They entered the burial grounds through a creaking gate. The gravestones, some flat, some lurching at haphazard angles into the soil, were ancient. Wandering slowly around, they read what they could of the faded stones until they came to the wrought iron enclosure set apart from the rest that contained the Carmichael family graves. The crypt faced out over the loch.
Geraint gazed out at the choppy waters, which turned from blue to iron-grey to blue again as the clouds scudded over the sun. ‘It’s a beautiful spot,’ he said. ‘There’s something about it. Peaceful. Calming’
Flora squeezed his hand. ‘Enduring. This place has survived so much. It gives me hope. Don’t laugh at me.’
‘I’m not.’
They walked back up the hill towards the ruined church. There was shelter from the wind here, and a wider panorama that swept out over the loch to the mountains beyond. Aside from the distant bleating of a sheep, there was not a sound. Geraint drew her down to perch beside him on one of the inner walls, putting his arm around her and hugging her close into the shelter of his body.
‘I know we agreed not to talk about it today, but I hate to think of you being ordered to the front,’ Flora said, after a short silence.
Geraint’s expression tightened. ‘I joined up to fight with my countrymen. The men I enlisted with are at the front. It’s where I should be.’
‘I know it’s wrong of me to say it, but I don’t want you to go to war and I don’t want Alex to sign up or Robbie, either.’
Suddenly it was all just too much. She had not allowed herself to cry, not once since the army had arrived. There were others enduring so much more than her, she had not felt as if she had the right to cry, but now the tears came, hot and acrid and unstoppable. She tried desperately to brush them away with her hands, rubbing her eyes furiously. ‘I’m sorry. It’s unpatriotic of me.’
Geraint laughed. Not a humorous laugh, but a bitter one. ‘Unpatriotic but healthy. I sometimes wish I could cry.’
This unexpected admission brought her tears to an abrupt end. ‘I cannot imagine such a thing.’
He flushed. ‘Because tears are for women?’
‘No. No, I did not mean that at all. Are you afraid, Geraint?’
‘A coward, you mean?’
‘I meant nothing of the sort! I cannot believe there is a man in uniform who has not been afraid at some point. I merely meant...’
‘Forget it.’ Geraint pulled out a handkerchief from one of the capacious pockets of his tunic.
His expression was closed, unreadable. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you, or to imply...’
‘I said forget it.’ He closed his eyes, took several deep breaths before opening them again. ‘Let’s not talk about the war, Flora,’ he said in a gentler voice. ‘Let’s pretend it’s not happening, for just one day.’
Hurt. He was hurt, and he was hiding something. What had he said earlier?
It’s complicated.
Flora longed to ask him what, exactly, was so complicated, but he was so very determined that she should not know, and she could not bear the thought of him walking away from her. Not today. She shivered. ‘It’s getting cold, but I know a place nearby, a shepherds’ bothy, which has a fire.’
Chapter Seven
T
he bothy was a rough hut used by local shepherds to shelter from the weather. Pulling a box of lucifers from her coat pocket, Flora set light to the kindling, which was always left for the next occupant.
‘What a surprising wee lassie you are,’ Geraint said in a fair attempt at a Scots accent.
Relieved that his mood had lightened, Flora laughed. ‘I’m five foot eight. Not so wee, thank you very much, though beside you I feel like a skelf.’
‘You’ve lost me now.’
‘A skelf is a Scots word for splinter.’
‘Given that a splinter is something that gets under your skin, you might have a point, Miss Carmichael.’
‘I doubt I’d get under anyone’s skin in this old thing,’ she said, holding out her mackintosh and making a twirl, as if she was wearing a ball gown.
His smile was completely unguarded, a rare thing for Geraint. He pulled her to him, his arm circling her waist, and spun her around again in the tiny stone hut, making her giddy. Her laughter faded when he looked down at her, his eyes dark with the passion she had witnessed earlier.
‘You have certainly managed to get under mine,’ he said, pulling her backwards into his embrace and kissing her.
This time he did not stop. He kissed her, and she kissed him, and it was as if they had not left off kissing in the woods at all. They sank to the hard earth floor in front of the spluttering fire, still kissing. He kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, her throat. Her mackintosh fell onto the ground as he nuzzled the hollow at the base of her neck.
Lips. Tongue. His. Hers. She could not tell, and did not care. Who would have thought kisses could make you feel like this, melting and on fire at the same time? Who would have thought that so quickly, kisses would not nearly be enough?
She struggled with the brass buttons on his tunic. Geraint swore and unfastened first his belt and then the buttons, still kissing her. He shrugged out of the jacket. His singlet was pristine white, stretched taut over his chest. His arms were muscled, just as she had imagined them, smooth skin, knotted underneath, like whipcord. The hardness of his body made her shiver, made the tension twist low inside her. She smoothed her palm over his chest, feeling the heat of his skin through the cotton, feeling his heartbeat, slow and certain, enjoying the sharp intake of his breath as she touched him.
He pulled her to him, wrapping his arms tight around her so that she was pressed against his chest, and she felt the heat of her passion rise another notch. The dry wood on the fire sparked and crackled as Geraint slid his hands over the soft woollen sleeves of her dress, flattening his palms on her breasts in an echo of her own action, making her shudder. Her nipples hardened. He stroked them through the layers of her garments, so delicately it was almost painful. She moaned his name, shocked by the strength of her response, even more shocked by how much more she wanted.
He managed the hooks and buttons of her gown far too deftly to have been anything but familiar with such impediments. She wouldn’t think about that. The emerald-green woollen dress was worn under a tunic patterned in the new jersey fabric, but Geraint managed to pull both from her shoulders at the same time, sliding them down her arms, leaving her in her camisole. She had always thought it would be embarrassing, to have a man look at her in her underwear. Geraint’s breathing quickened, his eyes darkened as he looked at her, leaving her in no doubt about what he thought. She felt powerful, liberated.
He laid her down with the mackintosh to protect her, sliding her gown out from under her before stretching out at her side, his legs tangling with hers, half-covering her with his body. He kissed her more languorously this time, deliberately slowing her, when she would have touched him, gently putting her hands aside. ‘Wait. Let me,’ he said. His touch was like the whispered breath of a warm breeze on her skin, fingers and lips. Her arms, his mouth warm on the sensitive skin inside her elbow. Her chest, the valley between her breasts, stroking and licking his way along the lacy frill of her camisole. He cupped her breasts and circled her nipples with his thumb, then he kissed them, his mouth warm, dampening the rayon, making it cling.
He undid the ribbons of her camisole and pulled it open. His hand on her skin, so much more. How could there be so much more? His mouth enveloping her nipple, sucking, licking, making her shiver, making the knot inside her tighten.
She could feel the hardness of his erection pressing into her thigh. His kisses became more heated. He slid his hand down, under the waistband of her knickers. She tugged his singlet free of his trousers to run her hands up the knotted length of his spine, revelling in the way his muscles flexed beneath her trembling touch.
His hand cupped the heat between her legs. ‘More,’ she gasped, not meaning to say the word aloud, even though she was thinking it. He slid his finger inside her so easily. Deeper. Then he touched her, a sliding, stroking touch that made her lose all sense of everything except what he was making her feel. His mouth on hers. Her hands on his skin, clinging, digging into him, and his fingers sliding, stroking, until she could bear no more, and it was as if she was tearing apart. Her climax ripped through her. When she finally opened her eyes, it was as if she was another, quite different Flora.
He was gazing at her, dark eyes, flushed cheeks, unreadable expression. ‘Geraint?’
* * *
He rolled away from her and got hurriedly to his feet. Dazed in the aftermath of her climax, she stared at him as he tucked his singlet hurriedly back into his trousers, picking up her gown, holding it out for her to step into. ‘It’s gone too far, Flora. Much too far.’
His voice sounded curt. As he turned her around to fasten her dress, she flinched.
Fool. What a bloody stupid fool he was.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t say that.’ She turned on him, her face stricken. ‘Don’t apologise. It makes it worse.’
She was searching for her shoes under her mackintosh. It had grown dark outside, though it couldn’t be much after four. He stooped to help her. ‘Here.’
She snatched the shoes from his hands and tried to put them on, hopping on one foot, and when he tried to help her, she pushed him away. ‘Leave me alone.’ She dropped onto the wooden bench, staring dejectedly into space.
He took her shoes and knelt before her to put them on before sitting down beside her on the bench. ‘Flora, it’s not that I don’t want you, you must not think that. I have never, ever wanted anyone as much as I want you, but it would be wrong. You know that. We both do.’
She refused to meet his eyes. ‘Flora, it’s because I care for you that I stopped.’
Finally, she looked at him. ‘Do you?’
‘More than I realised. More than is right.’
‘Right?
Please
don’t tell me that it’s because of who I am, Geraint. Please don’t tell me that it’s because we are from—what did Sheila call it?—different sides of the fence.’
* * *
‘Is that what Sheila said? She’s right, but it’s not that. Not just that.’ Geraint got to his feet and picked up his tunic. Sitting next to Flora was distracting. His body still yearned for satisfaction. The more clothes, and distance, he could put between them the better. ‘You’re still a virgin, Flora,’ he said bluntly. ‘I won’t take that from you when there can be no future for us. That honour will go to your husband, the lucky man. And don’t tell me that it doesn’t matter, because I know damn well it will. I won’t compromise you.’
‘You make me sound like some sort of Victorian heiress, for goodness’ sake. We are in the twentieth century, not the nineteenth.’
‘But some things still matter, and that’s one of them. Another thing that matters is this damned war. I’ll be going to the front sooner or later, and the chances are, if I come back at all, I’ll not be the man I am now. Even if things were different, even if we did want the same things from life...’
‘I have no idea what I want.’
‘But you’re finding out.’
‘Thanks to you.’
He shook his head. ‘You’re doing it all yourself. You can do so much more than you think, Flora. This war could be the making of you, if you wanted it to be.’
‘But you will not allow it to be the making of us?’
He had not allowed himself to consider it until now, any more than he had allowed himself to consider her feelings might run every bit as deep as his. One step, and he could take her in his arms. Just one step. The temptation was shockingly, terrifyingly, strong. Dear God, but he really was in over his head.
Appalled, Geraint picked up his belt and tightened it viciously. ‘No, I won’t,’ he said brusquely. ‘It would be the most selfish thing I could do. It would never work.’
‘Why must you always harp on about the differences in our station?’ She jumped to her feet and began to shake out her mackintosh furiously. ‘I am sick to death of our friendship being a source of shame to you!’
He could never tell her that his shame had nothing at all to do with class. His horrible, loathsome, cowardly little secret accounted for that. He took her mackintosh from her and helped her into it. ‘As it is, it will be hard enough for both of us when I leave here,’ he said, pulling her back against him, wrapping his arms around her. The unmistakable scent of female arousal overlaid her usual perfume, made his blood thicken. He let her go reluctantly. ‘Think how much harder it would be if we allowed ourselves to care more deeply, Flora. Think how much more difficult it would be to get through every day, living in fear of what will happen. I might be killed. If I don’t die, it’s possible I’ll be maimed. I won’t be a burden. I wouldn’t do that to you. I can’t.’
‘Do I have no say in the matter?’
He shook his head.
‘Why not?’ she asked.
He couldn’t tell her. Not the definitive reason. He simply could not. ‘You just don’t,’ Geraint said. ‘Trust me, it’s for the best.’
Flora fastened up her coat, tucking her hair into the collar. ‘I love you, you know. I didn’t know it until today, but I do.’ She dashed a hand across her eyes, digging her knuckles into them painfully.
He had not thought he could feel worse. For the tiniest moment, Geraint felt the most utter elation, which made the guilt-fuelled plummet back down to earth an agony. She loved him. She could not,
must
not love him. ‘Flora...’
She shrugged herself free when he caught her to him. ‘Please don’t tell me again how impossible it is. You’ve made yourself very clear. I know it makes no difference. I told you—I told you because it seemed wrong not to. I am sorry, I should not have said anything.’
She waited, looking at him expectantly, her blue-grey eyes glittering with unshed tears, but he could think of nothing to say. She loved him. Those most perfect of words and most dreadful. They tore him in two. As she turned away from him, out of the bothy and into the dusk, Geraint forced himself to hold his ground, not to go after her. He had done more than enough damage already. No more.