Scottish Brides (35 page)

His thumb rested upon her chin, dipped beneath her jaw and pushed her face up. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, waiting in terrified wonder for the touch of his lips on hers, the magical and forbidden taste of wickedness.

Instead, he spoke, his breath brushing against the tendrils of hair at her temple. “Why did you come, lass?”

Her eyes opened. He stood so close, she could feel his breath upon her cheek. Push him back, or be enfolded in his arms. That's how close they stood.

“I couldn't stay away.” The simple truth of it frightened her. She'd done nothing but think of him all day, wondering if she'd dreamed their first encounter.

“Neither could I, lass. A good omen, I think.” There was that hint of a smile in his voice again, as if he was amused by her. It should not have coaxed free her own smile. It might have been better if she'd feared him.

“Give me your hand, Ealasaid.”

She reached out her arm, until her fingers brushed his chest. The hand that encompassed hers was large; his palm, roughened. He laughed then, an odd sound in the darkness, and pulled her with him.

Three

 

 

 

He had thought about her all day, this woman with
the ill-fitting name. She wasn't timid. A timid miss might ask where he was taking her. But then, a timid miss would not be in the dark with him, or stand in a stream with her skirts to her knees.

Her voice was melodic, almost as if she had the sound of Scotland trapped within her speech. She was fleet of foot as she followed him, skipping every once in a while to keep her steps equal to his.

“Are you certain you've not come to steal?” she asked, her voice breathless.

“Are you feared I would ride with you across the border, lass? Hide you in my castle and demand a ransom for you?”

“Have you a castle?” She sounded fascinated.

Did she not know who he was? A thought without merit at this particular moment. But still, a thread of doubt crept through his mind. He'd never thought she wouldn't know him. Lachlan was a good Scots name, but not very common.

“I'm Sinclair,” he said, wondering how she would receive the news that the man who held her hand and pulled her through the forest was her future husband.

“Oh.” A small sound, for all that. Still, she did not protest.

They traveled slower, winding through the thick woods. He waited for her to speak, wondered what her questions would be.

“Could you tell me about the castle?”

“Glenlyon?”

“Yes. It's to be my home, so I would like to know.”

“It's a castle,” he said. “It's old and grows cold in the winter, though passably cool in the summer. You don't expect me to tell you what color the curtains are or some such?”

Her laughter surprised him. So, too, the fact that it seemed tied to his own smile, as if she'd the power to summon it.

“Can you not wait until you see it, then?”

“You're right; I should wait. It is only a month.”

Her hand still rested trustingly in his, and she'd said those words that had calmed his sudden jealousy without a clue that it had been there at all.
It's to be my home.
She'd known who he was, then, and had not simply come with him to have an adventure before marrying. He wanted to kiss her, some recompense, some reward for her hesitant honesty, for her gift of tremulous anticipation. There had been fear in her words, barely audible, but then he'd had some experience with learning that emotion in the past few years. He was occasionally afraid of the future, afraid he might not be able to save his clan. He turned his mind from such dour thoughts.

He brought her hand to his face, kissed the inside of her wrist. He did not wish to startle her; they were newly met, however destined their future together might be. She seemed silenced by his gesture, the pounding of her blood beneath her skin the only communication between them. Perhaps not a timid woman, but one of shyness still, of uncertainty. It was there in the way her breathing had escalated, in the small step she took away from him; almost, but not quite, pulling her hand from his stewardship.

He said nothing, simply walked on, his route one learned years ago when he had first begun to visit this place. The waterfall was the headwater for the small stream she'd bathed in last night.

The sound of the rushing water drowned out her words. She pulled free of his grasp and stood on the mossy bank overlooking the pool formed by the rapids. The moon chose that moment to peek out from behind the lowering clouds, and he was treated to the sight of her, bathed by silvered light.

She took his breath away.

She turned, her smile as radiant as the moon, the night no match for her beauty. Were all women as such when seen for the first time, or had it been his singular blessing to view her in the moonlight? Had Fate, who'd decreed the Sinclairs such a sorry lot these past years, felt only pity and sorrow for his condition, then? Had he been given this woman in order to right so many wrongs? A woman with a child in her heart, who gamboled in streams and raced like a fawn, whose laughter taunted him to smile and whose face made him thankful for Old Mab and the Legend. And perhaps even Coinneach.

Her lips were full, the lower lip more so than the upper. Her eyes were large; her cheeks, high. Her chin was neither squared nor pointed, but tapering in a way that chins do. And her nose was neither beaked nor sharp, but ended with a small upturn to it. Her hair curled over her shoulders in riotous disarray, and he wanted to know if the mist made it such, or if she was beset with curls every day. A question he'd have answered after their wedding.

He bent finally, and she cupped her hands around his ear so that he might hear her words over the roar of the water. “I've never known such a place existed,” she said.

His own words were said in a similar manner. He hesitated as his hands brushed over her hair, feeling the thickness of it, wishing that it might be provident to thread his fingers through it. “You've led a sheltered life, then, lass. Did you never go exploring?”

She shook her head. He didn't need sunlight to see the sparkle of her eyes. He needed no urging for her to grip his hand. They followed the edge of the pool until they came to the waterfall. He turned and looked at her, as if to measure the extent of her daring, then calmly picked her up and walked into the gap between waterfall and stone.

He slowly lowered her to her feet and reluctantly stepped away. What he wanted to do was get so much closer. But they had all the time in the world to learn of the other. These moments hollowed from time and circumstance were sacred to themselves. He wanted to know things that a bridegroom might dismiss. Why she seemed so un-English for one, and why she'd never ventured far from her garden. Were her parents strict? Had she been mistreated, then? A surge of protectiveness for her thudded through him.

The cave was little more than a hollowed-out rock behind the waterfall, deep enough that they could stand with their back to it and watch the silvery curtain in front of them. He wished it were daylight, so he could see the expression on her face. She was little more than a shadow. A breath of substance.

“I shouldn't be here,” she said, addressing the waterfall. Her voice was faint enough, but it was oddly less noisy here than in front of the cascade of water. Did she stand so still because she sensed him in the same way he did her? He wanted some connection of flesh to flesh, so he placed his hand on her shoulder. He felt her shiver, a strange sensation that was neither in response to cold nor aversion to his touch. Instead, it was as if every part of her body stilled in that instant, became aware of how close he stood to her, how near they were to each other, how their very breathing seemed in tandem.

“What better place, Ealasaid?”

“In my bed. Asleep.”

“Dreaming?”

“Yes,” she said. The word sounded sorrowful.

“And what do you dream about, lass?” He had not moved his hand, imagining he could feel the texture of her skin beneath her shawl, her dress.

“I dream of the past,” she said. Her voice seemed as soft as a whisper; yet if it had been, he could not have heard it over the sound of the waterfall. “I dream of Scotland.”

“Does it frighten you that much?”

“It does not frighten me at all.”

“Yet we're an impressive bunch, for all that. I think you a brave lass, to be standing here in the dark with a Scot.”

“Which is why I shouldn't be here.”

“Do you question your courage, or my honor?”

“My own perversity, perhaps, that I would wish to be nowhere but here, even as I know it's not right or well done of me.”

His smile broadened. “I'll not harm you.”

She didn't answer him, just looked around the cave as if she could see into the nooks and crannies of it.

“Is this where you hide from the patrols?”

“I've put my wayward life behind me.”

“Or encouraged me to join it.”

“Is that what you've been dreaming of? The life of a border reiver?”

“It seems a bit more exciting than the life I've led,” she admitted. “I've little liking for embroidery threads and sketching.”

“Are you craving an adventure, lass?”

She glanced at him. “I think you are my grandest escapade of all.”

 

*       *       *

She should not be here. It was one thing to be discovered barefooted and racing into the house; another to be missing when she'd convinced Harriet she was ill. She did not doubt that Harriet would send a servant to check on her or go herself to render condemnation and compassion in one breath.

The rain had come as if to wash the sky clean and then disappeared, leaving it dazzling with stars and deep-black night. The moon had been a lantern, illuminating her foolishness, and then his face.

Lachlan Sinclair. One of the Sinclairs. His name alone had sent a thrill through her. She would see him again, then, after Harriet wed. They would live in the same place, know the same people. And perhaps they could meet again, as they did now, stretching the boundaries of the restrictions that held them in place.

An unmarried woman did not eagerly grasp the hand of a man she did not know. She did not race into the woods with her lips clenched tight as if to muffle the sounds of excitement. She certainly did not stand upon the edge of a pool grown black and silver with moonlight and gape at the face of a man she'd never met.

She'd known he was tall, and his breadth had been hinted at in the shape of his shadowed form. But she had not known that his face would be so strong, that the moonlight would dance upon his features and give shape and hollows to them. It was a face of extremes, softened by a mouth that seemed adrift in smiles. She had stared at him as if she'd lost her wits. And perhaps she had, for in that moment, when the moon had encapsulated him in radiance, she'd wanted to touch him. Her fingers ached to dance over the skin of his cheekbones, to see if they were as sharp as moonlight made them. Was his nose that strong, his lips that full? His hair that thick?

Last night she'd thought herself wild. Tonight she knew herself wanton.

She brushed by him. Without another word, she'd found her way from the cave and back to the bank of the pool.

“Ealasaid?”

She looked back, and he stood there, his arm outstretched, his hand palm up. She shook her head. He was too much a lure, and she had learned caution and survival in the past years. She should wait until they met again in Scotland. It would be more properly done. Less tempting than seeing him in the moonlight. Even as she told herself to leave, she did not wish to. A clue, then, to how wild she truly was.

“Meet me here, tomorrow.”

Did she just imagine his words?
Wishful thinking, Janet, or a dream?
Or perhaps an echo of wildness?

Four

 

 

Janet slept heavily and woke late. She had crept to
her room by the servants' stair, had felt only a giddy sense of relief not to have been discovered. But sleep had not come easily. Instead, she had remembered every moment of the hour she'd spent with Lachlan. She spoke his words over and over in her mind, as if to fix them there.