by Gwyn Cready
He gave her a smile tinged with fear. His heart was expanding in his chest faster than he could control it, and if this turned into another disappointment, he would be destroyed.
“After you left me at Rogan’s house, I told him I wanted to delay the wedding.”
Hugh’s heart was like an Oriental hot-air lantern filled with joy, and he was clinging to the edge, trying to keep it from lifting him off the ground. But he had heard the nuance of that word.
“Delay?” he said carefully. “You did not cancel it?”
“No.” Her voice shook, and he watched the blood creep up her cheeks. “I wasn’t sure.”
Not sure? The words were like the stab of an arrow. The lantern collapsed and shuddered to earth. His shoulders fell.
“But I am sure now!” she cried.
“You are not. I can see the disquiet on your face.”
“No! The disquiet isn’t for Rogan—or you. It’s for me. I’m a virgin.”
He blinked. Virgin? He felt as if he’d lost his footing in a complicated dance.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have told you.”
She grazed his hand, and his heart pulsed.
“He will know,” Hugh said wildly, pulling his hand free.
Her eyes flickered, fearful. “No he won’t.”
“He will. He’s not a fool, and neither am I. I will have no part in . . . in preparing you for his bed.”
Glimmering drops appeared in her eyes.
“There will not be a marital bed,” she said. “At least not with Rogan. I can’t marry him. Not when you’re the only man in my head. What kind of a woman do you think I am?” A tear fell and then a second.
“Oh, Joss.” He swept her into his arms. If this was his punishment for failing his brother, he hoped his life was one long failure. “You’ve made me so happy. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it. And what a day for it to happen.”
She hugged him tighter. He tilted her in his arms and for a long, long moment they kissed.
“Where is your ring?” he asked when they had stopped, lightly touching his forehead to hers.
“With the duchess.”
“I cannot afford another like it. I suggest you keep it close.”
She laughed through her tears. “I was told you are a very successful captain. Have I been misinformed?”
“I can manage a bauble or two,” he said, then added with a sly smile, “Anything more would have to be earned.”
“Earned, is it?” She lifted her unadorned fingers and gave him a smile. “I do have a great taste for jewelry.”
He whispered the going price into her ear and heard her inhale.
“Is that all?” she said.
“That is per jewel, of course.”
“In that case, I shall have a neck collar fit for a queen.”
He put out his hand to her. “And what is the price for a virgin queen?”
She laid her quaking palm on his. “A bracelet,” she said, “of tawny pearls.”
He led her to the bed. “You set your price too low, milady. You are worth far more. You are worth a band of gold.” He wrapped that thick dark hair around his hand and gazed with amazed joy into those eyes of cornflower blue. “Do you wish it?”
“Yes.”
He married his mouth to hers, savoring the sweet wine of her kiss. “Then demand it.”
“Possess me,” she whispered. “And the price is a wedding ring on my finger.”
“A fair price at that.”
His tongue was warm and undemanding, and she reveled in the confection of joy and pleasure he stirred.
He proceeded slowly, caressing her shoulders and breasts, his great, strong arms encompassing her.
“Have you done this before?” she asked, and pursed her lips when he smiled. “I mean this.” She gestured vaguely to the virgin territory below her navel.
“Once or twice,” he said, in a way that made her think the number was considerably higher. “You are in capable hands, Joss. I promise I will see you safely to the other side.”
“Why didn’t you marry them?” This sense of being taken care of was new to her and she wanted some reassurance it wasn’t a mistake.
“All of them?” He rose to his feet and slipped out of his coat.
“Hugh.”
He grinned. “None touched my heart. ’Twas my own fault, though. I don’t think I had a heart to touch until I met you.” He loosened his stock—the stock that had played such a heated role in their afternoon—and dropped it on the floor.
“I wonder if they think about you.” If she was to wear his ring, she wanted no ghosts lurking in the shadows.
“I should very much doubt it. As I said, I was not much of a prize—am not, still, though I will strive to become one for you.”
He pulled off his shirt, and she was taken once more with the broad expanse of his chest and the back streaked with scars of battle, including the bullet wound he had taken in Pittsburgh. “I know Fiona thinks about you.”
His face clouded for an instant. “I hope not,” he said, removing a boot. “Our exchange was a fair one, and I do not think either of us expected more.” The second boot followed, then the socks.
He placed his timepiece on the nightstand, then loosened his breeks and let them fall. She gathered the sheets nervously in her fingers. He was considerably larger than a tongue or a finger. Her palms began to sweat.
His eyes glittered. “You have called upon me to guide you. You must trust me. The tool is irrelevant.”
“Irrelevant” was the last word she would have chosen.
He stretched out beside her, and she twined her leg over his, feeling the power in his long limbs. Their mouths joined easily, and he braided his hand in her hair.
“How is it,” he murmured, “you are yet unplucked? The men before me have been foolish indeed.”
“My mother,” she said as he brought a hand to her hip. “Her Tale of the Beautiful Mapmaker and the young girl in it whose mother warns her to wait for the man who will love and protect her.”
“Today is a day of many surprises,” he said, falling back onto the pillows. “That tale inspired me, too. ’Tis one of the reasons I wanted to come to your time. I thought I was the knight who would save her daughter.”
“And I thought Rogan was my knight!”
“Oof. I should prefer it if you were not quite so exuberant about that fact.”
“Don’t you see? Because I waited for Rogan, I was here for you. Do you think my mother planned it that way? Do you think she told the story to you so you’d come and to me so I’d wait?”
He smiled. “With Maggie, anything would have been possible.”
“She laid it out for us like a maze, and we met in the middle.”
“Then let us not disappoint.”
He brought his hand between her legs, and the fire was different now—the flames were flames of joy, and her heart pounded at the difference. She ached for him in a way that carnality could not satisfy. But she wanted that, too. He had come to her unguarded. How had she ever imagined he had held back part of himself?
He lifted himself gingerly on an elbow and shifted his hips over hers. She could tell his shoulder pained him. Nonetheless, he took her hands and clasped them. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
He pressed himself against her and she opened herself to him, savoring the heft of his weight on her thighs. With a pinch she would remember the rest of her life, he was inside her.
“Oh, God,” he whispered. “You are so beautiful. Are you all right?”
“Yes.” She longed to move but was fearful as well. It was different from what she’d imagined, more intimate. His eyes were so warm.
He slipped a hand free and brought it to her bud. She felt herself tighten around him.
“Careful, lass. ’Tis all I can do to be still.”
He had the fingers of a piano prodigy and she squirmed. “Move,” she begged. “Just a little.”
He moved, slowly. When she gasped, he stopped. “Joss?”
“Go,” she said. “More. Please.” Whether it was him or the act, she didn’t know, but she felt as if she might burst with the pleasure that burned between her legs.
“If I am hesitant, ’tis only because I don’t know where your experience ends and mine begins.”
“This is all new,” she mused. “So, so wonderful. Am I bleeding?”
He checked his fingers in the light. “Aye. A bit. Should I stop?”
“Do you want to stop?”
“God, no.”
She smiled. “I know how to . . . But with this . . .” Her thoughts were so scattered. She laid a hand on his arm, feeling the coiled power there.
“God, I want to bury myself in you,” he said, slowly rocking. “I want to batter you. Tell me I will someday.”
“Oh yes.”
“And you will be round with my child.”
She flushed, thinking of the power of his act. “Someday, yes.”
“Today, if I have my way. And you will long for my touch even then.”
“Yes.”
“And I will plow you each night and each morn.”
“Yes. Yes.”
He cupped her breast, moaning as he kneaded the weight.
The rocking increased in tempo and pressure. She felt the same slow, driving rhythm sweep through her limbs, but this felt more momentous than anything she’d ever known. It could have been the unfamiliar pleasure between her legs, or the sloughing off of her virginity, or this new flavor of desire, but she thought instead it was the clear spring green of his eyes and the way he strained to hold himself from hurting her and the matchless communion she felt in his arms.
She pulled him closer, feeling his long muscles move. “More,” she whispered. “Harder.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He pressed himself slowly into her. It felt as if he reached her lungs.
He groaned and allowed himself a small thrust. “God, you’re as tight as a drum.”
“More.”
He thrust again. She could feel his shoulders tremble, and she pressed her hips against him.
“Do not, milady,” he begged, “do not.”
But her hips were moving on their own. She moaned, heedless of nothing but the tide rising in her. He joined the heated tempo with short, anchored strokes that made her bones shake.
The minutes could have been hours. She rode the momentous joy, clutching his back and taking in his salty scent.
Then the tide took her. She cried out, and he moved just enough to catch her in its crashing ferocity and hold her there. She clutched his shoulders, writhing, calling. Then he caught her hands again, pinning them over her head, and sheathed himself hard, groaning her name as he shuddered.
He collapsed beside her, his body damp with sweat, and pulled her into his arms. “Oh, Joss.”
She curled beside him, awash in the happiness of her new status. “I liked it.”
He laughed. “I could tell.”
“Can we do it again?”
“Aye.” He threw an arm over his eyes and exhaled. “If I can ever stand.”
“I don’t need you to stand.”
“You do for what I’m planning.”
She laid her head on his chest and marveled at the joy she felt. She had no idea how they’d live or where they’d live, and she knew she would have to have an awkward conversation with Rogan to let him know of her decision before she could be completely content, but somehow she knew it would all work out.
Poor Rogan. He was a good man. Whatever she had imagined she’d seen in that dome had to be just that—something she’d imagined.
“When will you get to see the Sir William?” she asked.
The joy in his eyes flickered briefly.
“What?” she asked. “What happened with Sir William?”
“He cannot accept the map.”
Joss felt the world turn over again. For her it meant the life she had known would not disappear like a thief in the night. She would be the daughter of a murderer, but her memories would reflect what had truly happened, and in some strange way she was grateful for that. But for Hugh it meant something else, something worse. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He squeezed her closer. “As am I. I had thought . . . Oh, I suppose it doesn’t matter what I thought now.”
“No, tell me.”
“I thought it was the one thing I could do for my brother, since I was powerless to do anything else. But maybe the one thing I was supposed to do for my brother was to fall in love with the girl he loved as a daughter, the girl whose mother he loved truly and proudly.”
“Oh, Hugh.” She hugged him. “I-I had another thought about the Trojan Horse.”
“You did?”
“We thought my mother put it there as another clue, but what if it’s just meant to be what it is?”
“Which is what?”
“A warning that what you see isn’t what you get.”
He smiled. “It makes sense, but knowing that doesn’t seem to help us unless we know what the what is. It could be the map itself, a symbol in the map, someone involved in the quest.” He touched her nose. “Maybe your mother just wanted to ensure you had a reason to study Latin.”
They heard the sound of violins coming from somewhere in the house.
She looked at him, confused.
“Dinner, milady. The party is about to begin.” He slid from the bed and pulled on his breeks.
“What? Now?”
He pulled back the drapes an inch or two to gaze at the evening shadows in the garden. “Aye, we cannot lie abed all day. At some point, we shall have to thank the man who has generously provided the setting for our happy adventures here.”
Dinner? It hardly seemed possible. She grabbed the timepiece off the nightstand and popped open the cover. But before she could even register the time on the clock-face, the words inscribed on the inside cover struck her like ice water.
Hugh turned. His face fell when he saw her. “Oh, Joss, no!”
“What does this mean, ‘His blood for yours. A brother’s promise’?” She felt as if air were stuck in her lungs, and had trouble keeping the words in focus.
“I-I—”
“Whose blood, Hugh? Whose?”
“I was a young man then,” he said weakly, “and foolish.”
“When you came to that alley the first time, what did you want?”
“Joss . . .”
A siren rang in her head. She’d been so stupid, so ready to believe. She felt like an idiot for not having seen this before now. “What did you want?”
Their gazes held in an embrace of righteous anger and sorrow. At last he said, “I wanted to find Bart’s murderer.”
“Whom you knew to be my father?”
His shirt hung loosely in his hand, as if he’d forgotten its purpose. “Aye.”
“So that you could trade his blood for Bart’s?”
He sighed and nodded.
“So that you could kill him?”
“Aye. But he was already dead.”
“And was that the end of your hunger for vengeance?”
He gazed at the floor, silent.
“Tell me, Hugh. At least be man enough to tell me that.”
A tremor ran over him, as if he had been slipped into a suit of armor. When he lifted his head and looked into her eyes, she barely recognized him. “No,” he said, “’twas not the end. I settled on destroying you—that is, until I found out you were Maggie Brand’s daughter, and then I settled on destroying Reynolds, the heir to the ill-gotten gains from your father’s abominable crime.”
And nothing could have destroyed Rogan more easily than his fiancée’s betrayal. She had served willingly as the dagger of revenge in Hugh’s black quest. Had Hugh actually planned on marrying her? Of course he had. No betrayal is complete without the total destruction of one’s enemy. Hugh had seduced her, torn her from her friends a
nd would steal her forever from Rogan’s world as surely as Zeus had abducted Europa.
“Leave me,” she said, and flung the timepiece onto the bed.
A terrible sadness appeared in his eyes, then it was gone, replaced by something awful and determined. “I cannot. He is here.”
“Rogan?” she asked, shocked.
Hugh nodded.
“Where?” She hoped her seeming eagerness pained Hugh as much as he had pained her. The truth was, she wasn’t sure if she cared if Rogan was there or not, but she knew she was about to cry and she would die before she’d do it in front of Hugh.
“I do not know, milady. But he’s here, in 1706, and he is a danger, perhaps to you. He’s the one who shot me.”
She gasped, but knew in an instant that had to be the truth. She hated that she’d been lied to, hated that her instincts about Rogan had been correct, hated that Hugh was the one to make her see this.
“You’re a liar! I wouldn’t believe you if you said the moon was round. Get out!” she cried. “Get out!”
She buried her face in her hands while he dressed, and the last thing she heard before the sound of the French doors opening and closing was a long sigh and the rustle of bedsheets as he swept the timepiece into his hand.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Hugh stepped into the gloomy twilight, his world in pieces at his feet. She was right, he thought as he stumbled blindly away from the house. He had come to her world with the sole purpose of destroying what she held dear. How could he have expected that sin to be borne away like smoke from a doused fire just because they had fallen in love?
He had lived a life of anger and cold-blooded determination, and now he had lost his only chance for happiness. The punishment was just, but that did not make the coup de grâce any less painful.
He found himself in a thick copse of oaks, though how he had gotten there he could not say. He felt the darkness envelop him, and he wanted to be lost; but just as the last bits of light disappeared, the call of duty stopped him. He couldn’t abandon her. Not when Rogan prowled the land. Even if she did not wish to see him, Hugh must stay where he could see her. He turned as if pulled by a powerful magnet and in the distance found the French doors, still lit by the lamp that had shone on their lovemaking.
