A fine bridal night this was turning out to be. She didn’t even have Macduff for company. She and Gavin were expected to spend the night together. But what about the next night and the night after that?
“Tell him,”
her mother advised. She stretched out in bed with a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Tell him
. She was under no obligation to tell him anything. It happened so long ago. It could have nothing to do with Will Rankin’s murder.
There was more to her reluctance than that. She didn’t know what she knew. All she had to go on were her dreams and the notes she had taken from the file in Dr. Rankin’s office, the file with the name of the woman who had given her birth, Mary Macbeth.
She was five years old when the Camerons adopted her. Her memory did not go back that far. She had dreams, but whether she could trust them or not was debatable. Everyone had bad dreams . . . everyone had dreams.
When Gavin entered their bedchamber, it was to find his bride asleep. A fine state of affairs for an eager bride-groom! Not that he’d had any hopes in that quarter. He might as well make love to a marble statue.
No. That wasn’t precisely true. He wasn’t a seer for nothing. From the beginning, he’d recognized Kate’s latent sensuality. Hell, a man didn’t have to be a seer or a wizard to recognize it. Any red-blooded male could sense it. But Miss Cameron was unattainable. No wonder Magda had lost all her beaux to her sister. There was nothing men loved more than a challenge.
One corner of his mouth curled up. He was remembering Kate’s words, that she had lost all her beaux to her beautiful sister. It wasn’t true. He didn’t believe for one moment that Kate had suitors. The only men she wanted in her life, that she allowed, were safe men like her father and cousins. He wasn’t safe, because he persisted in treating her as a desirable woman.
He wondered about her relationship with his friend Will.
Brooding now, he removed his jacket and draped it over a chair. Next came his shoes and socks. He knew what he was supposed to do. They had arranged it beforehand. He was to take the quilt and one of the pillows from the bed and make his own bed in front of the fire.
He did none of these things. He turned the gas lamp down to a peep, settled himself in the comfortable armchair, and studied the girl in the bed. She moved slightly and let out a low moan. He half rose from the chair with the intention of going to comfort her. When she moaned again, he sank down and clasped his hands.
Alex’s voice, as he’d heard it on the telephone, came back to him.
“The more you practice, the stronger you’ll become. If you don’t use the gift Granny gave you, you will lose it altogether. Concentrate, focus, and you’ll be surprised at the results.”
And when he’d protested that his gift was erratic, Alex had scoffed at him.
“You’re lazy, Gavin, that’s your trouble.”
Concentrate. Focus. Gavin closed his eyes and opened his mind to Kate.
Nothing happened. He tried again with the same result. His trouble was that he was bone tired. He’d spent half the night making sure that the hotel was shut up tight and laying a false trail, just in case. All he wanted now was a nice soft bed and a good night’s sleep. A quilt in front of the fireplace was not what he had in mind.
Kate was sleeping soundly. What was to stop him stretching out beside her? She need never know. And what if she did? He wasn’t going to lay a finger on her.
On that virtuous thought, he crossed to the bed and gingerly eased himself down beside Kate.
Fifteen
She knew where her dream was taking her, and she tried to resist, but the dream was stronger, more persuasive than her hold on reality. Reality, now, was her mother’s hand: thin fingers, dry skin, nails bitten down to the quick. She didn’t care. It was her mother’s hand, and she clutched it to her breast as if it were a holy talisman.
They crept soundlessly from the children’s dormitory into the long, dark corridor. There was a door there, Mama said, that led outside. There was a friend waiting for them. Soon they would be free and live together in a lovely cottage in the Highlands. Nothing and no one would ever separate them again.
In spite of her mother’s words, her child’s mind was numb with dread. The door to the outside was always locked. What if Matron discovered them? Matron never went to sleep. She had eyes in the back of her head. She would make them sorry they had broken the rules. Mama would be dragged back to the hospital wing, and she would be locked in a cupboard.
Mama was whispering to her, but her whispers were drowned out by a fit of coughing. When the coughing stopped, she tried again. They were giving her something, Mama said, to make her sleep. Whatever happened, Kate mustn’t look back. She was to go through that door where Mama’s friend was waiting for them. If Mama couldn’t come now, she would come later.
A light behind them. Someone shouting. Footsteps. Matron raising the alarm.
“Go, Catherine, and don’t look back!”
The urgency in her mother’s voice gave wings to her feet. She had never run faster than she did during the next few moments. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she turned the doorknob and pulled the door open. Cold air streamed in. Her mother’s screams had her head whipping round. She had to go back. Mama was in trouble. Matron was shaking her. Before she could retrace a single step, someone flung a blanket over her head, and she was lifted off her feet. Kicking, screaming, she tried to fight free of the arms that restrained her.
Someone cursed. A man’s voice. Her struggles only made him tighten his hold. She began to panic. She couldn’t breathe. Darkness swam at the edges of her mind.
“Wake up, Kate. It was only a dream! It’s me, Gavin. You’re perfectly safe. Wake up!”
She stopped struggling and sucked great draughts of air into her lungs. “Gavin?”
He was on the bed, half sprawled over her, and she found his weight more comforting than his soothing words. Her arms wrapped around him, and she held on tight. He kissed her tears away, then he brushed her lips with his. The dream had seemed so real, more like a memory, and she burrowed closer to his warmth to stave off the shivers that racked her whole body.
“Kate,” he said, and his kisses changed. They were no longer comforting but darker, sensual, passionate.
It never occurred to her to stop him. She was ready to break. She wasn’t thinking about consequences. If only for a few minutes, she wanted to blot out the paralyzing despair that still held her in its grip. All that had ever come to her in her dreams were fleeting impressions. Tonight, her dream was sharply etched and had seared her mind. But Gavin was here. Nothing could hurt her as long as he was by her side. She twined her arms around his neck and kissed him back.
He tasted her surrender and wanted more. His heart was pounding before, but now it was taking flight. He could feel it at the base of his throat, in his ears, in his head, behind his eyes. And it was so wrong because she wasn’t herself. She didn’t know what she was doing. But she had locked her arms around him, demolishing his control. This was so wrong . . .
It didn’t feel wrong. Nothing in his life had felt more right. From their first encounter at Juliet’s wedding, he had known this woman was going to be important to him. This went beyond the commission he had been given in his granny’s prophecy. This was primitive, mate with his true mate.
Then why was he hesitating?
He was hesitating because he wasn’t sure that he could believe what her dream was telling him. Besides, he’d never read anyone’s mind before. All he’d ever had from Kate were impressions. Was he reading her correctly now?
He cupped her face with both hands. “Look at me, Kate,” he commanded.
Her lashes slowly lifted, and she gazed up at him. Her eyes were dark with grief and pain. It had always puzzled him, but her dream had opened a door to her past, and everything was beginning to add up, all the little hints that he’d been given: Magda’s reproaches, Kate’s work at the clinic, her close friendship with Will that went beyond nurse and doctor, and the note she had received from the killer.
“In Scotland, we burn witches.”
He tightened his hold on her. He didn’t expect her to make things easy for him. She was the most private person he knew. But her dream had given him a wedge into her secret thoughts and, one way or another, he would break down every barrier she kept throwing in his way.
“Make me forget,” she whispered, and she raised her head and pressed her lips to his.
No one had ever kissed him like this. Desire was there, and something else: wonder, awe, gentleness, and a million other emotions he could not name. It would take a poet, he thought, to describe how her kisses made him feel, and he was no poet.
“Gavin,” she whispered against his lips, “make the ghosts go away.”
He speared his fingers through her hair and held her face up as he dropped random kisses on her cheeks, her nose, her throat, her lips. “Always,” he murmured past an odd constriction in his throat. “Always, my love.”
She could smell the sea through the open window, hear the raucous cries of the gulls and knew that dawn could not be far off. The darkness in her mind began to recede. She was exactly where she wanted to be, with no fears or doubts. On that thought, she gave herself up to the pleasure to be found in her lover’s arms.
It was her first time, but she wasn’t nervous. As she’d told her mother, her work at the clinic had given her an education that few young women possessed. What she lacked was practice, and she was sure that Gavin would make up for that deficiency. The stray thought made her smile.
No one had told her that her skin would heat like this, and that her breath would catch, that his kisses would drive her to the edge of reason. She wasn’t cowed. She wanted it all, but just when she was voracious with desire and would have allowed him anything, he turned shy on her.
This is her first time.
Gavin repeated the litany inside his head. He wasn’t going to take her like some ravenous beast of prey. He wanted to make this good for her; he wanted her to know that she came first with him. He murmured soothingly as he unbuttoned her nightgown and slipped it from her shoulders, then, with tantalizing deliberation he kissed her throat, her shoulders, her breasts.
Shuddering with pleasure, she raised herself from the pillows and unbuttoned his shirt. With lips and tongue, she tasted his warm flesh. Gavin stopped breathing, then inhaled sharply as her questing lips dispensed a trail of heat to the waistband of his trousers.
She had registered, absently, the flowery fragrance of the sheets, but it was her lover’s scent that inflamed her senses, something dark and primitive that was uniquely his. She sucked on his flesh and then ran her tongue over her lips, savoring his taste.
Her innocent caresses made his blood boil and his hands tremble. “Too many clothes,” he whispered and adroitly dispensed with her nightgown. She gave a throaty laugh when he got up and tore out of his own garments with a speed and efficiency that would have alarmed her if he had been anyone but Gavin.
When he joined her on the bed, she welcomed him with open arms. His naked body molded to hers. It came to him, then, that this was the first time for him, also. He had never wanted like this, had never been cherished like this. He gentled his hands and tested every delicate bone in her face, her shoulders, her hands. She was fragile and no match for any man in a test of physical strength, but that did not mean that she was weak. She summoned an ironclad determination when she put her mind to something, as now.
Or had he misread the signs? Was he taking advantage of her at a weak moment?
“Gavin,” she whispered, “is this all there is?”
He gave a shaken laugh. “I’m trying to make this easy for you,” he said.
She didn’t want easy. Her body was so tight, she felt that it would shatter. Why was he so hesitant? What was he waiting for? She, it seemed, would have to have enough courage for both of them.
He groaned when her hands moved from his flanks to his groin. His jutting sex obviously held no fears for her. This was madness. They were going too fast. Where was his restraint? His good intentions?
God, he didn’t care. This was glorious. She was glorious. He spread her knees, positioned himself, and thrust through the barrier. When he felt her nails scoring his back and the bite of her teeth on his shoulder, his heart sang. A man wanted his woman to be passionate in bed, and Kate had exceeded his expectations. Then all rational thought slipped away, and he was aware only of the woman in his arms and the driving beat of his body.
Sated, he rolled to his side and anchored her with an arm around her waist. When he heaved a great sigh of contentment, she bolted from the bed and wriggled into her nightgown.
It did not take him long to discover that his wife—he smiled foolishly at his choice of words—that his wife was less than deliriously happy.
He rose to one elbow and surveyed the scowl on her brow. “I’m told,” he said, “that the first time may be difficult for a woman.”