Katerina bent down, ignoring the hot, stretched feeling in her side and hugged them both. ‘Not this time, I’m afraid. This is something I must do alone.’ Straightening up, she ruffled the thick brown hair on their heads, in turn. ‘I’ll be back soon and then we’ll be able to walk together.’
She strode out along the track, the track that she had walked along with Lussac on the previous evening, heart threaded with stuttering unease. Her whole future was held in the fragile balance of the words she was about to say. The fields to her right were alive with the sound of insects, whirring and buzzing in between the ripening grass, the dusty seed-heads. The sky formed a wide bowl of pale blue above her head, hazed by a few white wisps of cloud. It was a perfect day, a perfect late summer’s day.
She willed her skittering heart to settle, to cease rearing upwards in renewed waves of rattling panic. Clutching her hands across her belly, she knotted her fingers, trying to kindle some inner strength, a thickened layer of fortitude, for the conversation that lay ahead. A conversation that she had to have, and had to endure, whatever the consequences. She would take this chance, this risk.
* * *
She reached to place on the track where the narrow muddy trail led south to Longthorpe. Lussac would return this way, retracing his steps across the marsh. Behind her, the expanse of good pasture fields had ended in a copse of pollarded willows, trunks poking out at crazy angles from the spongy ground. The trailing willow branches whispered in the breeze.
‘Katerina?’
Her heart seized. She turned, slowly, pivoting on the ball of her foot. Lussac stood below her in the tall rushes, his big-shouldered body framed by the rustling, waving grass. He was so beautiful, she thought, the polished shine of his hair fringing his tanned forehead, the expression on his strong, lean features expectant, curious, meeting the mineral sparkle of her eyes.
‘I thought you would still be sleeping.’ The husky melody of his voice reached up to her. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I came to find you.’ Anxiety jerked her speech, hobbled it; she chewed on her bottom lip. ‘I wanted to see you, to speak with you...alone.’ Her eyes flicked nervously to the swaying rushes, searching for a sign of Philippe. Her voice sounded weak, thready; she cleared her throat, swallowing down the dryness.
‘He’s a long way behind me,’ Lussac interpreted her look, the curve of his mouth turning upwards into a smile. In one powerful stride, he leaped up the bank and on to the road where she stood, linking strong fingers with her own.
Her spirit quailed beneath his touch. ‘I know what you did today. My father. I wanted to thank you.’ No, no! she berated herself, that wasn’t what she wanted to say at all. ‘I wanted to thank you before...’ she hesitated ‘...before you left. You’ve done so much for me...’ In her agitation, the words stumbled out from her, tripping over each other, blurting fitfully. ‘Everything...’ she clutched about for words ‘...the marriage proposal...that was kind of you.’
‘I’m not sure it was prompted by kindness,’ he said.
‘You asked me out of a sense of duty.’ She attempted to explain his actions.
‘No.’
‘You forced me to return home; you felt responsible. It was to be a business transaction, you said.’ Her speech scuttled out of her, carried on a wave of apprehension.
‘I lied.’
The breeze, sifting through the willows, stirred the loose gathers of her gown, wrapping them around Lussac’s legs, lovingly. Violet silk against tan-coloured braies. Above their heads, a swallow danced, a curved black V shape barrelling chaotically through the rising air.
‘What do you mean?’ she whispered slowly. Hope flickered in her chest.
‘I asked you to marry me, Katerina, because I love you.’ His eyes locked on to hers, held steady. ‘Did you not realise? I would have done anything to keep you at my side.’
‘Love...?’ Had she heard him correctly?
He threw her a soft smile, fingers circling her slender wrists. ‘Yes, Katerina, I love you. I want to live with you, lie with you, have children with you.’ His eyes glittered over her, turquoise. ‘When I first met you, I was a shattered man living a semblance of a life. Nothing mattered to me, no one. I was eaten alive, consumed by a cold, black-hearted revenge. I had one goal and one goal only: to kill the man who had slaughtered my family. I thought that killing would solve everything, but I was mistaken. It was you, Katerina, you have made life bearable again, with your bright courage, your beauty and your unerring ability to find the good in me.’
‘You want to marry me?’ she spluttered out, clinging to his fingers. ‘Truly?’
‘Will you?’ She caught the slightest note of hesitation in his voice, the doubt.
Her heart soared with delight. ‘Oh, Lussac, yes, yes!’ she almost shouted, tears welling up, threatening to fall. ‘I can scarce believe what you are saying!’
‘Believe it, Katerina, for I speak the truth,’ he replied solemnly. ‘I love you and there’s not a thing you can do about it.’
‘I have always loved you, Lussac, from the moment I first met you.’
He smoothed one hand across the shining bronze of her hair, chuckling. ‘What, even when I caught you in the forest? When I chased you up that tree?’
‘Well, maybe not quite at that moment,’ Katerina admitted, throwing him a shy smile. Tears spilled freely down her cheeks as she stared at him in wonderment, at this man who loved her, who had openly declared his love for her. As if in a dream, she touched his face, the lean slant of his cheek, the silky drift of his hair, her heart overflowing with pure happiness. Raising herself on tiptoes, she brushed his lips with hers, a fleeting exquisite touch, before he gathered her to him and bound her mouth in a kiss that would tie them together, for ever.
* * * * *
ISBN: 9781472004246
THE KNIGHT’S FUGITIVE LADY
© Meriel Fuller 2013
First Published in Great Britain in 2013
Harlequin (UK) Limited
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
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