Pleasured (30 page)

27

M
eg sat at the table,
the late-afternoon light slanting onto the open book before her. She had steadily been working her way through her grandmother’s journal ever since she got home. It was almost enough to distract her from the pain in her heart.

How ironic that her joyous trip should leave her in such sadness and turmoil. Meg had learned several things, but first and foremost she had discovered what she wanted most in life. And it was the one thing she could not have.

She loved Damon. Loved him as her grandmother had loved the man she kept secret, a love so fierce and consuming it pierced her heart and soul, blazing up in the core of her being. There would never be another love for her; she was certain of that. Her mother had never wavered; had Faye lived, she would have remained true to the lover who never returned to her. Like them, Meg would love only one.

Unlike them, she did not think she could be content with the love she had. In Aberdeen, she had glimpsed what
she truly wanted, a life with Damon. The peace, the joy, the easy comfort, of a life truly commingled with her lover had captured her. She wanted marriage and all that came with it, not just children or the pleasure of his bed, but the shared life. The vaunted independence of the Munro women paled in comparison. She knew she had no real freedom when her heart would always be chained to his. A life with him was what she ached for, and as long as she had only a part of him, she would continue to ache.

But he was an earl, and she could be nothing more than his mistress. His occasional mistress. It would be better when he went back to London. She would miss Lynette, and the pain of parting from Damon would be searing. But only then would she begin to heal. She would not have the love she wanted—indeed, she thought she needed it like she needed air to breathe—but the wound of parting would scar over. Without the constant reminder, the continual pull of Damon’s presence, she could pull her life together and move on. She would have . . . contentment.

Until then she would live in this state, yearning and happy and sad, fearing the moment of parting.

A crackle of a branch underfoot brought her head up, and Meg looked outside to see Damon coming up the path to her door. Hands in his pockets, he walked with his head down, frowning. Her heart began to pound, and she rose a little reluctantly to her feet. What was he doing here at this time of day? And what had put that sober expression upon his face?

She pulled open the door before he could knock.

“Meg!”

“Yes. Who did you expect?” She smiled, determined to maintain a light manner.

“No one. I mean, well, you, of course. I was just thinking. Meg . . . I want to talk to you.”

Her stomach turned to ice. “Of course. Come in. No, wait, I have a better idea. I was just about to leave. We can go together—Damon, I think I’ve found where they used to meet.” She took his hand, real excitement tingeing her voice, and pulled him over to the table where the book lay.

“Really? Where? Did Faye say his name?” His attention was caught.

“No, never. But he
did
give her the hair comb, as we thought; she mentions it late in the journal. There were two of them, but one must have gotten lost over the years. He gave her something else, as well, only she will not say what. It’s terribly frustrating. All she writes is that he entrusted ‘it’ to her and she has hidden it and will keep it till he returns again. After that, the entries grow farther and farther apart in time. He hasn’t returned, and I can hear the sorrow in her. I think she lost all interest in her life. She was just waiting for the baby to arrive. Toward the end, she writes about a frightening dream she had; she fears that it means she will die soon. And of course she did. Then, there is obviously a page torn out of the book. Maybe more than one.” She held out the book to him, showing him the ragged tear.

“Why?” He frowned, running his finger down the tear.

“I don’t know, but after that there is only one more entry.” Meg turned the page, pointing to the words. “She says she went to their ‘spot’ again to leave him a last message. I wonder if that missing page was what she left there for him. If we went to that place, we might be able to find it.”

“After all these years?” He looked skeptical.

“It’s possible. I presume it is where they met, but she re
fers to leaving their messages for each other there. So it must have been some place that was protected. Where she knew it would not be damaged.”

“Where is it?”

“She doesn’t say outright. She calls it the ‘spot’ or ‘the cave’ or ‘the place.’ ”

“A cave?” He groaned. “There are hundreds of them. And they’re all dank and cold,” he added darkly.

Meg laughed. “But, you see, I know exactly which dank, cold cave she’s talking about. She says right here that she went there to leave him the message and to fetch Irish moss for a tonic.” Meg smiled triumphantly. “There’s only one cave where the Irish moss grows, where the Munros have always picked it. That is where she left the message. Damon, she might have put his name on it or told him where she hid whatever it was and that might give us an indication of who he was.” Meg started toward the door. “Come, I’ll get the lantern and we can row over there. You can reach the cave only from a boat.”

“Wait.” He pulled her to a stop. “First I want to talk to you.”

“No!” Anxiety clawed at Meg. She knew in the depths of her heart that he was about to tell her he was leaving, and she could not bear to hear it. Not now. Later, when she had prepared herself. . . . “It’s a sea cave. The moss grows there because it is submerged in seawater. The sea is just below the entrance, and when the tide comes it, it fills the place with water. We have to go now, before the tide, or else we won’t be able to get in until tomorrow.”

“Very well.” He sighed. “We’ll find your cave first. But
then
, we are going to talk.”

They rowed out of the loch through the narrow channel to the sea, their speed aided by the flow of the river. The sun shone on them from the west, negating the chill of the water, though off in the distance gray clouds gathered over the gray sea. A storm might blow in with the tide, Meg thought. But they would be gone by then.

Damon rowed up to the dark entrance Meg indicated, and she lashed their rope to a large rock at the entrance. She stepped up into the cave, and Damon followed her with the lantern.

“Where do you think this place is?” Damon moved forward into the cave, lifting the lantern to illuminate the dark space. It was not large, for he reached the end in only a few strides. The walls were damp to the touch, and water pooled here and there in depressions in the stone shelf beneath their feet. Fallen rocks of differing sizes decorated the floor, and lichen grew on most of them. “This is your Irish moss?”

Meg nodded. “Yes. The water will cover these rocks when the tide is in, so their messages would have to be up high.”

“Seems a peculiar place anyway. Even if it’s not directly in the water, it’s bound to be damp.”

“It’s secluded. No one ever comes here that I know of, except for me.”

“They went to great lengths in their quest for privacy. I’m beginning to think he must have been an Englishman. Only loving an enemy would have required such secrecy.”

“Sometimes no one knowing about you is a very pleasant thing,” Meg said, remembering the feeling of Damon and
her existing in their own world, the cozy intimacy that had been theirs when they were away from the loch.

“That’s true.” Setting down the lantern, he went to her, placing his hands on her hips and smiling down into her face. His eyes sparked with light, and Meg knew he was remembering the same thing. He tugged her forward gently until her hips rested against him. The familiar heat started deep in her abdomen, and Meg felt his response. Damon’s eyes took on a dark and heavy look, and he bent to nuzzle her neck. “Privacy is a pleasant thing indeed.”

For the next few minutes they were lost to everything else, but finally Meg pulled away with a sigh. “This is
not
finding what we want.”

“I believe I am finding exactly what I want.” But he gave her a final kiss and let her go. “Very well. The sooner we find it, the sooner we can get back to a comfortable bed.”

Meg laughed. “Is that all you think about?”

“Not entirely. Only a large portion of it.”

He reached out a hand to her. Meg’s heart ached in her chest, thinking how soon this would all be over. Firmly she pushed the thought aside. Leave the sorrow for when that happened. She laced her fingers through his, and they strolled around the cave, lifting the lantern to peer into holes and crevices. They got distracted once or twice and spent a few more minutes locked in an embrace, but each time they pulled away and continued with their thorough search. Damon felt along the walls as high as he could reach.

“You know, this looks like a waterline, where the tide comes to.” Damon pointed. “The only place I can see that wouldn’t be covered with water would be that narrow shelf of rock that runs along this wall.”

The shelf was too high for Damon to see to the back of it, so he lifted Meg up to look at it. It was empty save for grit. When Damon set her down, she dusted off her hands and glanced around disgustedly.

“Nothing. Perhaps she came back and took away the message. That notation was several months before she died. Or maybe the tide came in higher than usual and it did get washed away. The storms strike this headland hard, and there is bound to have been a ferocious storm or two in the past fifty years.”

“What about that hole?” Damon pointed to a large black opening just above the floor at the far end of the cave.

“Surely they would not have left messages there. It is far too low; obviously anything there would be washed away.”

“Yes, but as I recall, the caves are like a rabbit warren.”

“You think it leads to another cave?” Meg’s interest was piqued.

“Or opens up inside to something higher.” Intrigued, Damon went to the hole and knelt, holding the lantern inside. “It doesn’t open up, but I can’t see the end of it.” He started to crawl forward. “Blast. There
would
be water on the floor.”

“Water?” Meg glanced down and saw that a shallow trough of water was indeed running along the center of the floor. She turned, looking back, and saw that near the entrance of the cave, water sloshed on the floor. “Damon, look! I don’t understand. The tide doesn’t rise for another hour.”

“Just a minute.” His voice was muffled, his body entirely inside the hole now. “This is a tunnel. It goes back some distance.”

“What is that noise?” It had been going on for some time, Meg realized, hovering in the back of her conscious
ness, an irregular knocking that she had paid no attention to, wrapped up as she was in the search. Her heart began to thud, and she started toward the entrance. “Damon, come back! Something is wrong.”

The water was over Meg’s feet by the time she reached the entrance, and she had to hold her skirts up to avoid getting them soaked. Behind her, she heard Damon moving about and the clink of the lantern on stone, then he exclaimed, “What the devil!”

Wind whipped into the entrance, making her skirts swirl, and Meg braced her hand against the cave wall and peered out. The gray clouds they had seen earlier over the ocean had moved in with alarming speed, and the sky had darkened to a deep, threatening gray. Rain came down in a heavy sheet, moving swiftly toward the cliff. The wind had kicked up the waves and sent their dory, on its mooring rope, clattering against the cliffside again and again. The water, which had been a foot below the base of the cave when they arrived, now lapped freely over its edge, water sloshing in and spreading across the floor.

“It’s that storm,” Meg said, her throat tight. “The tide hasn’t risen yet, but the storm is sending water in. Once it starts rising . . .”

“Damn and blast!” Damon said as he came up behind her. “How could it have blown up so quickly?”

“It does,” Meg said grimly. “I should have paid more attention.” She had seen the clouds on the horizon, but she had been too eager to find the place her grandmother wrote about, too eager to flee from the words she knew must come between her and Damon, and so she had ignored the warning signs. “We must leave immediately.”

Meg glanced past Damon toward the loch. The passage from here at the mouth, where the water emptied into the sea, narrowed as it stretched back to the loch. Between the high cliffs, it would be somewhat protected from the high ocean waves crashing against the cliffs here. It would be rough going, but they could make it into the loch and from there to shore. Provided that they managed to get into the dory and into the neck of the passage, away from the higher waves. They could not stay here, for the cave would fill up with water.

Damon edged around her and grabbed the mooring rope, which was soaked and pulled taut, the wind shoving the dory toward the loch. Damon leaned out to haul it in, the wind whipping his hair and billowing out his jacket. Water splashed up onto his breeches and lapped around his boots.

“Damon, be careful.” Fear clutched at Meg’s heart.