The Lady and the Lion (20 page)

"We should be heading back," he murmured, kissing her again because he had to. He wondered fleetingly if he would ever be able to look at her and not have to touch, to kiss, to lose himself in the magic of her luminous eyes, and thought he knew what the answer was.
Never.
If fate granted him a dozen lifetimes in which to love her, he might possibly grow accustomed to these incredible feelings, but he knew he would never get over the astonished wonder of.
knowing
she loved him.

"I suppose so." Her voice was soft and dreamy, her green eyes misty with love and contentment as she looked up at him.

He stroked her flushed cheek gently. "Are you sure you don't mind going to New York so soon? I can put them off a few more days."

"I don't mind
at
all," she said serenely. "Your company's struggled along without you for too long as it is. Besides, it was your idea to have a honeymoon in the Bahamas. I told you I'd be perfectly happy to go straight back to New York, but you wouldn't listen."

"I listened." He kissed her again. "I just felt so guilty.
 
Carrying you off to a judge because I couldn't wait to marry you, barely giving you
time
to call your father. You didn't have a proper wedding, sweetheart, and I wanted you at least to have a honeymoon."

"My wedding was quite proper, thank you," she told him, smiling. "I don't feel at all deprived. In fact, I've been gloriously happy, in case you haven't noticed. I don't need a lot of pomp and ceremony, darling, only you."

"I love you," he said softly, intensely. "I love you so much."

"I love you too. Isn't it wonderful?"

Keith hugged her, agreeing wordlessly that it was, then reluctantly eased away from her. "If we don't raise the sail and head back right now," he said, "I'm going to get distracted again and well never make it."

"You're so reasonable," she said admiringly, her eyes gleaming at him as she found her swimsuit and began putting it on.

Several minutes later, the sails raised and their little boat skimming swiftly over the sparkling water toward Nassau, Keith asked a question that had been troubling him only a little. "Do you think your father's forgiven me yet?"

"Is that bothering you?" she returned politely.

"Not on my account. I married you, not him. I just don't want you to be upset, sweetheart."

She smiled and touched his cheek. "I don't think hell ever be able to upset me again. We never would have been close, Keith, even if you hadn't come along. And he didn't disown me, you know. In fact, he invited us very civilly to come and spend a few weeks at Westford."

"True. Do you want to?"

"Not particularly. I'd like for you to see the place someday, but there's no hurry."

"Um.
Well, in that case, we won't worry about it for a while. I'll probably have to go back to Europe in a couple of months, so we'll visit then."

She grinned a little.
"While Dad's in Turkey?"

Keith reached out an arm and drew her close to his side, smiling wryly. "Okay, so I feel a bit wary about meeting a British ambassador whose daughter I eloped with."

"He won't be hostile," Erin said, no longer troubled by the distance between her and her father.

"Maybe not, but I probably will." Keith met her smiling gaze, then shrugged and pushed the matter from his mind. Erin was happy with him, he knew, and that was really all that counted. He meant to make certain that their life together was so complete and filled with love that she wouldn't feel the lack of closeness with her father.

"All I need is you," she said softly, reading his mind or his expression, her eyes glowing as she cuddled close to him.

Keith held her, feeling the brisk wind in his face, the sunlight warm and bright,
his
heart so full that it seemed it might burst with happiness. And he thought, fleetingly, of the strange old man Erin had told him about, the one who had
known
even though he couldn't have, because it wasn't possible....

But maybe after all, it was quite possible. Maybe destiny supplied a special emissary when a guiding hand was needed, and called him Fortune.

Erin believed that.

Keith thought he did, as well.

"Well, you won again," she said.

"Destiny won, my sweet," he responded, closing a file as he sat at his desk and laying it aside.

Her delicate hand touched his shoulder, and she leaned down to kiss him. "Coming to bed?"

"In a moment," he said, and watched her slender, elegant figure move gracefully from the study.

He sat in a pool of
lamplight,
his gaze turned inward, a big, powerful, very old man, with a spirit so ageless and filled with delight that it seemed an aura around him. And he thought idly that he hadn't known, back when it all began, how full and rich his life would be. He had been blind, too, then, as stubbornly resistant to the dictates of fate as a fierce young man could be. He hadn't known, hadn't recognized the truth of every soul's search for its match, its mate.

Until his own tempestuous search began.

"I am the captain of my fate," he murmured softly in the peaceful, book-lined room. "I am the master of my soul."

The sound of a low, vastly amused chuckle became a deep and delighted laugh, and upstairs in their bedroom, where she waited for him, Julia heard.
And smiled.