Isle of Skye, Scotland, December 1798
The moor had gone the color of old pewter by the time Alistair turned his horse toward home. Snow lay banked in the lee of every stone dyke. Wind carried the smell of peat smoke from three miles off, and his shoulders came down.
Two hours he'd been riding, and the light had failed an hour into it. He'd meant to leave before midday, but the last of the rents wanted collecting and the land steward wanted instruction on the flock before Alistair could hand the whole of it over even for a week, and by the time he'd finished, the sun was already low.
Six months he had managed MacLeod land in his grandfather's stead. Fergus's health had failed enough by summer that the old man could no longer make the ride between properties, and Ewan had sent Alistair in his place rather than let the land go untended. His father had not asked whether Alistair felt equal to it. He had told him what needed doing and trusted him to see it done, and Alistair had stood a little straighter under that trust every day since.
He liked the work more than he'd expected to. He enjoyed being the laird of MacLeod before the title was properly his. If he proved himself now he knew his Grandda would be proud, as well as his Da. He would be the youngest laird in over a century if his Grandda passed. He prayed he wouldn't leave the world soon, but the old man kept talking daily about it being time to be below ground. It was unsettling hearing him talk like that. And because of that he couldn't make his Grandda's office his. He took the ledgers he needed and worked in his mother's old solar.
He'd only go into his Grandda's office once he was gone. It was an honor thing, in his own way. He couldn't explain it to his Da or Grandda.
He shivered in the cold and wrapped his plaid around him further. The ground was thick with snow and the travel back home was taking longer than he anticipated.
He hadn't been home since September, and he only managed to come back for two days before turning around again, and even riding back to MacLeod land he'd had the feeling he'd be doing the same thing after Christmas. The harvest had kept him through October, and after that the winter stores had wanted settling and a new man had wanted training up on the east pasture, and there had been no good stretch to spare for the crossing since. Christmas Eve was the first day he had allowed himself to leave, and even that only because his mother's last letter said Fergus was asking after him daily and growing difficult to put off.
He crested the last rise and MacRae land came into view below, windows gold against the falling dark. The sun went early on Skye in December, and full dark had settled an hour past though it was not yet suppertime. Smoke rose straight up from three chimneys into a sky gone the deep blue that came just before full black. Somewhere behind those walls his mother would be directing Maggie through the last of the feast, and his grandfather would be in his chair by the fire, here on MacRae land instead of alone on his own holdings with only servants to watch him. And five girls would be underfoot in every room at once.
Alistair smiled and gave the horse its head down the slope. It took the road home without waiting to be told, sure footed even in the dark, on ground it had walked often enough to know blind.
"Good boy," he said, a hand at its neck. "Found our way home again."
The horse nickered and picked up its pace toward the stables.
One of the grooms was still about his evening work there, and took the reins with a nod and a "Merry Christmas to ye, lad." Alistair was halfway to the kitchen door when it banged open and Rhona came flying out into the snow, boots on the wrong feet and her cloak left behind on its peg. Her hair was red like all his sisters', her skin pale and freckled the same as theirs. Alistair was the only dark one among them, black haired like his mother, like his grandfather. None of Ewan's copper had come down to him, and none of the girls' fairness either.
"Alistair!" She hit him at a dead run, arms around his waist, face turned up. "You're home. You're really home. I told Kenna you'd come for Christmas and she said you might not and I said you would."
"I told you I would." He gave her braid a gentle tug. "Three months is long enough."
"It is. It's far too long. Don't do it again." She pulled back just enough to look up at him properly, then remembered herself entirely. "Alistair, come see. Come see, there's a star."
Before he could answer she had his hand and was pulling him toward the open ground past the stables, until he gave up and swung her onto his shoulders instead. She locked her small fists in his hair and pointed east, past the roofline, to where a single bright point had appeared low over the water.
"That'll be the same star it is every year," he said.
"Mam says it's the Christmas star. She says it means something good is coming."
"Does she now."
"Elspeth says it's only a star and stars don't mean anything, but Elspeth is being disagreeable because Catriona ate the last of her honey cakes."
Movement caught his eye near the old rowan at the edge of the yard, and Alistair went still.
"Shh, Rhona." His voice dropped low. "Mam was right. This star is special tonight. Look, there. A white hart."
Rhona went still and quiet. This one was pale as the snow it stood in, watching them from the shadow of the rowan, and it did not run.
"Is this your first time seeing one?" she whispered.
"Aye."
"I'm only six, and I've already seen one." She said it slowly, counting it out. "This must truly be a special star."
She leaned forward over the top of his head, cupping her hands into two rings and holding them up to her eyes like a looking glass. Her elbow dug into his scalp with every wiggle, and he braced his feet wider and let his shoulders take it. Six months of hauling timber and rebuilding the barn roof ahead of the worst snows had put more breadth into them than the eighteen-year-old who'd left in June would have managed.
"Angelica told me a poem, just the other day," Rhona said, still whispering. "About a white deer. Her papa read it to her, in Italian, and she said whoever sees one first is bound to find their true love." She went quiet a moment. "Alistair, I hope it's true. I want you to find your true love."
He laughed before he could stop himself, and the sound was enough to startle the hart. It turned and limped off into the dark, favoring one foreleg, and was gone.
The leg would want tending. He'd leave hay out for it before he went to bed, in hopes the deer would come to the barn and allow tending.
Rhona thumped him on the head. "Don't laugh. Angelica's poem is real. It was in Italian, and her papa read it to her himself, so I know it's true."
"Well, my wee sister, that's not the story I know." He reached up and steadied her before she could thump him again. "And I don't want romance. I'm eighteen. Barely a man. Still wet behind the ears."
She laughed at that. "When I'm eighteen I want to be married already, with my first babe on the way. I can't wait to be grown."
"Don't grow up too fast."
They were quiet a while after that, the cold settling in around them, the light from the kitchen door spilling out across the snow.
"You can put me down now."
He set her down and unwound his plaid, settling it around her shoulders over her protest that she wasn't cold in the slightest. She took his hand instead, small and cold in his despite the argument, and they started back toward the house together.
"If you don't think the white hart means true love," she said, "then what does it mean?"
So he told her the other tale, the one he actually knew. A king of Scotland, out hunting on a holy day when he'd no business hunting at all, and a white hart that very nearly gored him for it. Not a promise about sweethearts. A warning about respecting the Sabbath, and nothing more.
Rhona listened to all of it and did not look convinced.
They crossed the last stretch of yard together, snow crunching underfoot, and Alistair pushed the door open and let the warmth and noise of the house spill out over both of them. Rhona let go of his hand the moment they were inside and made straight for the fire.
The great hall had been dressed the same way it was dressed every year since before he could remember: evergreen boughs along the mantel, candles in the high windows, the MacLeod and MacRae tartans hung together above the hearth where his parents had stood to be bound nineteen years before. His mother kept the binding cord from that day in a carved box on the mantel and brought it down every Christmas morning, though she had never once explained why, and no one had ever thought to ask.
Fergus MacLeod sat in his chair nearest the fire, a plaid over his knees though the hall was warm enough, his stick propped within reach. He had grown thinner over the past year in a way Alistair tried not to notice and could not quite stop noticing, and when he looked up and saw his grandson come through the door with Rhona's hand in his, the line of his mouth eased.
"Grandda!" Rhona let go and ran the last few steps to him.
"About time," Fergus said. "Little Rhona got hold of you first, I see. I was near ready to sic the dog on you to bring you home."
"Nearly did. Rhona rescued me. And showed me something special."
"Did she now." Fergus held out a hand and Rhona scrambled down into his lap without being asked. "And what did you see out there, wee one?"
"The star. And a deer too, Grandda. A white one, by the old rowan. Alistair said he'd never seen one himself either, not once, not in all his years."
Fergus's eyebrows lifted. "A white one, you say. Rare, that." His hand rested on her hair, unhurried. "I'll want to hear the whole of it before the night's through."
Then, to Rhona, "Look at your brother. Have you seen him broader through the shoulders like that before?"
Rhona considered him with real seriousness. "When I sat on his shoulders tonight, it felt like sitting on a chair. A comfortable one."
Alistair laughed. "Been rebuilding the barn roof. Hard going, most weeks."
"And the rest of it?" Fergus asked. "The tenants, the flock, the rents?"
"Settled. The flock's wintered in, the rents are collected, and the land steward's kept the tenants paid through Martinmas."
Fergus nodded. "Good. You'll do well by it."
The door from the yard opened again before Alistair had properly settled by the fire, and Isla Giovanni came through it first, cheeks reddened from the walk up from her own hearth. Angelica and Luca came in behind her on their own two feet, six years old and long past being carried anywhere, Luca making sure everyone saw him march in unassisted. Marco came last, a sack over one shoulder holding two days and a night's worth of clothes, Isla's basket of shortbread balanced on her hip. They came every Christmas Eve the same as always, no plan to see their own hearth again before Christmas dinner was long finished and the dishes put away.
"Alistair MacRae." Isla set down her basket and looked him over the way she had every Christmas since he was in short coats. "You've grown again."
"So I hear," he said, while she gave him a hug and kissed his cheek.
"So glad to see you. Where is your mother?"
"I haven't seen her yet, as I've barely just arrived myself."
"Well now. I'm going to go find that cousin of mine and see what is keeping her from you." She took off toward the kitchen.
He had a feeling his mother was in the kitchens, making sure everything was perfect for their dinner. And he was sure his father was right there beside her. They stuck together like glue every Christmas Eve and day, since as far as he could remember, being that it was the anniversary of when they were married. And each year it was as if they were newly handfasted, they couldn't leave the other.
Angelica zoomed past him and made straight for Rhona rather than the fire, already telling her about the doe before she'd gotten her mittens off. Luca went straight for the fire, warming his hands without waiting to be told.
Marco crossed to Alistair and pulled him into a hug before either of them said a word.
"It's been a long time." He held Alistair back at arm's length a moment. "You've grown. You're taller than me now."
Alistair laughed and hugged him back. "How long have you been back?"
"Made port early October," Marco said. "Laid the Stella Marina up not long after." His eyes went to his children. "It's hard being away from them for nearly eight months. Always glad to be home for the winter."
The kitchen door swung open on the heels of it, and Catriona and Fiona came through carrying platters between them, trailed by Kenna, sugar still at the corner of her mouth despite Elspeth's ongoing grievance about the honey cakes.
Fiona set her platter down and reached him first, arms around his neck. "Look at the size of you. You'll be ducking through every door in Scotland soon."
"He's not that tall," Catriona said, setting hers down beside it.
"He's taller than Da," Fiona said.
Catriona considered this, then hugged him anyway. "I do believe he's wider than Da."
Kenna arrived still licking sugar from her thumb. "What is this about a giant in the hall?" She hugged him around the middle, since that was as high as she could easily reach. "It's only you."
"Only me," Alistair said.
Ewan came through from the kitchen last, carrying a tray of meats, and Elspeth with a tray of honey cakes that she deposited on the table.
"He is not a giant. I don't know why everyone is making a big deal. Da is always going to be the biggest." She went to her da and grabbed his hand.
"Alistair, come here now. I will prove it once and for all that Da is always the biggest in our house."
When Alistair didn't move, she went to him and pulled him by his sleeve and hauled him over to stand beside their father.
She crossed her arms and huffed. Alistair stood a half a head taller than Ewan now.
"It's only been three months. How did you grow so much? I'm still stuck being short."
Alistair ruffled her hair, which he knew would annoy her more than anything else he could have done. "Because you're just a wee bairn."
She stomped her foot. "I am eleven and three quarters. Not a bairn."
"So you say. But you're pouting like one."
She stalked off toward the table. Ewan set the tray down long enough to cuff his son lightly on the shoulder. "You shouldn't tease your sister," he said, and pulled him into a hug anyway.
His mother came in last, wiping her hands on her apron. She stopped in the doorway and found Alistair with her eyes, and for the length of one breath she did not move at all.
Ewan was beside her, his hand already at the small of her back, and he did not ask what had stopped her. He simply stayed there, steady, until she moved again.
She crossed the hall to Alistair and put her arms around him, stiff at first, then not. When she pulled back, her eyes were wet, and she wiped at them with the corner of her apron before he could say anything about it.
"Mam?"
"I missed you." She wiped her eyes again. "Only I didn't expect my boy to come home a man, and not after just three months."
"Sit, all of you," Moira said. "Before the venison goes cold."
They sat. Fergus at the head, Ewan and Moira together at his right hand, the five girls crowded in wherever they pleased, Isla and Marco and the twins finding space among them as they always did. Alistair took the seat he always took, near enough the fire to feel it, near enough his grandfather to reach him if the old man's hands shook too badly with the carving knife. They sometimes did now, and Ewan nodded in praise the first time Alistair had begun managing it without remark.
Fergus bowed his head, and the hall went still around him.
"Lord, we thank Ye for this house, and the roof that holds, and the folk gathered under it, kin and chosen kin alike. We thank Ye for another year given to us that we did not earn and cannot repay. Keep this family close, whatever comes. Amen."
"Amen," they all said, and then Kenna reached for the bread before anyone had properly lifted their head, and Fiona swatted her hand, and the hall filled up again with noise.
It didn't take long for Rhona to tell it all again, this time to the whole table. "Mam, Da, you won't believe what Alistair and I saw." Before they could ask, she blurted it out. "A white hart deer," she announced, loud enough to carry over the clatter of plates. "And Angelica's poem says whoever sees one first finds their true love. Alistair saw it first."
Fiona set down her fork with entirely too much interest. "Did he now."
She was the one closest to him in age, three years younger. Three of her friends had already taken to flirting with him whenever their paths crossed, and he groaned inwardly at the thought of what she'd tell them now.
"He said he didn't want romance," Rhona added. "He told me so himself."
That got a laugh out of half the table at once. Isla pressed a hand to her chest. Kenna wanted to know if he'd at least gotten a good look at its antlers, for luck. Marco offered that in Italy, a man who denied love too loudly was usually the first to fall for it.
"I deny nothing," Alistair said, which turned out to be a mistake, judging by the noise that followed.
"You're eighteen," Ewan said from the head of the table, not unkindly. "Plenty of time yet for romance to catch you unawares."
"I'd rather it didn't catch me tonight," Alistair said, and reached for the potatoes with as much dignity as he could manage, which, given the company, was not much.
"Grandda," Rhona said, "what does it really mean, seeing a white hart? I don't believe Alistair. His story was boring, and you promised you'd tell me later. It is later."
Fergus set down his fork, unhurried. "The Cailleach sends them down. The old woman of the winter. She keeps to the high ground most months, and now and then she'll send one of her deer down to a house she's satisfied with. A sign it's been kept well. Kept honestly."
"Mam, what do you think?" He looked to Moira. "Do you believe in the old lore, you being a church goer?"
"Well, my father did teach me to set the cream out for the wee folk, same as his own mam did for him. But it was my mother who took me to church, where I learned to pray." She considered it a moment. "So who's to say."
"You see," Fergus said. "Neither one troubles her conscience in the slightest." His mouth curved, faint and unhurried. "A man can hold more than one true thing at once. You'll learn that yet, if you haven't already."
Later, when the plates were cleared, the family stayed on by the fire, the whole crowded lot of them. Someone started a song, and someone else was singing it wrong on purpose within a verse, and Fergus told them all to hush so he could hear Rhona's part. Ewan produced a set of dice from somewhere and lost badly to Elspeth three times running. It went on that way until, one by one, the household began to settle for the night.
He waited until the house had properly gone quiet before he went back out, well past midnight, to see whether the doe had found the hay he'd left.
"I thought you'd be asleep," Alistair said when he saw Rhona sitting on the barn step wrapped in the blanket from her bed.
She yawned. "I'm sleepy. But I knew once you put the hay out you'd come look for her again before you went to sleep, and I wanted to see her again too."
They waited together, quiet, until the white hart came slowly out of the dark to the hay, favoring the hurt leg the whole way. Alistair watched the leg while it ate, judging how bad the swelling truly was, and between the two of them, moving slow and saying little, they got it coaxed into an empty stall in the barn.
"We can tend her properly tomorrow, in the daylight," he said, latching the stall door. "Thank you for helping me, Rhona. You did well."
She beamed at him.
Later, after she'd finally gone up to bed, Alistair was walking to his own room when he stopped outside the door of the room Rhona shared with Elspeth, who liked to sleep with it open. Rhona was saying her prayers. "Thank you, Lord, for sending Alistair the white hart. I can't wait to meet his true love. And to have another sister."
He leaned against the wall in the hall. Marriage was the furthest thing from his mind that night. But he found himself hoping, all the same, that when it did come for him, it would look something like his parents' had: companionship, and trust, and the plain steady work of giving the other whatever they needed most.
***
If you enjoyed this glimpse of the MacRae family, their full story begins in Vow of the Heart, the free prequel to the Vows of the Heart series, and continues in Book One, Winning Lady Beatrice, available now.
If you haven’t read the prequel yet, it is free to download here: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/5hu9kwhsk0