* * *
Kate had given her much food for thought, but no concrete advice. Telling herself that it was foolish beyond measure to consider any sort of future based on such a very brief—if also exceedingly intimate—acquaintance, Rosalind took herself off to the village in the hopes of another chance encounter with Fraser. Though when she bumped into him coming out of the Rothermere Arms, she forgot all about feigning surprise and simply smiled up at him like a besotted puppy. ‘You haven’t gone,’ she said inanely.
‘Did you think I would, without saying goodbye?’
‘No. Yes. No. I don’t really know anything about you.’
‘You should know enough to be sure that I wouldn’t just walk away without a word, Rosalind.’
He was serious, and he was also right. ‘I did. I do.’
‘Walk with me, wont you?’ He took her hand and tucked it into his arm. ‘Show me some of the parklands at the big house. Tell me how the family do. Did my visit help?’
Upon this matter, she was able to reassure him. They walked and talked of everything and nothing, noticing little of Castonbury Park’s rusticated landscaping, nor its extensive formal gardens, nor any of the carefully constructed aspects that the architect Robert Adam had so thoughtfully taken into account when positioning the house. Only when they reached the fishing pavilion at the top of the biggest of the lakes did they take stock of their surroundings, and only then because the pavilion could not but remind them of yesterday.
The slow burn of awareness that they had both been carefully ignoring flickered into vibrant life between them as they stood with their backs to the pavilion, staring out over the water at the island. ‘Rosalind, you know that for me, yesterday was not just a—a—it was not like anything I have experienced before,’ Fraser said.
‘It was the same for me.’
‘Thank God.’ He put his arms tight around her and kissed her, swiftly but hard, so that she was in no doubt that she had been kissed. ‘I haven’t slept. I wasn’t able to sleep.’ Fraser leaned back against the wall of the building, staring up at the pale blue of the sky. ‘All night, I kept telling myself that it was just my imagination, telling myself that it was folly, to even consider—but I have considered. I can’t help but consider it.’
‘What?’
‘Us. The future. Whatever it is. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t really care too much, as long as you’re in it.’ He pulled her back into his arms, his eyes alight with excitement. ‘Take a chance, Rosalind. I can’t tell you what you’d be taking a chance on. Life. Adventure. Us. Come away with me.’
Her heart was thudding wildly. Recklessness, that’s what it was that had her in its clutch. And passion too. Everything seemed to be intensified as she stood there in his arms. The light. The grain of the wood from which the fishing pavilion was constructed. The smell of the damp grass they were standing on. The lap of the water on the lake. Her skin felt stretched, yearning for his skin. And her mouth for his. ‘Come away where?’ she asked, realising as she did so that the question of whether she would or not was already answered.
‘Anywhere.’
‘France? Corsica? Spain?’
‘Greece. Egypt. Turkey, if you like.’
‘America,’ Rosalind said, laughing now.
‘Arabia,’ Fraser countered, pulling her tighter against him.
‘Australia,’ Rosalind said, rubbing her cheek against his, turning her head to nuzzle a soft kiss on the jagged outline of his scar.
‘New Zealand,’ Fraser replied, running his hand down her side, brushing her breast, her waist, settling on her hip.
‘The North Pole,’ Rosalind said, her lips just touching his.
‘The North Pole,’ Fraser agreed. ‘We will go to the North Pole, and the South Pole too.’ And then his lips fastened on hers.
She kissed him back, aware that her kiss was a promise, deepening it so he would know it was so. Her breathing was ragged when they stopped.
‘You mean it?’ Fraser asked. ‘Just like that? You’ll take a chance?’
Rosalind laughed. The same throaty, sensual laugh she had discovered not twenty-four hours ago, though it had grown in confidence. ‘Just like that,’ she said. ‘I’ll take a chance.’
They made love in the little bathhouse that was formed underneath the fishing pavilion. Though they were wild for each other, they made love slowly, knowing that this was the first of however long their lifetime together would be. The took their time kissing, touching, as they divested themselves of their clothing. Their mouths lingered in creases and curves, watching each other, smiling at each other, tangled up in each other, and then finally joined, inside each other, perched precariously on the edge of the sunken bath, slowly pulsing, pushing, rousing each other into a climax that was all the more fierce for having been so long delayed.
They did not speak their feelings. In time, perhaps they would. Perhaps they never would. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that there would be time.
‘You will write and let me know where you are?’ Kate said anxiously.
‘And that I am safe, you mean?’ Rosalind said.
‘That you are happy is what I mean.’
‘I am happy now,’ Rosalind said, moving closer to Fraser in the gloom of the great hall. ‘Who knows what the future will bring.’
‘Wherever you are, it will be more exciting than being at Castonbury,’ Kate said. ‘Nothing ever happens here.’
‘I met Fraser here.’ Rosalind stepped forward to embrace her friend. ‘It’s true,’ she whispered, ‘what they say about passion. It can happen. It has happened to me, and I can give you several years. Don’t give up hope.’
Kate’s smile was sceptical. ‘Take care of her,’ she said to Fraser, taking him by surprise and shaking his hand firmly. ‘Now, go, the pair of you, or I shall cry and I have shed enough tears for a lifetime. I won’t wave you off. I’ve done enough of that too.’
A brief salute and she turned her back, running lightly up the stairs, leaving Lumsden to see to their departure. The post chaise and four that Fraser had hired was waiting on the carriageway, their baggage already strapped to it. As she settled into the squabs beside Fraser, and the horses headed at a walk down the drive, Rosalind leaned out the window to look back at Castonbury Park. ‘You know, there is a whole world here, just on this estate,’ she said. ‘Gardeners, servants, farmers, villagers, shopkeepers, even clergy, as well as that extended family living in the big house. I wonder, if we came back a year hence, what differences there would be?’
Fraser pulled her back into the carriage. ‘No doubt there will be a hundred different stories to tell, but right now I’m only interested in one. Ours.’ He leaned forwards and produced a bottle of champagne with two crystal glasses, which he gave Kate to hold while he loosened the cork. It popped just as the carriage turned out of the gates. The ruts in the road made the champagne slop about the glasses as they clinked together.
‘To our story,’ Fraser said, ‘whatever it may be.’
‘To us,’ Rosalind replied, sipping the warm bubbles. ‘And to Castonbury,’ she added, ‘a place of beginnings.’
Fraser leaned over to kiss her, and then across her to pull down the window blind.
‘What are you doing?’
He raised his glass and drained it in one gulp. ‘Another first, my love,’ he said, pulling down the other blind. ‘At least, for me it is.’
‘You can’t mean—in the carriage?’
‘Ah, so it is a first for you too. Excellent. And I do mean it.’ He was already shrugging himself out of his coat. ‘Now,’ he said, gazing at her with a devilish look in his eye, ‘I think we should start the way we mean to go on. You choose. Which way would you like me?’
Rosalind swallowed her champagne and threw the glass onto the opposite seat. ‘I think I shall learn to like you any way,’ she said, ‘and every.’
* * * * *
About the Author
Born and educated in Scotland,
Marguerite Kaye originally qualified as a lawyer but chose not to practice. Instead, she carved out a career in IT and studied history part-time, gaining a first-class honors and a master’s degree. A few decades after winning a children’s national poetry competition, she decided to pursue her lifelong ambition to write, and submitted her first historical romance to Harlequin Mills & Boon. They accepted it, and she’s been writing ever since.
You can contact Marguerite through her website at www.margueritekaye.com.
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ISBN: 978-14592-3110-8
Flirting with Ruin
Copyright © 2012 by Marguerite Kaye
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