Jennifer Horseman (54 page)

"Is he in there? Is he, dear God-"

The soft whisper of her voice outside sounded like a great blaring trumpet in his mind and he stopped, the story of valor and courage and miracles forgotten in the instant as he waited, fearing it could not be true.

"No, don't try to stop me. . . . You can't, you can't . . ."

Waiting outside as an informal line of bodyguards, the uniformed soldiers stepped aside with raised brows changing to smiles as Juliet's hand turned the knob and she opened the doors. Looking for the briefest moment confused, she stood in the doorway until the moment her eyes found him. Garret hardly had a chance to take in the lovely, pale blue dress and matching overcoat, the pretty crown of her hair, the noticeable loss of weight or the touch of sun on her face. All he noticed was her eyes: fear and confusion disappeared the moment she found him, replaced by something he simply could not believe he saw. Something ten thousand times greater than his wildest, most fanciful dream.

There was no one else in the world, much less in the room, and with not a thought of propriety or protocol—things that made no sense now—Juliet ran to the arms reaching out for her. Arms pulling her from the tunnel and into the light. She closed her eyes tightly as he lifted her off her bruised, bandaged, and oh so tired feet to hold her close, desperately close. An embrace she had dreamt of forever. The miracle cascading through her became an emotional swell, so deep and swift that all other memories were swept away in its rush; life began this moment.

"Garrett . . . Garrett ... I am here. . . ."

With smiles all around, the men quietly got up and left the suite of rooms. Garrett could neither speak nor think, think of anything beyond the feel of her slender form pressed against him, the touch of her skin beneath the brush of his lips as he celebrated her very heart beating against his. He had her love, her tears, she was crying for him. She must have been told how close he had come to death and the idea triggered . . . "Juliet," he said her name. "No, don't pull away . . . not yet. I need to hold you like this a moment . . . forever ... at least, at least until I know I'm not dreaming."

Juliet had no thought of pulling away. "I love you ... I love you so much—"

She felt him stiffen as if with alarm, and he lowered her to her feet to look down at her face. "Say it again, Juliet."

"I love you," came in a soft whisper of truth.

Garret's mind turned a dozen times in the instant: the day was a Tuesday, the bishop would be at residence, his mother could make the arrangements in the hour, they could be married by one, alone five minutes after that.

Garrett's warm and joyful laughter sounded against her ear just as Leif voiced his very thoughts outside: "As in my dream! My God, I don't believe it!"

"Neither do I," Garrett said. "Say it again."

This simple truth was said ten times in close succession with laughter that lit her eyes like jewels. His fingers stroked the complicated lift of her hair, the thick braid wrapped like a crown around the loose swirls on top as he studied her joyful, upturned face with awe and reverence, his own joy without bounds at being able to do so.

Yet they fell suddenly still and quiet. His fingers curled along the edge of her ear and neck before tracing the petal-soft lines of her lips. Juliet's eyes softened, darkening as the last tear fell down her cheek. She kissed the finger on her mouth as if it were the most precious thing on earth, and it was. It was. Drawing a sharp breath, he lowered his head, first tasting the sweetness of her tears before taking her mouth beneath his. Never had he kissed her like that, so tenderly and slow, cherishing her as well as the moment. She clung to him. He kept his mouth close to catch the sweetness of her breath as he, too, said in a whisper carried away by emotion, "I love you, Juliet, now . . . always, I love you. . . ."

He brought her closer still. Yet when his arms wrapped around her an earthly realization—unpleasant in the extreme—interrupted the bliss that surrounded them. "You are thinner, love."

The emotions were heady, swirling and dizzying, as if they were dancing beneath a symphony of heralders and heaven-sent light and unearthly happiness. She felt wildly drunk. Hearing came only with effort, understanding required even more. Thinner, he had said, "Yes," she nodded, "all the walking."

Confusion mixed with concern. "How much exercise did Elsbeth put you through?"

"Oh! None," she shook her head, smiling, lost in the blissful haze until she saw his face. "Don't you worry, too! Your mother still won't let me out of bed!"

Garrett watched as her gaze seemed to lose its focus, vanishing with a sudden sad thought. Juliet was thinking of Lady Evelyn, her refusal even to let her attend To-mas's short sentencing. "I won't let you put yourself through that, my darling," she had said. Lady Evelyn sensed how terribly trying it would have been to hear the traitor's sentence—execution by hanging. She knew, too, without it ever being spoken outloud, that Lady Evelyn had a lot to do with the actual sentence, commuted to one most considered actually far worse. Tomas had been sent on a prisoner ship to the barbaric continent of Australia, forced to serve twenty years in what amounted to harsh slavery. Only the strongest survived there—leaving his questionable fate in God's hands.

Banishing the unpleasant thought, Juliet smiled. "Your mother wouldn't even tell me you came back because she knew nothing could stop me from running to you. But Elsbeth can't keep a secret, and the minute she told me, I got up, dressed, and slipped out the window."

"Love . . . love," his hand brushed her face and he wanted so badly to kiss her, just as soon as he understood what had happened, "Why has my mother kept you in bed? Are you . . . are you ill?"

"No ... no, I survived, 'tis a miracle, just everyone thinks so. Tis only my feet now." She looked down, the world still a bit blurry from her tears. Garrett's gaze followed to see bandages beneath the slippers. "They're still sore."

With a trickle of alarm, he lifted her off her feet and sat down in a chair. She expected his alarm, though, "Please Garrett, don't worry—"

"You had an accident, love?" He removed a slipper to see the whole of her foot bandaged. Then the other.

The idea made her laugh through her tears, a giddy, joyful laugh, for it was hard to think past the idea she had lived to be in this moment at last.

"Tell me what happened, love?"

She shook her head, "Oh Garrett, please don't make me tell you more now . . . not now, I just want ... I want—"

The emotion made her cry again and he was suddenly kissing her. His lips brushing lovingly over her forehead and her closed lids, where he tasted tears. Tears sweeter than spun sugar. "Juliet," he whispered her name, a catch in his voice as her elation filled him. Like wings to his soul, he loved her. His lips touched hers, tenderly at first but then fueled by the heady emotions, their waiting passion blossomed. . . .

"Love . . . love," Garrett's breaths escalated with an alarming rhythm, "I have to marry you . . . first, now, before-"

"That would be fine . . . truly," she managed to say shakily, her blood turning to a honeyed thickness that made her blush. "Only I don't think I can wait."

Garrett buried his soft laughter in her neck and it tickled, making her laugh, too. Really he thought, he ought now to drop to his knees for a formal proposal, for while their wedding would be the happiest and most joyful the world had ever seen, it would fall blessedly short of the term formal. And he'd spend the rest of his life making it up to her. . . .

With these intentions, he took her small hand in his, but stopped, the contrast and feel of her hand always startling him. So small and delicate, utterly, terribly feminine, this hand had been through much, too much. Yet-

His brows drew a sharp line. He tried to make sense of it. Impossible, of course. Impossible for one simple reason: she had not the power to remove his ring; no one on earth had the power to remove that ring.

Yet the ring was not there.

Juliet didn't understand the shocked look on his face as he lifted her hand and saw the missing ring. "Are you very angry? I didn't want to, Garrett, but at the time, 'twas the only way. . . . And you see, Mr. Rosenberg promised not to sell it until you came back. Of course, I told him you'd be generous—"

"How did you get it off, love?"

"That was one of the miracles. I tried and tried but of course I couldn't. 'Twas Jack, the old beggarman. Did the admiral tell you about him? No, probably not. The admiral doesn't believe in angels, and that's what I think he was, an angel who was sent to help me. I met him on the street while I waited for the port master's office to open. He was old and missing an eye and nearly all his teeth, yet if you stared, well, never mind that. I sent Brighton out nearly every day since, but he's gone now, as if he had never been there in the first place. No one he's asked ever saw or heard of him, either, and Lre-member he told me he had been in that spot for years. Anyway, 'twas him, this old beggar, that took the ring off to get the money for my passage to Amsterdam. He also made me look like a boy, and Garrett, 'twas him who told me to always look to the churches for salvation, and h# was right, he was right. Not just on the whole way back, but 'twas the church bells that made me see how to warn you — "

The sudden bright fear in his eyes stopped her. He slowly shook his head, a denial, one that needed proof. He reached slowly to her coat, using care to take it off her shoulders, where he saw the bandage covering a bullet graze. In the moment, his eyes filled with the idea; she saw he hadn't known. He hadn't known anything.

In a shaken voice she asked, "I thought the admiral told you?"

Garrett could not speak to answer. For he was trying desperately to imagine her dressed as a boy alone on a ship, then traveling a hundred miles to save him, going without sleep and often without food to save him, then chased by hundreds of armed soldiers, losing them finally to be left without food or shelter or even shoes to make her way back home. On a pirate ship . . .

Yet he couldn't imagine it, not Juliet, the lovely young woman standing before him with half his weight and less than a hundredth of his strength, the young lady with hands more delicate than a fairy blossom caught in the wind. "The bravest person in all of England . . ." He gave immediate thanks to God for the mercy of his failed imagination.

"It shouldn't be such a shock to you, Garrett, of all people. At least not the first part. One does what one must, remember? At first I'thought that meant saving you. So I did, with God's grace, I saved you, only to see it didn't mean that at all. Not when the soldiers were racing up to capture me, for I knew what I must do was return to you." Tears sprang to her eyes with the knowledge. "You see, getting here to you now, being in this very moment, has been the only purpose in my life, the rhyme and reason, the light at the end of the tunnel. I am here to cherish your love and for the rest of my long life, now and forever more. I love you, Garrett."

His remarkable eyes glistened beneath his own emotions as he took her into his arms. Filled with too much emotion to put words to, he couldn't speak. Yet she heard his whispered vow, the echo from his heart: "And I give you my love, my soul, the rest of my life, the promise that I will always keep it safe, now and forever, I love you, Juliet."

A love she would cherish, for it was made of the alchemy of the elements: water and air, fire and earth, and the heavens above, a love made with passion's magic.

A memory played in a dream as Garrett slept. After returning by the fourth morning bell, he found Juliet asleep. A better man might have left her in peace, but not he, not when the short two-day separation felt like a year, and his desire ferocious and demanding. Hardly concerned with the small obstacle of her sleepy consciousness, Garrett woke her by drawing her soft form against his hard hot readiness, which was the place where his dream began. . . .

Whispered words roused him from the heated pleasure of his dream and his agony was expressed in a low groan as he looked across the spacious chambers. Golden light bathed the hardwood floor where Juliet knelt before his cat. The blue silk robe created a pretty half circle around her, the long hair cascaded over the peacock in back. Even with the distance between them, the blue of her eyes matched the shine and color of silk, while the contrast of her dark brows and lashes, the red of those lips, was startling against the pale softness of her skin. He could only wonder at her beauty and his desire, both created, he knew, by a love soaring far past the heights of any poetic imagination. . . .

His smile disappeared as the robe triggered the memory of her confession not long ago, and he fell back against the pillows. While Juliet had the most potent blend of sensuality, femininity, and passion of any woman he had ever dreamed about, yet alone known, he rarely saw her unclad until passion overcame her consciousness. He had gently teased her about it, only to watch her grow solemn, her eyes fill with emotion as she confessed in a whisper: " Tis not so much modesty as ... as an idea of how . . . how unsightly my marks are. I always feel that if you see them, you won't want to love me."

The emotion her confession brought him left him speechless. All he could do was pull her into his arms, his tenderness expressed in the loving caress of his hands and lips. For she was right. Those marks reminded him of all she had been through, and then all he wanted was to take back her passage through darkness. Irrational and futile impulses, he knew, but once felt, his need to protect her overcame his desire, the only thing that could . . .

But not at this moment, he realized, rising on an elbow to see what she was doing to his cat.

"Please! Oh, please!"

Tonali batted Juliet's hand and sneered, a revelation of what he thought of the red ribbon she tried to slip around his neck. " 'Tis his birthday! Today is the party!" Evelyn, Elsbeth, and herself, with help from Leif and Gayle, had planned the party for weeks. A medieval theme, they had old fashioned games, costumes, and fare. The last decorations had gone up over Kourtain Castle and the guests would be arriving all day for the weekend. Tonali was part of the decor, or so she hoped. She held the red ribbon in her hands as proof, pleading in a whisper, "All I ask is that you wear it for a few hours. Is that too much?"