Timeless Desire

by Cready, Gwyn

  “I want your word that what I tell you will remain between you and me.”

  The old man shook his head. “You have my word—but only if I believe what you say. So I would suggest employing your strongest powers of persuasion. The chiefs here would find great satisfaction in making an example of you.”

  “The English army has been given the order to prepare for a battle.”

  “Bloody bastards!” MacIver hobbled quickly toward the door. “I’ll have my scouts confirm this. If the army thinks we shan’t meet them blow for blow—”

  “Wait.” Bridgewater stepped in front of him. “Let me finish.”

  The servant with the tray reappeared and made his way toward the table.

  “Leave us!” MacIver said sharply.

  The man bowed and exited.

  MacIver eyed his grandson with the intensity of a jungle cat, and Bridgewater could see a vein beating under the pale skin of his forehead.

  “We have been prepared for this,” MacIver said. “The time has come to bring this matter to a head. The clans of Scotland will not endure an army at our doorstep.”

  “I want you to convince the clans not to respond.”

  MacIver’s eyes widened. “Are you insane?”

  “You will lose. You must believe me.”

  Bridgewater knew he had already committed treason by revealing the army’s plans. The line he had drawn for his own conscience, however, was that he would not reveal the number of soldiers or the fact that the queen’s orders gave the army only until Wednesday to wait for a battle before they had to return south.

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” MacIver said. “To take your victory without a struggle.”

  “Twill be no victory for anyone if your men and the army come to blows.”

  MacIver stepped closer to his grandson, close enough that Bridgewater could feel the man’s sour breath on his face. “You’re saying to me that you want the clans to throw down their arms and allow the English army free reign to cross the border?” His eyes shone like two blue flames.

  “I’m saying I want you to keep the clans from attacking. You do not need to throw down your weapons. But you must keep them from mounting an offense.” Bridgewater could see the machinations in his grandfather’s eyes as he considered what it might take to reverse that plan.

  “You ascribe too high a power to me, Captain. The clans will do as they wish. They always do.”

  “You must stop them. If your men attack, they will be slaughtered. I am not a Scot, but I do not wish to see that any more than you.”

  The flames in MacIver’s eyes were fire now. “Not a Scot? Not a Scot? You are half Scot, you maneuvering English bastard. Would you deny your mother’s blood?”

  “You did!”

  MacIver grabbed him by the coat with his good arm and shoved him into the wall. A whiplash of pain flew up his buttock and back.

  “You have given me no reason to believe you. None. You’re asking me to betray my men. To snatch a battle from their teeth. You have no idea what you’re asking.”

  “I know what I’m asking. But you must. You must keep them from attacking.”

  The man’s gaze burned into Bridgewater’s eyes, and he held the head of his cane aloft as if he would bring it down upon his grandson’s head with the slightest provocation.

  “If you wish me to trust you, you will learn what it is to carry MacIver blood in you. If you wish me to act on your words, you will take the clan oath before the men here and claim your rightful Scots heritage.”

  Bridgewater would be throwing his lot in with Scotland. He would be stripped of his commission, if not hanged.

  “I cannot,” he said. “You of all people know what it means to have risen to a place where you command men. If the army discovers I have taken such an oath, I will be removed.”

  Bridgewater saw the doom of his effort with each passing second. Then his grandfather’s grip slackened.

  “Fine. You will take the oath before me. And you will marry the girl—here, now, before you leave. Show me you are not just a by-blow of that English blackguard. Show me you have enough MacIver blood in you for me to trust.” He released his hold.

  Marry her? Bridgewater’s mind raced. “But she is not mine to command.”

  “One hour,” MacIver said. “Appear before me ready to meet my demands, or I shall let the clan chiefs know we have an English agent in our midst.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  PANNA OPENED THE DOOR AND LOOKED BRIDGEWATER OVER. “HEY, whaddya know? No new injuries. That’s got to be a good sign, right?”

  Jamie didn’t laugh, though Mrs. Brownlow smiled from her place on the bed. In fact, Jamie had the same look on his face that Panna remembered her brother had on his when he found out his wife was having twins.

  “What is it, Jamie?”

  He summoned a small half smile at her use of his Christian name, and a sprig of joy blossomed in her heart. But the sprig wilted when he closed the door and said, “Panna, we need to talk.”

  The last time someone had said that, it had been Charlie after a routine checkup two weeks before their seventh wedding anniversary. Her throat dried. She knew she was being was ridiculous—Jamie could hardly have contracted a terminal illness in the last twenty minutes—but it was hard not to run down the same road.

  He bowed to Mrs. Brownlow, whose tears had been calmed in his absence. “Would you be willing to give us a few minutes?”

  “Hector would’na want me to leave her alone,” she said apologetically. “Not now.”

  Not after taking Panna’s virginity, she meant. Panna saw the blood flood across Jamie’s cheeks, matching the warmth on her own. She had assured Mrs. Brownlow that Jamie had not hurt her or drawn her into anything against her will but had stopped short of detailing any more clearly what had gone on between them. Even in the eighteenth century, Panna clung to her right to at least some privacy.

  Jamie cleared his throat, and the flush grew redder. “Please? A few moments. I promise nothing will happen.”

  Mrs. Brownlow rose from the bed uncertainly, as if she were leaving a bottle of gin on a chair in an AA meeting. “I’ll be right outside.”

  When the door closed again, Panna found herself feeling the same sort of awkward, charged current between them as if Jamie had seduced her, especially with the regret that lingered in his eyes.

  “I am most sorry to have embarrassed you,” he said. “Twas most thoughtless of me to come to your room.”

  She waved away his concern. “What were you going to do? You’d been shot, for God’s sake. Please don’t worry about it. I can deal with a little scrutiny. What happened with your grandfather? Will there be a battle?”

  The regret in his eyes turned to worry, and his gaze turned toward the hills in the distance. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? Jamie, what happened?”

  He sighed. “I must ask you for a favor, though ‘favor’ is hardly the word to describe it.”

  “Certainly. Anything I can do. What?”

  “I do not think you will find it so easy to agree once I tell you. My grandfather was already quite angry, as you know. Then we fought about my mother.”

  “Oh, Jamie.” Panna had held out a slim hope that once Hector MacIver got past his initial fury, the two men would reconcile.

  “By the time I began to encourage him to cancel the attack, he was not inclined to put a lot of credence in what I had to say.”

  “But surely to protect his men—”

  “Protecting his men is just as likely to depend on not listening to me. Panna, he has no reason to believe what a captain from Her Majesty’s army says to him. The army has lied to the Scots too many times before.”

  “But you’re his grandson. You’re blood.”

  He gave her an amused look, his eyes as clear as the morning sky. “You sound like him. He’d be pleased.” He stepped to the window, his hands clasped behind his back. “And blood”—his eyes fl
icked over the sheets, still streaked with crimson—“is the bargain he has offered me.”

  A chill went down Panna’s spine. “Blood?”

  “Mine—and yours. MacIver will try to convince the other chiefs to cancel the attack if I swear my oath to the clan—and you and I marry.”

  “What?” Panna felt dizzy.

  “Tis the vengeance he exacts for my ravishment of you. He finds the sins of the Earl of Bridgewater too richly inscribed upon my character.”

  She shook her head, unable to speak. She’d hardly considered another marriage, so absorbed had she been in simply trying to outrun the pain the last two years. She was very fond of Jamie, but fondness did not equate to marriage, not in her world. Besides, did he think—did either of them think—a marriage here would commit her to this time? “Oh, Jamie, I—”

  “Twould not be a real marriage,” he said quickly. “I know you don’t love me in that way.”

  She didn’t know what to say. They’d known each other a day and a half. Despite a confusing maelstrom of attraction, desire and admiration, she could hardly contradict him.

  “And I myself have no high opinion of such a covenant,” he added.

  “You don’t believe in marriage?”

  His gaze fell. “I had no example from which to learn, save my father and his wife, and to me their marriage seemed only a wall built to protect their riches and keep out those like my mother and me who attempted to attack it. I have no interest in such a thing.”

  “So you’re saying we would marry with no thought of upholding the vows.”

  “Panna, I am quite sensible of the fact that you are an unwilling visitor here—”

  “Unexpected,” she said softly. “Not unwilling.”

  “—and that I must deliver you to the chapel and back into the hands of those you have left.”

  She thought of Charlie and that empty bed.

  “Even if I believed in the covenant of marriage,” he said in a careful voice, “I could not have it with you. So, aye, if you are willing to accept the vow for the day or so it might take me to return you to the chapel, traversing the space of three centuries will put an end to it.”

  As if time or space could erase such a vow.

  Panna was not a deeply religious person, though the things she did believe she held close to her heart. She knew one thing for sure, however: If she stood at an altar and pledged her troth to Jamie, it would be a pledge she carried with her to some degree forever.

  “Jamie, think about what you’re asking.”

  “I know what I’m asking. And I know it’s not fair. But there are people whose lives will depend on it. Clare’s father died in a clash with the clans. So did his brother. Reeves’s sister was left a widow with four children. He supports his own family and hers. In a battle of any size, there are at least a dozen men who die. In the battle the army and the clans will undertake, it could be ten times that. I do not have the right to ask you, but I will not shield you from the truth, either.”

  She thought of her brother fighting in Afghanistan and how she prayed each night for his safety. What would it be like to lose him? What would it be like to know that there was a woman somewhere who could have saved her brother’s division from certain death, but hadn’t done it? Panna would be furious—beyond furious. Who wouldn’t trade a mere wedding promise for the life of a man? Panna would have given anything—anything, including her own life—to save Charlie. How could she refuse the same succor to another wife or sister?

  Jamie looked at her, his face as grave as she had ever seen it.

  “And you say this vow will mean no more to you than it does to me?”

  A muscle moved at the edge of his jaw. “No.”

  She nodded. “I’ll do it, Jamie.” Even if it meant one more vow life would keep her from upholding.

  His shoulders relaxed and he threw his arms around her. “Thank you.”

  Panna squeezed him back, and when their eyes met, she found it impossible not to lift her mouth to his.

  For a long moment the world stood still—no earl, no chiefs, no war, just her and Jamie in the morning sun.

  “Ooh,” she whispered when they parted.

  In response, he pressed his fingers along her ribs and made a tiny noise of agreement deep inside his chest.

  An unpleasant thought struck her, and she lifted her head. “Oh, Jamie, I just realized you said you had to swear an oath. What does that mean?”

  She could feel the beating of his pulse under her palms. “It means I accept my place in the MacIver clan. That I can do. Hector MacIver is my grandfather, and there’s nothing I can do to change it. Unfortunately, taking an oath also means I put the needs of the clan above anything else.”

  She knew enough from what she’d read of blood oaths to know that they were not taken lightly—not by those taking them, nor by those administering them. “But the army . . . ?”

  “Aye, the army and England. I have already taken oaths. I cannot to swear to anything that would displace those.”

  Here she was, worrying about the promise she’d make to a man she’d likely never see again, when he was struggling with something much harder. “Then how can you do it, Jamie?”

  “Making a blood oath to the MacIvers will save hundreds of men, if not thousands, Panna—Scots and Englishmen alike. For that by itself I would swear my allegiance to the devil, let alone Hector MacIver. But I do not think such an oath violates my duty to England. For years I have circled treason and looked into its ferocious jaws. I do what I do because I love my country, just as I love the kinsmen of my mother. I can navigate the murky waters of these loyalties just as long as I keep myself pointed in the direction of peace, which represents the best outcome for everyone.”

  She looked at him, a man who decried the church, standing before her with a black eye, a swollen lip, a body savaged by wounds from battles present and past. This man held peace before all else and was willing to sacrifice his soul to help deliver it.

  “Oh, Jamie.”

  He pulled her to him again, and she lost herself in his kiss. She would gladly make a vow to him, enthralled to be in his orbit, if only for a few more hours.

  The door opened. Mrs. Brownlow’s face fell. “Jamie Bridgewater—”

  He held up his hand. “No more reproofs. Now is the time for congratulations. Panna has agreed to marry me.”

  Mrs. Brownlow cupped a hand over her mouth, happiness bursting from her round face. Having already foreseen what was coming, Panna reached for the handkerchief and handed it to her.

  “Och, Jamie,” the older woman cried, the tears beginning anew, “your mother would be so happy! I wish she were here.”

  He clasped Panna’s elbow. “I do, too.”

  THIRTY

  MRS. BROWNLOW SCURRIED AROUND THE ROOM AS IF SHE WERE running on several double shots of espresso. The deadline of one hour had sent her into overdrive. It had sent Panna into something akin to shock.

  With the taste of him still on her tongue, Panna bounced between sizzling desire, a deep sense of pride, and the certainty that she was making a mistake.

  Jamie had been banned from the room while Mrs. Brownlow worked. Panna’s gown had been declared “not right at all for a bride,” and the muscles in her legs were jittering inside her skin as if she were a rabbit about to bolt.

  “I need a drink,” Panna declared.

  Mrs. Brownlow, who was busy brushing Panna’s hair into something that didn’t resemble the communal scratching post at a cat shelter, peered at her. “Aye, I think that’s a good idea.”

  Panna expected her to call for a servant, but instead Mrs. Brownlow lifted her skirt and withdrew a flask from the top of her stocking. Panna clearly needed to explore this area of undergarment subterfuge in more detail.

  Panna took the flask, popped the cork, and took a long swallow.

  “You can rest assured,” Mrs. Brownlow said, “the second time will be better than the first.”

  Panna coughed, se
nding a fine spray of sweet sherry through her fist. Mrs. Brownlow was not talking about marriages.

  “And if Master Jamie is the man I think he is, the third time even better.”

  Panna thought the first time would be crackin’ fantastic— that is, if she and Jamie ever got to it.

  “He’s a good man,” Mrs. Brownlow said. “You must tell him it’s like a wriggling fish.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The place between your legs,” she said under her breath. “And he must hook it with his finger. My Bobby went at it like he was trying to cudgel a tuna with a fence picket. That dinna work, lass. Oh, it works fine for them, but then again, what doesn’t? A tiny fish. And it must be his finger. Though, in a pinch, yours will work as well.”

  Panna considered this advice, downed another gulp of sherry and said, “Do you suppose Jamie is much of a fisherman?”

  Mrs. Brownlow’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, I should think so, don’t you? And if not, I’m sure he has it in him to learn. I can see it in the way he looks at you.”

  Panna flushed. “I hope.”

  “There are other things a man will want to do.” The approbation with which Mrs. Brownlow said this made it seem these other things would not be cured with something as simple as a hook and a wiggle.

  “Oh?”

  “You have to understand, they hold their cocks in very high regard.”

  Uh-huh.

  “I think if they could do so without damage,” Mrs. Brownlow added, “they would happily wear it in their cap.”

  Panna thought of Sunday strolls along the waterfront. “I see.”

  “There is no place too grand to hold it. So you must not take offense.”

  “Too grand?”

  Mrs. Brownlow surreptitiously passed a hand across her mouth.

  Panna bit her lip. “Oh, dear.”

  “Tis not as bad as you think. And if you are in no mood to linger—for sometimes you will not be—tis the fastest way home. I have three sisters, and we’ve had eight husbands between us. Not a one could last longer than a sheep’s shearing.”