by Karen Ranney
He would show her how much he loved her.
By the time they left Scotland she, too, would be regretting the waste of the last decade.
CHAPTER TEN
“It’s a wondrous place, isn’t it?” Bruce said from behind her. She turned, her skirt twirling about her ankles. He was dressed, but it was evident from his wet hair he’d been swimming.
“I didn’t get a chance to admire the grotto the other day,” she said, her face flaming. She had been too busy fixated on something else: him. “It’s truly a miracle of nature, isn’t it?” She moved to stand below the opening in the ceiling. Sunlight beamed down on her, encapsulating her in a golden glow.
When she turned to look at him again, he was studying her.
“What?” she asked. She rubbed at her nose and then her forehead. “Have I something on my face?”
“Beauty,” he said.
He mustn’t say things like that.
He strode past her, turned and held out his hand. “Come, I’ll show you the beach.”
She shouldn’t take his hand. She shouldn’t be lured anywhere with him. Still, she put her hand in his, their palms pressing together. His skin was warmer than hers.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
He smiled. “Edinburgh. One of my operatives thought he sighted Henderson.”
Had her question revealed how much she’d missed him the past two days? How much she thought about him? She’d been worried he’d taken off for some imaginary duty to avoid seeing her, but the look in his eyes now proved her fears were ridiculous.
His glance warmed her down to her toes.
“I should run in the other direction,” she said. “As fast as my feet can carry me.”
“And I as well,” he said, smiling at her. “You take my mind from my work, Ceana Mead. I missed you. I wanted to do my duty and hurry back to Drumvagen.”
Her heart was thudding so hard she felt breathless with it.
“Did you?”
He nodded.
“Did you miss me?” he asked.
How much braver he was than she.
She nodded.
“Now I’m back, I’m wondering how I’ll be able to sleep with your door only a few feet away. Then I think of Macrath and how he’s not only my employer, but my friend. I doubt he’d approve of my taking advantage of his hospitality.”
His hands slid around her waist. Gently, he pulled her toward him.
“Quite a dilemma, don’t you agree?”
Wordlessly, she placed both her hands on his shirted chest. If she splayed her fingers she still wouldn’t reach from arm to arm. How very tall he was, and strong. Look how he’d caught Carlton on the day she first saw him.
He wouldn’t come to her because of honor. Would she go to him because of need?
Stepping back, she straightened her skirt, ran her hands down her bodice, fiddling with the cuffs. She really was tired of black, but she would have scandalized her Irish family if she’d chosen to wear any other color.
Once a Mead widow, always a Mead widow.
She would have to return to her life. Or go back to Ireland long enough to explain her desertion and get her daughters. He’d be gone back to America by then and this interlude would be nothing more than memory.
Glancing up at him, she wanted to urge him to stay.
His face was arranged in stern lines, a muscle playing in his cheek. She wanted to touch his full lips, brush her fingers over his mouth. She was enchanted with him, to the detriment of her immortal soul and any sense of decency she once possessed.
She glanced at the passage back up to the library. She really should leave him and take care never to be around him alone.
Instead, she allowed him to spirit her from the grotto to the beach.
The wind was blowing so fierce it made patterns in the sand.
She let go of his hand, turned her back to the worst of it, trying to tame the tendrils of hair brushing against her cheeks.
He seemed impervious to anything nature could throw at him. Standing there, tall and broad, he reminded her of tales she’d always heard of Highlanders.
“Did your family come from Scotland?” she asked.
His bright grin had the ability to lift her heart. How foolish she was.
“I was wagering how long it would take for someone to ask.”
“Macrath or Virginia didn’t?”
He shook his head.
She studied a rock near her foot. It looked just like a turtle, complete with a tiny little head and pointed tail. Her youngest daughter would have tucked it into her pocket and kept it on a shelf in her bedroom. She bent and retrieved it, brushing the sand away and dropping it into her pocket.
“A weapon?” he asked.
She smiled, shook her head, then said, “No, a present. For Nessa. She likes all things turtle-shaped.” She retrieved the rock and opened her palm to show it to him.
He stroked his finger over the humped back.
The moment was too poignant. She couldn’t help but think of his lost family and her own darling children.
Of the two of them, she was so much more fortunate. A word she would never have used a few weeks ago to describe herself. But she had a family here in Scotland, and one in Ireland as well. She was surrounded by love and all she had to do was recognize it.
She would have curved her hand around the rock and dropped it back in her pocket if he hadn’t suddenly placed his forefinger on the inside of her wrist. Two of his fingers stroked across the tender skin there, as if encouraging her heart to beat faster.
She stared at his broad hand, the fingers callused as if he were no stranger to manual labor.
“Do you hate war?” she asked.
“Another question I’ve never been asked,” he said. “I understand war. I understand the politics that encourages one faction to fight another. I accept it the same way I do cruelty, knowing human nature is not always pretty. But hate? That would be as worthless as hating rain or the cold of winter. It simply is.”
“I never thought you a fatalist, Bruce.”
“It’s my Highlander blood,” he said. “To answer your question, my family came from Scotland, from the Highlands. Pushed out by sheep like hundreds and thousands of other Highlanders.”
“And they settled in Boston?”
“Not originally,” he said. “Canada first and then a branch of the family moved to America.”
“Preston isn’t a very Scottish name.”
“My mother was Moira McElwee. My father’s family came from the border. She used to accuse him of being mostly English, while he always said she was a stubborn Scot.”
She wanted to ask but was afraid to.
“I lost them both during the war. Nothing to do with the fighting. My father died of heart trouble and I think my mother just willed herself to die not long afterward.”
He finally dropped his hand and she returned the rock to her pocket.
“If Nessa collects turtles, what does Darina like?”
She shouldn’t have been surprised he remembered her children’s names. She suspected he didn’t forget very much.
“Animals,” she said. “She rescues everything she can find, and there are a great many animals around Iverclaire. Our little cottage is the home of two cats and one very hairy dog. She’s nursed an owl back to health and he rewards us by sitting on a tree not far away and hooting all night.”
He smiled, then reached out to tuck a tendril of hair behind her ear.
She should have moved away from his touch. She should have told him to keep his hands to himself. Instead, she just looked up at him. Caught by emotion, she was held silent by the need to offer him comfort.
To anyone else he was probably strong and forbidding, but she’d seen through to the heart of him. She wan
ted to hold him and take away a little of his pain, as he had unexpectedly eased hers.
He took her elbow and guided her close to the cliff where the earth was hollowed out and the overhanging grass provided a little shelter from the wind.
Leaning closer, he shielded her. She placed her hand on his chest, feeling the warmth of him. He was so alive. He was so real, so much a man, surely any woman in his vicinity would be aware of him.
“Will you kiss me?” she asked, feeling brazen and daring.
“Are you tempting me, Ceana Mead?”
She felt like a creature of the wind or the sea, a goddess of either or both. Right at this moment there was no need for earthly laws or social rules of behavior.
She reached up, placed her hand on the back of his neck and drew his head down. Lifting her face up, she watched as he came closer, noting when his smile faded.
When his mouth claimed hers, she sighed.
What kind of hedonistic creature had she become? To crave the touch of this man, to think about his kisses to the exclusion of any common sense? She didn’t care. She entwined her fingers behind his neck, holding onto him because he was a force greater than any wind or swirling sand.
“I want you,” he said, lifting his head. “I’ve wanted you ever since I saw you. I haven’t been able to forget the night we were together. I want you in my bed for days on end. If anyone knocks, I’ll tell them I’m otherwise occupied. For the first time in my life I’m willing to push aside my obligations. What kind of magic do you hold, Ceana Mead?”
She lowered her forehead until it rested against his shirt. A hollow cavern opened up in her chest. He couldn’t say such things, but oh how glad she was he had. He’d given her power with his admission. She was no longer just a widow, a woman to be pitied for her loneliness, but one who inspired lust.
Kiss me again. She didn’t realize she said it aloud until he smiled, wrapped his arms around her and lifted her to his kiss.
Take me here against the good earth of Drumvagen. Take me here with the ocean only feet from us, with the lichen-covered stone formations proving this was an ancient place.
Her cries would be silenced by the seabirds above them, by the oncoming rushing tide. Their joining would be as elemental as nature itself.
Instead, he stepped back and shook his head, more in control of his needs than she.
His finger traced a path from the corner of her lips to her temple.
“Ceana.”
“Bruce,” she said, smiling.
For a moment it felt like the world was held at bay. No past existed for either of them. No future beckoned, filled with responsibilities and obligations. There was only the wind, the sound of the waves wetting the sand, and the cry of seabirds.
Her heart felt squeezed as tears threatened.
She closed her eyes and stepped into his embrace, feeling his arms tighten around her.
Please let her remember this moment for the rest of her life. Never let her forget him and the great gift he’d given her. She was alive. She could feel. She could choose whatever direction her life took her.
Ceana was magic.
She was sorcery and witchery and something Bruce had never before felt. She stripped his mind of every cogent thought. She made him feel, and he’d gone for so long without feeling anything he was raw in her presence.
Kissing her was as necessary as breathing. Holding her in his arms made him somehow feel complete.
Sometimes she would look at him and he was struck breathless by her beauty. Her annoyance made him question himself. Her anger made him instantly defensive. Her passion pushed him to the edge of his restraint.
Every one of her emotions was met by one of his. With her, he couldn’t maintain the equilibrium he always had. She wasn’t like other women and he wasn’t the man he’d always known himself to be when he was around her.
Why had it been so important for him to come to Scotland himself? He’d never even given it a second thought. Once he discovered Paul Henderson had left America, he’d packed his own bags. Not because Macrath Sinclair was one of his best clients. Not because the man maintained an empire and a sufficiently large retainer with his firm. Not even because he wanted to see the homeland of his ancestors. Why had he come to Drumvagen at the exact time Ceana came home?
He might have to believe in Fate.
He wanted to tell her things he’d never mentioned to anyone else. He wanted to lay himself bare and have her judge him, when he’d never cared about other people’s opinions before. In the short span of two weeks he had come to look for her, to anticipate seeing her, to thinking of her too much.
When she mentioned returning to Ireland, his mood was affected and his thoughts blackened. He had the feeling once she went back, he would never be the same.
He didn’t want to see her wearing black. Nor did he want to be curious about the man she’d married. He envied Peter Mead, and had rarely envied anyone in his life.
Yet she’d come to his room, the greatest gift he’d ever been given. Now she demanded kisses and he willingly obliged, only to be trapped in a net of desire.
How could he allow her to return to Ireland?
For long moments he held her. Then, just when he couldn’t imagine ever releasing her, she stepped back.
Her cheeks were rosy, her mouth trembling. He wanted to kiss her again, but if he did he didn’t think he could stop.
“Do your daughters have your beautiful blue eyes?”
She glanced away.
“No,” she said. “They have Peter’s brown eyes. And his red hair.”
She looked back at him, placed her palms on his cheeks and studied him intently. “Your eyes are a beautiful shade. Not quite brown. Not quite gold. From the first moment I saw you I thought they were like whiskey in sunlight.”
He had rarely been the recipient of compliments, especially from a beautiful woman. He felt his face warm.
She laughed and wrapped her arms around his waist, tempting him to take her right there on the beach.
He bent his head, lay his cheek against her hair, hearing the wind and the waves.
The door to his heart opened, the rusty hinges dissolving as he realized that, despite all the odds, he’d somehow fallen in love.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Carlton was sitting in the corner, reading. Every few minutes he would lick his forefinger and turn the page. Any other day Virginia would have cautioned him that doing such a thing would damage the book, but she was so grateful he was occupied she didn’t say a word.
His tutor had gone off to Kinloch village on his half day off, but even if he was still at Drumvagen, it was doubtful Carlton would have left her side. Whatever Macrath told him had made an indelible impression on her son. He rarely let her out of his sight.
A sharp tap on the door frame drew her attention, and she turned to see Ceana standing there.
Carlton looked up as well, then evidently reassured by Ceana’s presence, went back to his reading.
He was guarding her.
She was going to have to talk to Macrath, and Bruce, for that matter. This couldn’t continue. She had to feel safe in her own home. Even more importantly, her children did not have to guard her.
“Come in,” she said to Ceana before turning to Carlton. “Go and tell Brianag we need tea and biscuits.” Her son’s eyes lit up. Carlton had a well-developed love of Brianag’s honey biscuits. She held up one finger. “No more than two, Carlton.”
He reluctantly nodded, but escaped from the room.
“You’ve rescued me from my knight,” she said, closing the door and turning to Ceana. “For some reason, Carlton has decided to protect me.”
Ceana looked away.
“You know about Henderson,” Virginia said, returning to her chair.
“I do,” Ceana confessed. “I think it
’s horrible. I didn’t know anything about what he’d done. Nor can I remember him from London.”
“I wish I could forget him,” Virginia said. “He seems to have formed some type of fixation on me. Come and sit down and we’ll talk of other things until Carlton returns.”
“I’ve have a favor to ask,” Ceana said, her voice halting.
Virginia put her knitting aside and motioned to the adjoining chair.
After seating herself, Ceana stared down at the black silk of her skirt. “I’ve not worn anything but black since Peter died.”
“And you’re tired of it, aren’t you?”
“Is it terrible to want to wear something else?”
“No. I can remember feeling the same. Besides, black is only to let other people know you’re in mourning. Your emotions aren’t tied to the color of the dress you wear. I suspect you’ll always miss Peter in your heart.”
Ceana nodded. “He was such a good man,” she said.
“If you had been the one to die, would he have kept mourning for the rest of his life?”
The question evidently surprised Ceana, because she stared wide-eyed at her.
“I’ve never considered that. I hope he wouldn’t have. I hate to think of him being sad all the time. Besides, my darling girls would need a mother.”
“Don’t they need a father?”
Ceana smiled. “My brothers-in-law would say they have enough uncles to make up for the lack of a father.”
“Do you have enough brothers-in-law to make up for the lack of a husband?”
Ceana’s cheeks grew rosy. “They would say love isn’t important for me. That I should be happy with the memory of love and want nothing more for myself.”
“What do you say?” Virginia asked.
“Can you ever imagine yourself without Macrath and marrying again?”
The thought sent a spike of fear into her heart.
“I don’t even like to think of being without Macrath for a day,” she said. “But I think he would want me to be happy, whatever that entails. Just as I think Peter would want the same for you.”
