by Cach, Lisa
“Drop it, Oscar!” she ordered.
“Finders keepers!” He spread his wings, then flapped up into the air, carrying his treasure to the top of his favorite standing stone.
Valerian squinted up at him. She should let him have it, whatever it was, except that for a moment she had thought she recognized the thing.
She stood and went barefoot over to the menhir, and climbed atop the fallen stone beside it. If she stood on tiptoe, she could almost reach the top of Oscar’s stone, but not quite. She hiked her skirts, tucking the wet hem into her waistband. She found a foothold in the rough stone and hoisted herself up.
Oscar was surprised enough by her head appearing over the edge of the stone that he fluttered backwards, leaving his treasure trove exposed. Valerian’s eyes widened as she took in the trinket-filled depression atop the stone. So this was where all that hat trim ended up, along with pieces of glass, coins, fragments of jewelry, and nameless bits of junk. And on top of it all, the silver bracelet.
She plucked the bracelet off the pile and lowered herself down. She stood upon the fallen neighboring stone, skirts still tucked up, wind whipping her mantle, and looked at the bracelet in her hand. It was the same one Nathaniel had offered to her that day almost a year ago, in payment for her pulling the stitches from Paul Carlyle’s behind. She traced her finger over one of the flowered ovals, remembering.
“Eee-diot!” Oscar cried. “Eee-diot!”
Valerian sucked in her breath, fist closing over the bracelet as she looked up. Nathaniel stood watching her from the other side of the circle. Her heart beat a rapid tattoo, stars sparkling in her vision as a momentary dizziness swept over her. He was as handsome as ever—more so, even, for there was a quiet certainty in his stance that had not been there before.
Her muscles quivering, it was all she could do to untuck her skirts and let them drop over her legs. To climb down from the rock was beyond her. She stood, swaying slightly in a gust of wind, unable to speak.
“Valerian,” he said at last.
“Nathaniel,” she whispered back, the sound carried away in the wind.
“You found the bracelet.”
She looked down at the links in her hand, then up at him again. “Oscar did, in the grass.”
His eyebrows rose, and he smiled slightly, walking forward. “Then he has for once done me a favor. I left it on the stone for you. The last storm must have washed it off.”
“You left it for me?” she repeated stupidly, her thoughts frozen in her mind.
He gave a self-conscious shrug, showing his first sign of uncertainty. “Perhaps I am not completely immune to superstition. I thought that if I left it, someday you might come back for it.”
Her mouth was dry, hope kindling to life in her breast.
He closed the remaining distance between them, looking up at her where she stood on the stone. “You see, it took me a long time to realize that you did not leave because you cared nothing for me.”
“It was never that. It was your family, Laetitia…”
“It was more than any of that. Do you not even know yourself?”
She looked down at him, confused, unable to form a coherent thought with him standing beneath her, so close, after all this time and so many hours spent dreaming of him. Why else would she have left him, when it hurt her so badly, if not for Laetitia and his family?
He told her. “You never believed I could love you. You thought that someday I would come to my senses and see what a mistake I had made, and seek to be rid of you. You could not believe I wanted you, just as you are.”
“But you did not, not completely,” she protested. “You admitted as much.”
“I know I did. Like you, and like my family, I could not be sure that Laetitia was not an influence.” He wrapped his warm hands around her ankles, then smoothed his hands up her calves. “I know better now. The past is finished, Valerian. Laetitia is dead and buried, as is my part in that affair. It is you I’m asking for, not a salve for a guilty conscience. We can be husband and wife, or we can be distant acquaintances, but nothing in between.”
“And your family?” she could not help but ask, remembering the bitter, angry face of his mother.
“This is our choice to make. Raven Hall is my home now. Make it yours.”
His hazel eyes were deep with emotion, unclouded by doubt or the shadows from his past. He was right, she knew: She had thought he could never truly love her. Had thought that no one could, beyond her parents and Aunt Theresa. She felt the cold shield she had worn around her heart split asunder, the broken halves melting in the heat of the emotion that welled forth.
“I do love you,” she said at last. “I always have.” She held out the bracelet that she had once so angrily rejected. Her voice trembled. “Will you help me with the clasp?”
Comprehension lit his eyes, and then she yelped as he pulled her down off the rock and into his arms, spinning with her in mad circles within the circle of stones. At last he stopped, and she tucked her face against his chest, her arms around his neck, and felt her world complete within his warm embrace.
Books by Lisa Cach
The Changeling Bride
The Raven Witch (original title: Bewitching the Baron)
Phantom Bride (original title: Of Midnight Born)
The Wildest Shore
The Mermaid of Penperro
The Dragon, the Virgin, and George (original title: George & the Virgin)
Come to Me
Dream of Me
Dr. Yes
The Erotic Secrets of a French Maid
A Babe in Ghostland
Have Glass Slippers, Will Travel
Dating Without Novocaine
Great-Aunt Sophia’s Lessons for Bombshells
Wake Unto Me (Young Adult)
E-Novellas:
The Flirting Season
The Trouble with Truffles
My Zombie Valentine
A Rose by Any Other Name
Get all four of the above stories together in:
Crazy 4U
Warm your chestnuts with three romantic, humorous Christmas novellas under one cover:
Mistletoe’d!
About the Author
Lisa Cach is the award-winning author of more than twenty romantic novels and novellas, ranging across sub-genres from Paranormal, Historical, Contemporary, and Chick Lit, to Young Adult. Her novel “Dating Without Novocaine” was named one of Waldenbooks’ “Best Books of 2002,” and she is a two-time finalist for the prestigious RITA Award from the Romance Writers of America.
Ms. Cach was raised in the moss and mud of the Pacific Northwest, where she still suffers through the long grey winters today. She has used travel to inspire her fiction for decades, and in service to her art has hiked the foothills of the Himalaya, picked leeches off her legs in the jungles of Borneo, eaten dinner in the childhood home of Vlad the Impaler in Transylvania, and worn out her feet following an ancient pilgrimage route in the southwest of France. She has sailed the Caribbean as a working crew member of a research schooner, and taught writing aboard the MV Explorer on a voyage up the Amazon. Her professional background includes teaching conversational English in Japan, an M.A. in counseling psychology, and several years working the graveyard shift on a mental health crisis line.
When not writing or traveling, you’ll find her gardening, drawing, hiking with her husband, or digging for treasures at estate sales. And, of course, reading.
Visit her online at http://lisacach.com, or like her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/lisacachbooks.
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