your mother?"
Sarah jumped, then got out her phone and pressed her mother's contact, putting the phone to her ear and looking up at the gray stone ceiling of the university hallway, but only seeing the Highlands in her mind's eye. "Hi, Mom. Yeah, I know it's a bad time to call, that you're still at work. But hey, I need to tell you something. I'm leaving my job at Celtic University so that I can move in with Michael. We’re going up to his place in the Highlands. It’s rustic. There’s no cell reception, so it will be hard to reach me, but I promise to come visit every Christmas."
"More often than we see each other now, Sarah. You sound happy. That's all a mother could ask. You’re 27 years old. It’s time you settled down. I'm happy for you."
Sarah disconnected and put the phone away just as they got to Stanley’s office. The chancellor opened the door for them and gestured them over to the time travel spot without any fuss.
Giving him a grateful nod, she hugged Meehall close and put the bracer on.
Conveniently, it was now early morning here at the 1706 Inverness inn, and they had quite a surprise waiting for them when they went down the stairs.
The two shopkeepers were at the inn with all the clothing Sarah, Ellie, and Nadia had ordered, insisting on being paid.
Shrugging, Sarah got out the purse Kelsey had given her and paid them the amount agreed, for her own clothes and for Nadia and Ellie’s, too. She paid a little extra for the bags the shopkeepers had brought the clothes in.
Once it was all tied to the saddle on Snow’s back, she and Meehall rode away. Even though the room was paid for one more night, she was anxious to get to where they would be living together out in the Highlands, and to see her new — well, hopefully someday they would be her new family. Meehall really should be with his children as much as possible. She wasn't going to impede his progress toward being back with them.
She didn’t remember the way back to Murray camp all that well, but it seemed to her they left town a different way, and when they had ridden a good distance, she was sure they were on a different path. "Where are we going?" She finally asked Meehall.
"I think ye wull find it a verra pleasant surprise," was all he would tell her with a secretive smile.
Verra pleasant were the two nights they spent together under the stars on the way, and when Sarah laid eyes on their destination, surprise didn't even cover it.
“We gae tae a castle?"
“Aye, Huntingtower Castle.“ Meehall gave her a self-satisfied nod and grin from Smoke’s back. "We wull be stationed here tae help serve the Murray's wronged leader, Laird John Murray, in his resistance against Scotland uniting with England. Ye ken, as dae I, the resistance is doomed, but we canna tell them. The work should prove interesting, meeting any number o’ notable personages."
Struck speechless by the sight of the castle and the news they would be spending a lot of time there, she kept having to clamp her jaw closed as she rode Snow through the gate in the wall around the castle and into the courtyard, where a stable hand took both horses for them.
Alan, Keith, and Lyle came running out to greet them, visibly happy to see them together. Sarah cherished the small little arms hugging her and the wee little voices exulting in what they been doing for the past few days and how much they had missed their Da and how happy they were that Da was not lonely anymore.
"Are ye gaun'ae be oor new mither?" Little Lyle asked Sarah with the most serious face she'd ever seen on a child.
This put the sweetest smile on her face, and she hugged the little man tenderly, telling him, "Perhaps one day soon I wull. 'Tis up tae yer Da. He needs tae ask me, ye ken."
She turned her head to give Meehall a daring look, but she was dumbfounded at what she saw.
He was already down on one knee, face serious. "Sarah, I love ye with all my heart —after my children, o’ course. Would ye dae me the extraordinary honor and joy o’ becoming my wife and sharing everything I hae as long as we both shall live?"
Sarah collapsed down on her knees as well, and hugged him. "Aye. Aye, that I will."