When she got up and slipped from the chamber, he kept his gaze firmly fixed on the tome in his lap.
Chloe strolled blissfully through the gardens, marveling that already a week and a half had sped by. They’d been the finest days of her life.
Her time had been divided primarily between exploring the contents of the chamber library and exploring the newfound pleasure of passion. The explosive heat between her and Dageus was evidently palpable enough that on several occasions Silvan had ordered them to leave the chamber library, telling them dryly “to go … walk a wee or … some such activity. The two of you are like a pair of tea kettles, steaming up my tomes.”
The first time he’d said such a thing, Chloe had blushed furiously, but then Dageus had given her what she’d come to think of as The Look and she’d swiftly forgotten her embarrassment. He had a way of canting his head low and looking up at her, his dark gaze heated and intense, that never failed to make her weak-kneed with desire, thinking about all the things he was going to do to her.
Because she was unable to read a lot of the stuff in the chamber and was insatiably curious about the sixteenth century, while the men had worked, she’d stolen away frequently. She’d thoroughly explored the castle, leaving no part untouched: the buttery, the larders, the kitchens, the chapel, the armory, the garderobes (though scrupulously cleaned daily, those she could have done without), even Silvan’s tower library—where she was grateful to discover she could translate some of the more recent works. The elderly man had copies of every philosophical, ethical, mathematical, and cosmological treatise of historical significance on his meticulously organized shelves.
Also during those hours away from Dageus, she’d gotten to know Nell and had met his young half brothers, Ian and Robert, precious dark-haired two-and-a-half-year-old boys with sunny dispositions. She could hardly look at them without thinking what beautiful babies Dageus would make.
And that she’d like to be the one he made them with.
A delicious little shiver raced over her skin at the thought of making a family with him, building a future.
For the past ten days she’d watched him carefully and had concluded that he definitely cared about her. He treated her the same way Drustan had treated Gwen that day at Maggie’s castle, anticipating her desires: slipping from the chamber library to fetch her a cup of tea or a snack, or a damp cloth to wipe dust from her cheek. Disappearing into the gardens and returning with an armful of fresh flowers, leading her to bed and covering her naked body with them. Lazily, tenderly bathing her in the evenings before a peat fire, helping her plait her hair like Nell’s. She felt treasured, cosseted, and though he didn’t say it, loved.
She’d realized, while watching him and reflecting upon all she knew of him, that Dageus MacKeltar would probably never speak of love, unless someone spoke to him about it first. Gwen had essentially told her that much back in the stones.
Dageus doesn’t look for love from a woman because he’s never been given any reason to.
Well, Chloe Zanders was going to give him the reason to. Tonight. Over a romantic dinner in their bedchamber, which she’d already filled with urns of fresh-cut heather and dozens of oil globes that she’d pilfered from other rooms in the castle.
She’d set the scene, embellishing it with romantic touches, Nell had arranged the menu, and all she had to do was speak her heart.
And if he doesn’t say it back? a niggling little doubt tried to surface.
She thrust it firmly away. She would entertain no doubts, no fears. A few days ago, over mugs of cocoa in the kitchens, she and Nell had had a long talk. Nell had openly shared her own experience with Silvan, and had told her about the twelve years they’d wasted. Chloe couldn’t imagine loving in silence for so long.
Twelve years! Sheesh, she wasn’t going to be able to wait twelve more hours.
When Chloe had been a teenager, not knowing anything about kissing, she’d practiced on a pillow, feeling inordinately silly, but how else was a girl supposed to get a feel for it? She’d read books, and avidly watched movies to see how lips met and where noses went, but it wasn’t the same as actually trying to press her lips to something. (Personally, she harbored the firm conviction that there wasn’t a person alive anywhere in the world that hadn’t practiced kissing on something. A mirror, a pillow, the back of their hand.)
Since her first kiss had been reasonably successful, she decided that practicing saying “I love you,” wasn’t a completely idiotic idea.
As there weren’t exactly a plethora of mirrors around the castle, when she left the gardens, strolled into the great hall and spied the shiny shield hanging on the wall near the hearth, she yielded to impulse, dragged a chair over to it and hopped up, peering at her reflection.
She wanted the moment tonight to be just right. She didn’t want to stutter or stammer around.
“I love you,” she told the shield softly.
It hadn’t come out quite right. It was a good thing she’d decided to practice.
She wet her lips and tried it again. “I love you,” she said tenderly.
“I love you,” she said firmly.
“I love you,” she tried a sexy voice. Reflecting a moment, she decided it was probably better that she just speak normally. She didn’t do throaty well.
Saying it felt good, she thought, staring at her reflection. She’d been holding it so tightly inside her that she had begun to feel like a pressure-cooker about to blow her lid off. She’d never been able to keep her feelings to herself. It wasn’t part of her make-up, any more than casual sex was.
She smiled radiantly at the shield, pretending it was Dageus. The three simple words just didn’t seem like enough. Love was so much larger than words.
“I love you, I love you, I love you. I love you more than chocolate. I love you more than the whole world is big.” She paused, thinking, searching for a way to explain what she felt. “I love you more than artifacts. I love you so much it makes my toes curl just thinking about it.”
Pushing her hair back from her face, she donned her most sincere expression. “I love you.”
“You can have the confounded shield if you love it that much, lass,” Dageus said, sounding utterly bewildered.
Chloe felt all the blood drain from her face.
She swallowed hard. Several times. Oh, God, she thought dismally, was it humanly possible to feel any more stupid?
She shifted awkwardly on the chair, cleared her throat and stared down at the floor, thinking frantically, trying to come up with some excuse for what she’d just been doing. Back rigidly to him, she began to babble. “It’s … er, not the shield, um, you know. I wasn’t really talking to the shield, I just couldn’t find a mirror and this is just a little positive reinforcement thingie I do sometimes. I read it in a book somewhere that it boosted self-confidence and … er, engendered a general sense of well-being, and it really does work, you should try it sometime,” she said brightly.
She realized she was talking with her hands, gesturing a bit wildly, so she clasped them firmly behind her back.
He remained silent behind her, stressing her out completely, and she began babbling again. “What I’m saying is that I really don’t want the shield. I mean, I think you’ve given me more than enough artifacts already, and I couldn’t ask for anything else, so if you’ll just go away now I’ll resume my exercises. It’s important that one does them alone.”
More silence.
What on earth was he thinking? Was he going to burst into laughter? Was he smiling? She peered in the shield, but since she was up on the chair, he was several feet lower than she was and she couldn’t see him.
“Dageus?” she said warily, refusing to turn. If she looked at him now, she might start crying. She’d so wanted the moment tonight to be tender and romantic, and damn it all, now if she said it to him tonight, he’d know she’d been practicing and he’d think she was a total dweeb!
“Aye, lass?” he said finally, slowly.
“Why aren’t you going away?” she asked tightly.
A long pause, then a cautious, “If you doona mind, lass, I’d like to watch.”
She closed her eyes. Was he making fun of her? “Absolutely not.”
“With all the things we’ve done together, there’s something you wouldn’t let me watch? I think ’tis a bit late to be getting self-conscious around me,” he said. She couldn’t decide if she was picking up a hint of lazy amusement in his voice or not.
“Go. A. Way,” she gritted.
He didn’t. She could feel him standing there, his regard an intense pressure on the back of her skull.
“Chloe-lass,” he said then, softly. Tenderly. “Turn around, sweet.”
He knew, she thought, absolutely mortified. Nobody would fall for that pathetic excuse she’d made up.
But this wasn’t the moment she’d picked. She’d had it all planned out and he was ruining it for her!
“Chloe,” he repeated softly.
“Oh!” Something in her suddenly, simply snapped, and she spun about to face him. Plunking her fists at her waist, she shouted, “I love you! Okay? But I didn’t want to say it that way, I wanted to say it just right and you
ruined it.”
Scowling, she leaped from the chair and stormed from the hall.
• 22 •
Dageus stood motionless in the great hall.
That had been singularly the most unforgettable moment of his life.
When he was his da’s age—in the event he had the luxury of living that long—he had no doubt he’d still be replaying the vision of Chloe perched on that chair before the shield, practicing how to say she loved him, just right.
At first when he’d come abovestairs to fetch fresh candles for the chamber library, and he’d walked into the great hall, what she’d been doing hadn’t made sense to him. He’d genuinely thought she was gushing over the artifact.
He teased her, and only then had he noticed the tension and misery emanating from her. She’d begun to babble, which was always a dead giveaway that she was upset. When she’d given him her absurd spiel about positive reinforcement or some such nonsense, he’d realized what she’d really been doing.
Practicing how to tell him she loved him.
How utterly adorable she was.
She loved him. She’d said it. Of course she’d shouted it at him, but a man could deal with that when the woman loved him more than the whole world was big.
He laughed exultantly, turned sharply on his heel, and hurried off to catch her. And to tell her that, since he was bigger, he was fair certain he loved her more.
But it didn’t work out quite that way, for he didn’t catch her until she was almost to the bedchamber.
And when he caught her, grasping at the billowing skirt of her gown, he tugged harder than he’d meant to and the thin silky fabric ripped. Clear up the back. And she had nothing on beneath it. Only those luscious shapely legs and the round curves of her beautiful behind. The fabric ripped clean to her nape and his thoughts turned instantly primitive and wild.
She glanced back at him, looking shocked, and though he suspected he should assure her he hadn’t meant to do that, he couldn’t seem to manage a word. Her declaration of love coupled with all that naked rosy skin had rendered him witless.
Growling low in his throat, he scooped her into his arms and planted his mouth firmly over hers.
She was stiff at first, but in a few moments she was kissing him back passionately.
“You didn’t have to rip my dress,” she said plaintively when he let her breathe. “I love this one. Nellie worked on it for days.”
“I’m sorry, lass,” he said somberly. “ ’Twas an accident, lass. Sometimes I forget my strength. I mean to be gentle but it doesn’t come out that way. Can you forgive me?”
She sighed, but nodded and kissed him again, locking her arms behind his neck as he carried her toward the door of their bedchamber.
“You have, without a doubt, Chloe, the most lovely behind I’ve ever seen,” he purred, shifting her in his arms to splay his big palm over the twin curves of it.
“Oh!” She squirmed in his arms. “I tell you I love you and that’s what you say?”
He silenced her with another kiss, and kicked open the bedchamber door.
“And I’d love you even if you didn’t,” he said softly.
She melted in his arms.
“And I think that no man has ever been told he was loved in such a memorable fashion, and I shall always treasure the memory.”
She smiled beatifically. “Really? You don’t think I’m the biggest geek in the world?”
He tossed her to the bed and slipped a dirk from his boot. “I think,” he said silkily, as he gripped the bodice of her ruined gown in his hand and slit it down the front, laying the gown neatly in two halves, “that you are perfect exactly as you are and I wouldn’t change one thing about you.”
He tossed the torn dress from the bed and tugged his shirt over his head.
She watched him with wide eyes, then laughed. “Nell is really going to wonder what happened to my dress.”
“I’m fair certain Nellie will never ask,” he said huskily, as he stretched his body atop hers. “I’ve seen a gown or two of hers in the rag heap.”
“Really?” Chloe blinked, pondering Silvan in a new light. He was a handsome man, and it was from his genes that Dageus and Drustan had come. Behind his scholarly mien, she suddenly realized, Silvan MacKeltar probably concealed a lot of things.
“Aye. Truly.”
“You have too many clothes on,” Chloe complained breathlessly a few moments later.
He offered her his dirk to cut them off, but she took one look at those snug leather trews and decided there was no way she was letting a sharp blade get near what she knew was inside them.
So she borrowed another of his delicious tactics and undressed him mostly with her mouth.
Chloe was deliriously content. Curled with her backside to Dageus’s front, his strong arms wrapped around her, she was blissfully sated.
He loved her. He’d not only told her, he’d shown her with his body. It was there in the way he stroked her cheek or brushed her curls from her eyes. It was there in his long, slow kisses. It was there in the way he held her in the aftermath.
With that resolved, she was impatient to lay all her concerns to rest. With such love between them, she knew they could face anything together.
She squirmed in his embrace, slipping around in his arms to face him. He smiled at her, one of those lazy, melting smiles he gave so rarely, and kissed her.
Sighing with pleasure, and before he could distract her again, she drew her head back, breaking the kiss. “Dageus, I’m ready to know about the curse now. Tell me what it is, and tell me what you’re looking for.”
He kissed her again, lazily, sucking her lower lip.
“Please,” she persisted. “I need to know.”
He smiled faintly, then sighed. “I ken it. I’ve wanted to tell you, but it seemed you needed a bit more time.”
“I did. So many things happened so quickly, that I felt like I needed to catch my breath or something. But I’m ready now,” she assured him.
He stared at her a long moment, his eyes narrowed. “Lass,” he said softly, “if you tried to leave me, I fear I wouldn’t let you. I fear I would do whatever I had to do, no matter how ruthless, to keep you.”
“I consider myself warned,” she said pertly. “Trust me, I’m not going anywhere. Now tell me.”
He held her gaze a bit longer, silently assessing her. Then, capturing her hands in his, he twined their fingers together and began.
“So let me get this straight,” a wide-eyed Chloe clarified some time later, “you used the stones to go back in time and—oh! That’s what that quote in the Midhe Codex meant about the man who takes the bridge that cheats death! The bridge is the Ban Drochaid, ‘the white bridge,’ because you can take it backward in time and undo
a person’s death. That quote was about you.”
“Aye, lass.”
“So you saved Drustan’s life, but because you broke a sacred oath that you’d sworn to the Tuatha Dé, you ended up setting an ancient evil free?”
He nodded warily.
“Well, where is this ancient evil?” she asked, bewildered. “Are you chasing it through the centuries or something?”
He made a sound of dry, dark amusement. “Something like that,” he muttered.
“Well?” she prodded.
“Rather, ’tis chasing me,” he said, nearly inaudibly.
“I don’t understand,” Chloe pressed, blinking.
“Why doona you just leave it for now, Chloe? You know enough to help us search. If, while reading, you find aught about the Tuatha Dé or the Draghar, bring it to my or Silvan’s attention.”
“Where is this ancient evil, Dageus?” she repeated evenly.
When he tried to turn his face away, she cupped it in her hands and refused to let him look away.
“Tell me. You promised to tell me it all. Now tell me where the damned thing is and, more important, how do we destroy it?”
Dark gaze boring into hers, he wet his lips and said softly, “ ’Tis inside me.”
• 23 •
Chloe delicately turned a thick vellum page of the tome on her lap, though she was not really reading it, too lost in thought.
’Tis inside me, he’d said, and so many things finally made sense to her. Bits and pieces slid neatly into place, giving her her first real glimpse of the whole man.
He’d told her everything that night, several days ago, as they lay in bed, faces close, fingers laced. About Drustan and Gwen (no wonder Gwen had been trying to brace her!), and about how Drustan had been enchanted and put in the tower. He told her how he’d immersed himself working on Drustan’s future home (and now she knew why he’d sounded so proud of the castle), and about the fire in which Drustan had died. He told her about the night he’d warred with himself, then gone into the stones and broken his oath. He told her that he’d not truly believed in the old legends till the ancient evil had descended upon him in the in-between, and it had been too late.
The Highlander Series 7-Book Bundle Page 148
