A Bewitching Bride (38 page)

Authors: Elizabeth Thornton

Kate was shaking with laughter when Gavin returned with her wine.

“What’s the joke?” he asked.

She choked out between breaths, “ ‘Love changes us.’ Those were your very words. I think, my dear wizard, that you’ll be surprised at what love can do. If I’m not mistaken, a brawl will soon get under way. Yes, yes. Look at Dalziel! If looks could kill, Cedric would be dead.”

“Now this is interesting,” said her husband, sitting down beside her. “There’s nothing I like better than a good brawl. But Dalziel? There’s not an angry bone in his—Wow! Dalziel has certainly learned a thing or two in the last little while. He must be taking lessons.”

“I wish Calley were here to see the change in him. He would be proud of Dalziel.”

“You know that Calley doesn’t feel comfortable in a social setting, and Macduff likes them only too well. He’d be right in there, chasing off anyone who laid a hand on Dalziel.”

Kate sat back, preparing to enjoy the spectacle. As was usual, it started as a shoving match, on this occasion, between Dalziel and Cedric. Then her cousins got involved. Didn’t they always? As more gentlemen joined the fray, the fiddlers played louder and louder. When glasses and other missiles came flying, however, she thought it prudent to leave. Gavin, after all, wasn’t fit to fight his way out of bed much less defend himself.

“Time to go,” she shouted above the din.

Gavin looked at the tall, walnut cabinet clock that chimed the hour. The witching hour. He nodded. “Time for all good little witches and warlocks to be in their beds.”

Arm in arm, they left the reception together.

“Now,” said Kate as they made their way to their room, “you have a lot of explaining to do, and you can begin by telling me how you figured out who the lady in the carriage was.”

In the wee hours of the morning, when nothing was stirring, the tinkers struck camp and set out for warmer climes. Before long, they came to a branch in the road and stopped.

“What are they doing?” Kate whispered.

She and Gavin were in one of the tinkers’ homes on wheels, as warm as toast, under a blue tarpaulin stretched over a sturdy frame. Their driver jumped down from the box and, after unhitching the horse, bid them a courtly good night, then became one with the shadows as he joined his friends.

“They’re trying to decide,” said Gavin, “whether they should return to Maryculter or take the route over the peaks that leads to Perthshire and its softer air. And before you ask, no, I didn’t read anyone’s thoughts. That’s not my gift. Yours is the only person’s mind I can get into, and only if you’re willing. Wee Alfie told me that they’d set up camp here, but we are free to go with them or stay as we please.”

He cocked his head to the side. “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it, footloose and fancy-free? ‘We can go where the whim takes us.’ Those were your words before we embarked on this unconventional honeymoon.”

Her cat’s eyes had never been keener as she smiled up at him. He took her breath away, this husband of hers, not because he was handsome, but because beneath the civilized veneer, he was made in the image of a Knight Templar. He was a warrior when he needed to be and a healer when the occasion demanded. There was a time she’d thought that he collected strays, but it was the other way around. They found him.

Her lips, suddenly fierce, covered his. She wound her arms around him and held on tight. Tomorrow, they would decide whether to go or stay. Tonight, in each other’s arms, under the stars, was where they were meant to be.

“Read my mind,” she said.

“I love you, too,” he said, and kissed her.