April Moon

by Merline Lovelace

  “I’m a tough lad.” He grinned, though his arm stung like the devil.

  “Aye, but the rest of this will hurt much more.”

  “Do your worst, Jenny Colvin,” he murmured, his gaze steady, “if it means you’ll give me a healing balm like that afterward.”

  In the lantern light, her cheeks blushed deep pink. She twisted a cloth in her hands and handed it to him. “Bite on that. This will not be pleasant.”

  “Though you think I deserve it.” He slid the rolled cloth between his teeth.

  “Hush, you,” she said, smiling faintly, shaking her head a little. Once again she thrust the blade into the lantern flame, then brought the knife toward him. When he sensed the heat, he closed his eyes. He felt her hand rest on his own, and her fingers knotted in his. Drawing a breath, he squeezed her hand.

  The hot blade seared his gaping wound, sending a lightning strike of pain through him. He grimaced, jammed his teeth into the cloth, felt sweat bead on his brow. As the knife lifted away, he suppressed a deep groan. Leaning back against the relief of cold, damp rock, he closed his eyes while the world spun.

  “Oh, Simon,” Jenny whispered, as she began to bandage his arm again. “I didna mean to hurt you so. I’m sorry. Oh, Simon.”

  He said nothing, leaning his back against the rock, eyes closed, as he mastered pain and dizziness. Finally, when he felt her tying off the new bandage, he opened his eyes. The world had righted itself a little. White moonlight, brighter for the darkness he had just seen, showed Jenny kneeling at his feet, leaned against his knees as she worked on his arm.

  When he saw the raw anguish on her face, he felt as if pain, and the dealing of it, had bonded them. In silence, he touched her cheek, tracing his fingers over her jaw.

  “No matter,” he murmured wearily. “It needed to be done, and you had the courage to do it.”

  Jenny tipped her cheek into the palm of his hand, and he saw tears glimmer in her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she said again.

  “I should be the one asking your forgiveness,” he murmured.

  “When I brought the knife to your arm, then I knew…” She stopped, closed her eyes.

  “What, love?” he asked quietly.

  “That I…never wanted to cause you pain, though all these years, I have been so angry with you.”

  “I am truly sorry if I hurt you,” he whispered.

  “And I you.” Her chin trembled, and tears pooled in her eyes. “Here,” she said abruptly, shoving the flask toward him. “Drink a bit more. You need it, for the…the pain.” She wiped her hand under her nose as if to stave off her tears.

  He lifted the flask and swallowed again. It burned smoky-sweet as it went down, its fire dulling the sharp ache in his arm, filling all of his senses keenly for an instant. “My God,” he murmured. “You really do make magnificent whisky, Miss Colvin. Only the rarest brings tears to the eyes like this, and makes a man want to sing hallelujah.”

  “Oh, dinna sing,” she said hastily, laying her finger on his lower lip. “We canna risk attracting the smuggling sort.”

  He chuckled, entranced, and kissed her fingertip. She slowly traced her fingers over his lips, his chin and jaw, then dropped her hand away. “You had better make sure I stay quiet then, as you did before,” he suggested.

  She smiled. “Shh…perhaps you’ve had enough after all.”

  In the luminous moonlight, she leaned so close that he felt her breath caress his lips. His heart pounded, slow and hard, and he forgot why he was here with her, why the whisky warmed his blood. He forgot about pain, and secrets, even forgot that enemies were elsewhere in the cave.

  He was aware only of the magic conjured by moonlight and dreams, aware only of Jenny. She heated his blood more potently than drink ever could.

  “White fire,” he said suddenly.

  “Wh-what?”

  “Your whisky,” he said. “It goes down like white fire. Like moonlight transformed to some magical potion.” He glanced toward the full moon, visible through the split in the rock.

  “I like that,” she whispered, still closer to him. Her eyelids lowered as she looked at his lips.

  “And you, love,” he said softly, “are like white fire, too.” Stretching out his right hand, he cupped the back of her head and sank his fingers into the gleaming mass of her dark hair. She angled her face toward him, suffused in luminous moonlight.

  Stay away from my daughter.

  Jock’s words intruded, reminded. God forgive him, he could not keep away from her. Tonight she had the allure of moonlight on her, and he had fallen under her spell long ago. Years had not abated that power. She had filled his dreams all that time, and now he was with her at last. He could not stay away from Jenny Colvin, no matter what her father wanted.

  Lost in her lovely eyes, caught with her inside the intimate space in the rock, he felt as if they had found some secret pocket in eternity. Here, the sea whispered below them and the moonlight poured its gentleness upon them. Here, fear and grief and close-kept secrets held no power over hope, and love.

  Jenny drifted shut her eyes, and Simon touched his mouth to hers, lingered. Her lips softened beneath his, and she breathed out a sigh, a poignant sound that fueled his desire. Pulling her toward him with one arm, he felt her arms slip around his neck, felt her body curve to his. Through layers of fabric, her breasts were soft, firm, warm against his chest.

  Leaning toward her, for she still knelt beside him, he slid his fingers deep in her hair, felt the braiding loosen. Her hair spilled, rich and silky, over his hand and down her back. Gathering her to him, he kissed her as he had wanted to do for years, since the day he had left.

  Then suddenly she pulled back. “Your arm—”

  “It’s fine,” he whispered, drawing her toward him to kiss her again. “I have wanted to kiss you like this for so long….”

  “If you wanted that so much,” she said, her lips touching his, “why didn’t you come back and do it?”

  “Hush.” He kissed her then as he had dreamed of doing, hard and fierce, his heart beating fast against hers, while kisses rained, and his body surged, and his love for her raised his soul in him until he hardly knew where he ended and she began.

  Her lips were warm and soft, and he tasted the sweet fire of the whisky between her mouth and his. Touching his tongue to hers, he heard her gasp a little with the pleasure of it, felt her sink more deeply against him.

  A moment later she drew back. “No,” she whispered, her breaths coming as fast as his own. “No, Simon Lockhart. You can always make me melt—like strong whisky, every time you touch me. But there are too many questions between us now.”

  He lifted his hands away from her abruptly, palms up. “Very well,” he said curtly. “No more. I apologize, Miss Colvin. You have my apology for all of it—the hurt, the worries, the waiting. But do not ask me why, not yet…What is it?” he asked, as he saw her eyes grow wide, heard her gasp. “What’s wrong?”

  “Your hands,” she said. “Your wrists!”

  Damnation, he thought, and lowered his hands quickly. He had forgotten about the scars.

  She grabbed his wrists and turned them toward the moonlight, running her thumbs over the glossy, healed ridges of skin, rotating his arms to look at the fine, scarred grooves that ran across his forearms below the wristbones. “You did not have these scars years ago. What happened?”

  He frowned, looking at the familiar striations. He had forgotten about them, having lived with them for years. And he had forgotten that Jenny had never seen them.

  “Simon.” She looked up at him, brows drawn tight, her fingers cool and soft upon his wrists. “These were made by manacles.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE TRUTH had asserted itself despite his secrets. Simon realized that the time had long passed for honesty. “Manacles, aye,” he said gruffly. “I was in prison.”

  Her hands tightened on his wrists. “Why?” she breathed. “When? We heard you were briefly jailed in Edinburgh. B
ut this—”

  “I was in the dungeons—for two years.”

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. “What were the charges?”

  “I was arrested—” he drew a breath, steeled himself to deliver more of the truth that he had withheld so long “—for taking in a cargo of French laces and West Indies rum, and trading twenty casks of Scottish whisky.”

  “But—” Jenny stood quickly, turned away, pacing a few steps in the little niche in the rock that held them safe from the rest of the world. “But…that night you left…my father had traded a load of twenty casks of whisky for a cargo of laces and rum.”

  “I know,” he said quietly.

  She whirled. “And you were the one he entrusted to watch the goods, while he went in search of Felix, who had wandered off.”

  “I remember.” He watched her steadily.

  “He left you there,” she said, “and then you disappeared.”

  Simon nodded. “After your father and the others left, several revenue men came with dragoons. The chief customs and excise officer was with them, sent from Edinburgh to intercept that shipment. They had already caught the free traders on the cutter out in the firth, but they did not know who else was involved. They found me with the goods, but could find no one else that night.”

  “And they never proved who else had a hand in that cargo. I remember—but we thought you took it. We were never told the whole truth of it. After my father and Felix saw the dragoons that night, they went back to their houses and their beds, so when the king’s men knocked on their doors, they were sound asleep, or seemed so. My father thought you had done the same. When he and the others went back to the cliffs, you were gone. We heard no word from you, and the excise officer said only that my father was a lucky man to have avoided the king’s men that night, and lucky to be rid of you.”

  “That particular officer was a sly fellow who loathed me,” he said. “I found out later that he wanted Jock to believe that I had betrayed him, to help ruin me.”

  “My father assumed you had taken off with his cargo.”

  “In a way I did. They loaded it in a cart and we went off to Edinburgh. It was a merry convoy,” he said bitterly.

  “Did you tell them who the goods belonged to?”

  “Why would I do that?” he asked softly.

  “Surely they asked.”

  He lifted his wrists in silence, to let the scars serve as evidence of his resistance. Someday she would see the scars on his ankles from iron cuffs, and the lash marks on his back.

  “You never told,” she whispered. “My father traded that cargo, arranged everything that night. You only guarded it. Yet you went to prison…to protect him, and all my kinsmen.”

  “Jock would have hanged if they had taken him,” he said quietly. “He had been arrested too often for similar crimes. I had never been taken before, so they were lenient with my sentencing. Not death, but two years in the Edinburgh dungeons.”

  “In chains.”

  He shrugged, folded his hands to cover the scars. “I was not always…cooperative. I was glad to spare Jock’s life, but I cannot say I was content to be there.”

  Jenny let out a little sob and rushed toward him, sinking to her knees. “Oh, Simon,” she said, and wrapped her arms around him. “Forgive me, please.”

  He bent toward her, resting his cheek on her hair, gathering her close with one arm. Closing his eyes, he breathed in the scent of flowers and sunshine in her hair, savored it. How he had missed that.

  “There’s nothing to forgive, love,” he murmured. “It’s I who should ask that of you.”

  She shook her head. “All this time we thought you had betrayed my father and had stolen from him to suit yourself. And I thought…that you didna love me after all.”

  He made a gruff sound. “From that day to this, I have never stopped loving you. Never, Jenny Colvin,” he whispered. He tipped his head to rest his brow on hers. “I came back to tell you so.”

  THOSE WORDS, on his lips, seemed almost like a dream, for she had yearned for them so long. A sob caught in her throat as she gazed up at him.

  “And I never stopped loving you,” she whispered. “Never, even though I tried—” She looped her arms around his neck and pressed into his embrace. Lifting her face for his kiss, she felt his sigh, felt his arms tighten around her.

  He brushed a hand over her hair. “I had no choice that night, Jenny. I hope you believe that.”

  She nodded and tilted back her head, accepting his kiss again, his lips warm and firm on hers, so that she felt his love, his strength, surround her.

  His face in the moonlight was precisely cut, his eyes vivid blue, his beard a dusky shadow on his lean jaw. His mouth was full cut and gently arched, with a hint of mischief. She had always loved the shape of his lips, and she kissed them again, a quick savor. But she could not shake the taste of sadness in it as she thought of what he had endured for her, for all of them.

  “Two years in prison,” she whispered. “I cannot imagine…but what of the rest of the time? You’ve been gone four years in all.”

  He looked down at her soberly. “Did your father ever tell you what happened that night? Did he tell you that we argued?”

  “He said only that you had a dispute over some strong differences. We assumed—my kinsmen and I—that you wanted a greater share of the smuggling profits, since you took the cargo…but then, you didna take it,” she added thoughtfully, frowning up at him. “So what was the dispute over?”

  “You,” he murmured. “I asked your father for your hand in marriage that night—and he refused to allow it.”

  Her heart beat fast and hard as she gazed up at him. “What?”

  “He told me that he would never allow you to marry a rogue and a smuggler. He told me to stay away from you.”

  She tilted her head, trying to comprehend. “He never said so to me…what if you had not been arrested that night?”

  “I would have gone away for a bit, I suppose. I was already thinking of changing my circumstances. My father had insisted on my education, but as a headstrong lad, I had not used the benefit of the education, and returned to the free-trading life after university. But when I realized that I loved you and wanted to settle down into a more normal existence, I realized that I did not want to be a smuggler all my life. I wanted to make more of myself.”

  “Why did you not come back? I would have understood.”

  “Damned fool pride. When your father told me I was not good enough for you…that stayed with me a very long time. I had to prove him wrong, and prove to myself, too, that I was more than a rogue with a ruined castle and no fortune, with the law always one step behind me.”

  “I didna care whether you were within the law or outside of it.” She slid her arms around his waist. “I wanted you, and nothing more.”

  “But my pride was too strong, Jenny,” he murmured. “Your father thought I had betrayed him…and I felt betrayed as well. I was hurt, and proud, and determined to stay away until I could better myself.”

  “What did you do those two years?”

  “An acquaintance of my father’s befriended me in Edinburgh, a judge in the Court of Sessions. He had been present at my sentencing, and he saw to it that my treatment improved in the dungeons. When I was free, he found me a position in the customs and excise offices—I knew the law, and I knew smuggling.” He shrugged. “They needed my…unique expertise.”

  “You never let us know.” She frowned.

  “I sent word at first, through my friend. I took your silence for a reply,” he said.

  “We never had a message. If I had known, I would have gone to Edinburgh myself, with or without my father’s blessing.”

  He smiled and brushed a hand over her hair, then bent to kiss her again, and the tenderness and power in it threatened to melt her limbs out from under her. She grabbed his forearms for support. From the press of his hard body against her own, she knew that he felt as she did, overcome with passion, with relie
f, with desire long held in check.

  He cupped her jaw, traced his fingers down her throat and over her upper chest, so that her heart leaped. She arched against him, ached for him, every part of her hungry for what had been so long denied, snatched away and now restored to her.

  She savored his kiss, the supple touch of his tongue upon hers, his fingertips tracing lightly down her throat and over her collarbones, delicate yet firm touches that made her heart soar. When his hand moved over her bodice, she moaned softly with delight and passion.

  His mouth was hungry on hers, his hands compelling as they gentled over her breasts. She gasped, sucked in her breath, felt a lightning stroke of desire plunge through her. Pressing her hips tightly against him, she felt the hard evidence of his passion for her, matching, complementing her own.

  Her heart hurt to think about what he had suffered for those he loved, and she felt a surge of love so complete, so full of compassion and patience that it brought tears to her eyes as she stood wrapped in his arms.

  And she wanted him to feel loved, wanted him to know how much she wanted him, and how much she still cherished him.

  “Simon,” she breathed, slipping her hands along his shoulders, then up, sinking her fingers into his thick, dark hair. She could not say more—there were no words good enough to express what she felt in her heart. She could only let her hands, her lips, her body speak for her.

  As his fingers found the hidden buttons that opened the front flap of her bodice, she drew in her breath, felt her heart quicken. He pulled away the bodice and slid his hand over the chemise beneath it, and she felt the first exquisite touch of his hand upon her breast, gentle as moonlight. She drew in her breath in ecstasy, for she had not felt that sensation since he had left her heartbroken, years before.

  Now, beneath his touch, she pearled for him, nipples firming, her body crying out for more, her soul radiant within her, filling with love for him. He bent his head to touch his mouth to her breast. The world seemed to shift beneath her feet, and she clung to him, ran her fingers deep into his hair.