My True Love (35 page)

“
Amantes sun amentes
,” he said with a smile. “Lovers are lunatics,” he said, in answer to her frown.

As a declaration of love, it lacked something.

“
An té is mó fhosglas a bhéul
,” she countered. “You talk entirely too much.” Her cheeks grew pink. “Loosely translated, that is.”

“I think I need to learn Gaelic.”

“Not an insurmountable feat for someone with such skill at Latin.”

“I could barely understand that old man we met on the road,” he said. “Was that Gaelic he was speaking or some sort of gibberish?”

“I think it owed more to a lack of teeth than to an abundance of nationality, Stephen,” she said calmly.

“What would your father say if you married an Englishman?”

“I’ll tell him you’re my Latin tutor.” Her cheeks deepened in color as he watched. So she recalled that night as well as he.

“I’m not the sort of genial husband you had in mind,” he said, smiling. “But I doubt a man of pleasant disposition would fare well among you Scots.”

“You’ll stay, then?”

He reached out and touched her cheek. It felt warm beneath his fingertips.

How could he ever part from her?

She turned her head and kissed the tips of his fingers, then grabbed his hand. Their fingers entwined even as their smiles grew.

It began to rain. Again. But he decided that it didn’t matter. He was, after all, already wet.

“We should go back to Dunniwerth,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, smiling. “But it’s dangerous to be on the loch when it storms.”

“The cottage, then?”

She stepped closer to him, placed a chaste kiss on his cheek. But her palms rested on his chest, and her smile had an edge of daring to it.

“Here?”

He smiled at her, amused. “You’re afraid of storms.”

“You’ll have to protect me,” she said, running her fingers to the laces of his shirt. “Lie with me,” she said softly, standing on her tiptoes to whisper the invitation in his ear. As if the squirrels and the birds might hear and pass the news to the rest of the forest court. “The only time we’ve loved has been in parting, Stephen. I would have this time be in welcome.”

“In the rain?” he asked. In snow, in sleet, in dead of winter. In a flood, he thought, or with lightning crackling about him.

She nodded.

Her fingertips on his skin had an odd effect of stilling his mind. There were other objections he should think of, surely. Instead, all he could remember was the vow he’d made to himself to love her once not in parting but in joy.

Above them a canopy of new leaves protected them from the worst of the rain.

He stared at her and she stared back, her eyes wide. The patter of the raindrops on the canopy of branches above their heads indicated how hard the rain was falling. Droplets clung to the leaves above them, falling heavily to the ground from time to time. A fine mist penetrated this odd bower.

He started at least a hundred sentences in his mind. A hundred approaches, a single one. The words stuttered to a halt, sliced to death by her silence.

He bent and kissed her instead.

His lips coaxed hers open. A gasp and her tongue met his. There, in this matter he was at least adept.

In the shadow of her throat, her blood beat hot and quick. He placed his lips there, heard her sigh. Would he have known her if she had not been sent to him? A thought that pulled him back from the edge of passion.

“Why did you come to England?” He knew the answer before she spoke, but required the confirmation of it.

She smiled then, the warmth in her eyes so deep and full that he felt himself surrounded by it. “To find you.”

He should not have been at Langlinais. He should have been at war. Instead, he had been suffused with a disgust so pervasive that he had acted in a way not himself. He had left the battlefield and returned home. In time to meet this woman and rescue her. A chain of coincidences. Except of course, they were not. The drawings proved that.

He kissed her then, welcomed her into his heart with a feeling not unlike humility. And gratitude.

As it was with them, the kiss turned heated.

He should have stayed her hand when she un laced her dress, carried her into the cottage and protected her from the rain. Garment by garment she removed her clothes even as he argued with himself. She should be veiled from the rain. She should be laced up, draped and tucked and protected from the elements.

Instead, he laid her down in the clearing. He unlaced his shirt, his fingers fevered.

She watched him, her eyes warm and welcoming. The fascination of her gaze made his breath tight and heated his blood. There was no semblance of smile on her face now, only a solemn study as each part of his body was bared as if she were to be judged on her recall.

She glanced up at his face. Her cheeks were pink, her lips open just the slightest bit. There was more to her than curves shadowed by a dismal day. More than arms and legs and secret places. His hand stretched out, and he noted with amusement that it trembled. As well it might, given this moment and this woman.

He was as hard as he had ever been, but as she watched him, he felt himself swell even further. He had the sudden mental image of a pikeman in harness.

He laughed at himself even as he lowered himself over her.

He kissed her, spiraling into the sensation of it. His breath was caught. He needed to breathe, but instead of air there was Anne.

He’d suspected that there was another dimension to love. Another depth. His instinct proved correct, after all. And so did hers. There was a strange rightness to their loving in the rain. It was elemen tal and almost pagan. Life at its core and its simplest.

He sluiced the rain off her breast, mouthed a droplet trembling upon her nipple, felt himself speared by a sense of tenderness so sharp it was almost pain. Was that love? If it was, he would bandage up his wounds daily and count himself a fortunate man.

The rain found an opening in the bower of leaves and anointed both of them with shuddering drops.

She gripped his shoulders with her nails. Even in this she demanded. Their kiss was transformed by his smile, by her soft laughter as she opened her eyes.

Joy filled him, an odd complement to passion. But he discovered in those moments that it was a better emotion than lust, as gold is more valuable than silver.

She stroked his chest, her fingers threading through the light furring of hair there. Measured his shoulders with hands that made his skin shiver. She raised herself up and kissed his shoulder with soft, warm lips, tasted his flesh with the tip of her tongue.

Her fingers slid gently over the bandage on his arm. “Does it still pain you, Stephen?”

He wanted to tell her that his only discomfort was some distance removed from his arm, but he did not. Instead, he shook his head, then contented himself with his explorations of her. The curve of her underarm led to the plump swell of her breast. Her ankles were fine-boned and sensitive to his touch. The hair between her legs was as fine as down and damp.

One hand lifted her breast to his mouth. He suckled her nipple with a gentle then a more insistent tug.

“I like that,” she murmured.

He spoke against the curve of her breast. “So do I.”

The rain filtered through the leaves, bathed them in a warm shower. He felt it on his back as he leaned over her, smiled at the thought that they both might drown of love as he entered her, each slow and slipping moment accompanied by her slight gasp.

He entered her slowly, the feeling exquisite in its execution. There was a sense of fullness, but it was aided by the melting warmth inside of her.

One hand held her hips still, the other played with the tendrils of hair at her temple. His mouth settled over hers, his kiss soft and coaxing.

She was him and he was her and she could not tell where one began. Or ended. “More,” he murmured, his lips on her throat. Soft, biting kisses traced from her neck to her shoulder.

He eased forward again, moved her legs aside with one hand, rose over her.

“Look at me, Anne.” It was a gentle command issued in a harsh voice. “Look at me,” he said again when her eyes fluttered shut. “Please.”

She blinked them open. His face was shadowed, his smile tender.

The words were accompanied by a slow easing into her. Further than he’d ever been. Harder and yet more gentle. He pushed her knees back, rocked over her. Teasing movements that made her grip his shoulders hard, tear at his flesh. She bit her own lips in the need that tore through her.

He bent and sucked her nipple, his teeth grazing the delicate flesh.

Her ears rang with odd sounds, a rushing noise, or one of deep-throated bells. The sun was inside of her, heat and melting warmth. She felt light and heavy at the same time. Her limbs floated, her hands oddly flailing, her toes curled and flexed.

He kissed her, then rested his open mouth on hers, exchanging breaths. The heat in her body burned higher. She was nothing but sensation. A pulsing, throbbing feeling, an ache that was linked to his movements, to the words he spoke. A cadence of love spoken in a gentle voice.

Now, now, now, now, now. A sound, a movement, a beat.

He smothered her keening cry with a deep kiss.

Anne sat in the curve of his arms, leaning against his chest. He leaned his head against the trunk of a venerable tree, smiling softly. His eyes were closed, evidently too great a temptation for her. She leaned over and dusted a kiss on each eyelid.

His smile grew broader.

“Your feet are very large,” she said, as she settled back into position. “But so are mine.” He wiggled his toes, and she giggled. It was the first time she’d ever done so, and he was delighted by the sound.

Her touch on his big toe made him squinch it up, curl his foot.

“Are you ticklish?”

He yelped as she dragged one nail across his arch. He opened his eyes and pulled his foot away, protection against her tickling touch.

Stephen then reached out and trailed fingers along her jaw. He’d thought her lovely but had never considered how beautiful she was, with her eyes shining defiantly and a pink color to her cheeks. Her chin ended in a soft square, as if shielding her stubbornness in beauty.

She sat beside him, tucked and laced, while he had yet to finish dressing. The truth of the matter was that he was so pleasantly weary at the moment that the effort was beyond him.

He closed his eyes again, drifting into a soporific state of relaxation.

“I knew I would love you,” she said softly. “But I did not expect to like you so very much.”

He opened one eye.

“Why should you not like me?”

“You’re occasionally very fierce,” she said, smiling at him.

“You’ve never appeared to be restrained by my ferocity,” he said carefully.

“I was being brave,” she said. “It’s a Sinclair trait. We’re exceptionally courageous.”

“And unpretentious,” he added before shutting his eyes again.

She laughed. “My father has enough pride to fill all of England.”

“You might have mentioned that Dunniwerth was so large.” He opened his eyes. “Or that he was an earl.”

“Did you think me a poor laird’s daughter?”

“It might be better that you are an heiress. I’ve just purchased land from your father. I think he tried to beggar me.”

Her smile grew brighter, and her eyes appeared to sparkle at him.

“You have?”

“For a king’s ransom. It is, he assures me, a perfect place to build a fortress.”

“My father thinks Dunniwerth is beautiful. I would not let him overly influence you,” she said, smiling.

She settled against him.

“Not once did I think you were interested in my fortune,” he said.

“It was not chief among my interests,” she admitted.

“My mind, perhaps? My ability to translate Latin?”

“Your ability with a sword,” she said demurely, but with such a wicked gleam in her eyes that he fell back against the tree laughing.

“I love the way you laugh,” she said.

“I’ve not had much chance to do a lot of it,” he confessed. “After my father died, I spent too much time in London, trying to maintain my inheritance.”

“Did you?”

He smiled. “I did. Only to find myself nearly taxed to the death for it.”

“What will we do with this land of yours?”

“Build our home,” he said. “Something to last as long as Langlinais.”

“Something even more beautiful,” she said.

The words spun a web around them, made the moment perfect in its simplicity.

He brushed her smile away with the edge of a forefinger, bent to kiss her again.

“
Ego te amo
,” he said softly. “I love you.” He doubted she heard him. Because at the exact moment, Anne Sinclair of Dunniwerth was saying the same words back to him. A coincidence of speech. An accident of timing.

Or perhaps the hand of fate again, opening their hearts.

Epilogue

S
tephen
.

A call. A cry so loud that it stopped him in midstride.

Stephen scrambled out of the earthworks. It was the beginning of the foundations for their grand castle, Sperare. Even now the name was being transformed into something unintelligible by those who spoke only Gaelic.

The castle would take years to complete, but in his mind he saw it soar to the sky. Only he and Anne knew that it would closely resemble Langlinais. Nor would any casual visitor realize that there was a special strong room, one that contained a treasure of history if nothing else. Juliana’s chronicles would rest there, held in trust for generations.

Douglas called out a greeting as Stephen stood and looked toward the island. The boy had been returned to Dunniwerth six months ago. A peddler had taken pity on Douglas and brought him home, but the journey had been delayed by the necessity of avoiding English troops. Now he spent his time in the foundations, doing errands and carrying dirt, as they all did.

While it was true Stephen’s father-in-law never lost an opportunity to comment on the lack of fortification of their new home, they had become wary friends. But there was one person who would never come to Sperare. Ian Sinclair did not want to witness any of their new lives here.