Highland Sunset

by Joan Wolf

  He seemed to freeze and then his head came up and he looked at her. "Would you want him to?" he asked in an odd voice.

  Van's fingers were unconsciously flexing on the brightly patterned quilt that covered her. "Yes," she said.

  "Sweetheart." He crossed the floor and sat beside her on the bed. His eyes were brilliant. "I was beginning to be afraid you would never play again."

  She was looking at her fingers on the quilt. "I know. It was as if all the music had been knocked out of me." She looked up at him with wide, grave eyes. "These last months I felt as if I were being torn in two. There was you, and then there was Niall." She reached up and touched his face. "I was so torn," she repeated. "There was no room for music in me."

  "I know."

  Her fingers moved caressingly along his cheekbone. She thought of Staplehurst, and the harpsichord, and the horses, and realized, wonderingly, that she was looking forward to going. "When can we leave for Staplehurst?" she asked.

  "Tomorrow?"

  She smiled with satisfaction. "Tomorrow," she repeated.

  "Christ, Van." Her eyes widened at the tone of his voice and she stared up at him, her attention fully focused on him now. "Have you any idea of how frightened I have been?" he asked.

  "Frightened? You?" She was astonished. "Frightened of what, Edward?"

  "Of losing you. Do you think I did not realize how... how absent you were at times? Oh, not physically, but..."

  "I know," she said softly.

  "I was afraid the wounds were too deep, the division between us too wide."

  She put up her other hand and held his face between her two palms. He was so completely beautiful, she thought. Inside as well as out. "It was never you," she said. "You were never part of that."

  He put his hands over hers and moved her palms to his lips. He kissed them and then stood up to finish undressing. Van snuggled back into the bed. She had eaten so much at dinner and she was so sleepy... The bed sagged as he got in beside her. How lovely it was to have him there, she thought drowsily. She had been so lonely this past month.

  She opened heavy eyelids to look at him. He put an arm around her and settled her comfortably into the hollow of his shoulder. "Go to sleep, sweetheart," he murmured, and even in her extreme drowsiness she could feel how his hard body was alight with laughter. She opened her mouth to say something, but before the words came out, she was asleep.

  About the Author

  Joan Wolf is a native of New York City who presently resides in Milford, Connecticut, with her husband and two young children. She taught high school English in New York for nine years and took up writing when she retired to rear a family. Her previous books. The Counterfeit Marriage, A Kind of Honor, A London Season, A Difficult Truce, The Scottish Lord, His Lordship's Mistress, and The Rebel and the Rose, are also available in Signet editions.