by Jessi Gage
Hands clenched with purpose, she followed him onto the quaint stone porch and through the front door. “Where’s the box?” she asked, not willing to waste another moment of her life in the past.
He lit a lantern, and as it flared to life his handsome face looked drawn and stark. “Dinna ye wish to rest? Ye were nearly falling over with weariness when we came into Ackergill. That was hours ago.”
“I’ll rest when I get home.”
He nodded. “’Tis as I suspected, then. ’Tis magic that brought ye here.” It wasn’t a question, so she didn’t answer. He ran a hand over the back of his neck in the same gesture of discomfort she had seen Edmund use. “I thought at first mayhap ye would sell your wee box for passage on a ship. But ’tis no’ over water ye need to go, is it?”
“No,” she said simply.
He closed his eyes and released a breath. His shoulders rounded. He lit a candle and took it with him as he left the comfortable parlor the front door had spilled them into. “I’ll fetch it for ye,” he said as he disappeared into the hall. His footsteps sounded in an adjacent room.
Seeing him so dejected made guilt settle in her chest. She ignored it. Darcy had no right to her sympathy. He’d come right out and told her their marriage meant nothing to him. It was nothing but a convenient way to escape Steafan’s demands. How insulting. And hurtful.
He came back to the parlor, and when he moved into the lantern light, he looked even more resigned than when he’d said those vows at Steafan’s behest. She wanted to tell him to stop his acting, but he held out the box, and all thoughts of Darcy evaporated as her gaze zeroed in on her ticket home. She grabbed it, and the sleek wood with its cool knotwork felt like long lost treasure in her hands.
“I wish to go home,” she told it, turning the piece upside-down as she had at her workbench. Righting it again, she waited for the tiny clinks and groans that would precede the opening of the lid.
Nothing happened.
She tried it again, mimicking the way she’d handled the box several hours ago in Charleston. Nothing.
She gently shook it, repeating her wish and adding a shaky “please” at the end. She tilted it from side to side. With every attempt her movements grew jerkier, more desperate.
“It’s not working,” she said with an edge of panic. She kept trying to no avail while Darcy stood by and watched. “It’s not working! Why isn’t it working? I’m doing everything the same.” Her eyes swam with the heat of tears she refused to let fall.
“Mayhap ye need to be by the marker.” His tragic tone yanked her attention to his face. He looked as depressed as she was distraught. Sympathy almost softened the urgency racing through her veins. She reminded herself he didn’t deserve it.
“Right. The stone. Maybe it’s some kind of portal. Maybe it’s in cahoots with the box.”
“Come along, then,” he sighed. “Best get it over and done with.”
* * * *
Down at Ackergill’s stables, Darcy silently saddled Rand, the horse his da had bought for him on a trip to Inverness the year before his death. The dun gelding was a full seventeen hands at the withers and strong as a draft horse. He could carry Darcy farther and faster than any other horse he’d tried, and didn’t shy from a skirmish when horses were called for. Usually a pleasure, saddling Rand tonight was a terrible duty.
He’d thought he would have weeks to ride alongside Malina as he returned her to her home. If ’twas a sea voyage required to bring her home, he might have had months with her, and a unique adventure as well. But ’twould nay be weeks or months he’d have the pleasure of keeping his vow to protect her.
’Twould be an hour at most.
He couldn’t abide the thought of saying goodbye to her so soon. Even though she clearly didn’t want him, his heart lusted for her as his lungs lusted for air. When her box took her away, ’twould be a blow worse than any he’d yet received in battle.
While he worked on Rand, his wife turned her box every which way. Her eyes blazed with concentration as she whispered her wishes to it. She looked so lovely in the orange glow of the shuttered lantern. Lovely and determined to leave, the idea of being married to him so distasteful she couldn’t stand even a single night under his roof.
He didn’t blame her after his outright lie and withheld truths. But he didn’t want to send her away with poor memories of him, either. Mayhap if he did all he could to help her return home, she’d forgive him one day.
Malina sighed, a sound so discouraged it made him forget his own problems. The poor thing missed her family, her teaching. Mayhap she had pupils she was fond of. Mayhap the sire of her unborn bairn would be waiting for her. The thought scorched his heart and made his movements so tense Rand bobbed his head uneasily.
“Is he a good man?” he found himself asking past a throat tight with ire.
She looked up, startled. “Who?”
He shook his head at himself. ’Twas none of his concern, not when he was willing to toss aside the vows he’d made like scraps from the dinner table. But he still wished to ken what manner of man would get a woman with child and not marry and keep a close watch on her. “The one you’re so eager to return to,” he bit out.
She blinked at him. Her hand shifted from her box to her belly. “You mean, the man who got me pregnant?” A flicker of something that wasn’t quite shame flitted through her eyes. “He has some good qualities,” she said with a furrowed brow.
Anger climbed his neck. She was eager to return, but the man she had waiting for her didn’t inspire her confidence.
Rand protested his ruthless tightening of the girth with a grunt and a stomp of his hoof.
“Will he at least provide for you?” he asked, doing his best to keep his temper.
“No,” she said. “He married another woman. But I don’t need a man to provide for me.” Her chin lifted with pride. “I have a good job and a comfortable apartment. In my homeland I can take care of myself.”
The wedding vows he’d spoken embedded in his gut like thorns. As he finished with Rand’s bridle, his cut hand stung bitterly. The place where his blood and hers had mixed scorned him for being willing to let her go.
But he wasn’t willing. ’Twas she who wanted to leave.
A sudden insight teased him. What if she didn’t want to leave? What if she was just angry with him and acting impulsively?
He left Rand to kneel at her feet. She eyed him suspiciously. He hated that he’d given her cause to look at him that way.
“I will ask ye this but once. Do ye wish to forsake our bond and my offered protection? Do ye truly wish to return to your life of providing for yourself and working and raising your bairn alone? I would have ye stay here with me, and I would care for ye your whole life. I would treat your bairn as my own. I have means, and I am a good man, though I ken I havena given ye cause to believe it.
“Stay with me, Malina. Let me prove to ye the man I am. I wouldna expect your love, and I dinna expect ye to share my bed. But I wish ye to stay and be my wife. I wish to be your husband. Will ye release me from the vow I made to help ye return home?”
He made himself stop blathering and waited for her answer, drowning in the emerald pools of her eyes. Closing his hands around hers, around the box, he found some solace in the fact that she didn’t pull away.
She appraised him with liquid eyes. Could that be tenderness he glimpsed? But it was gone too soon, replaced with suspicion. Och, he’d been so dishonest with her she likely would never be able to trust him. Mayhap it was for the best she was leaving. If she couldn’t trust him, he’d nay be able to make her happy.
At last, she sighed and shook her head. “I suspect you’re a good man, even though you lied to me. I see goodness in you, and honor. Any woman would be lucky to have you as her husband.” His heart lifted with hope. “Any woman from your time,” she added gently. “I don’t belong here. I need to go back to my time. My being here is a mistake. This is all a huge mistake.”
His hear
t crumbled as he released her hands and pulled the heavy velvet pouch from his sporran. “Then, take this. ’Tis my wedding gift to you. If I canna be with ye to keep my marriage vows, I pray this will clear my name before the Lord.”
She took the pouch and looked inside. Her eyes grew wide. “It’s gold. I can’t take this.” She tried to push it back into his hands, but he refused it.
“You must. ’Tis the best I can do for you, Malina mine. I hope ye will remember me well when ye use it. I hope this will provide for you and your bairn for many years.” Not giving her a chance to reject his gift as she’d rejected him, he rose and blew out the lantern. He led Rand from the stables, and said, “Come, Malina. ’Tis time to send ye home.”
* * * *
The stable became dark and quiet once more as Big Darcy and the ample-chested trollop he’d called his wife left with his beast of a horse. Anya crept from the shadows of the tack room to peek out the barn door. Silhouetted by the blue night, he held out his hand, and the woman reluctantly handed over what looked to be a box. After tucking it in the saddlebag, he helped the woman mount, then mounted behind her. They rode silently into the night.
She clapped her hands in delight. She’d just witnessed the heir of Ackergill agree to willingly dishonor his marriage vows by helping his wife run away. But even better, she’d just witnessed the man she’d ruined with rumors when he was little more than a lad get a taste of the rejection he’d dealt her time and again when she’d been blossoming into her womanhood.
Of all the young men in the clan, she’d chosen the tall and comely Darcy to give her maidenhead to. At first, he’d laughed at her, not in cruelty–for he had never had the stomach for cruelty–but as though he thought her advances in jest. But they had not been in jest. In fact, they had been so earnest and had so exposed her tender, young heart that his rejection had planted seeds of bitterness within her that had grown into thorns. By the time she’d learned the finer points of seduction and had finally lured him into kissing and fondling her in the stables, she had no maidenhead to give, and she realized she resented him for it. Vengeance had seemed a better reward than the long-awaited coupling.
When he’d shed his plaid, she’d seen her opportunity. The lad had been large. Not monstrously so, as she’d led him to believe, but larger than the others she’d seen, for cert. ’Twas almost a pity she hadn’t permitted herself the pleasure of sitting astride such a magnificent cock. But kenning she’d so affected him that he’d never approached another lass in the years since that night made it worth the sacrifice.
Now Big Darcy was married, it seemed, and his wife didn’t want him. And not only that, but she was asking him to help her run away. ’Twas a delicious discovery she couldn’t wait to share up at the keep. Steafan would be furious. He may even disown his nephew. Too bad Big Darcy had a brother, or ’twould surely be Aodhan Steafan would set in line for the lairdship.
“There ye are, lass,” came a familiar voice out of the darkness. Aodhan. Her current lover and an important man among the Keith.
“You’re late,” she said, putting an extra sway in her hips as she approached him.
He swept her up in his strong arms and carried her to the dark tack room. “Business up at the keep,” he murmured as he closed his mouth over hers. No apology for keeping her waiting. But then she didn’t expect one. Not from the war chieftain.
“Wouldna happen to have been a wedding, now, would it?” she asked as he set her on the counter and helped himself to the pockets in her dress, searching for her vial of rose oil.
Aodhan tensed. His hand stopped in its search. “How did ye ken?”
“I saw Big Darcy with a strangewoman. I heard him call her his wife. Steafan must be pleased to have his heir finally wed.” She toyed with the wiry hairs framed by the V of his shirt, pleased to ken Aodhan must have been so eager for her he’d undone the laces on his way to the stables.
“Aye,” he admitted, but he said no more.
She didn’t care for the caution in his eyes. He liked to tup her, but he wouldn’t confide in her, the stubborn man.
“Who is she?” she asked, palming what he’d been searching for and pulling it from her pocket. ’Twas a vial of rose oil of her own making. She uncorked it and waved it under his nose, pleased with the way his eyes closed in bliss at the perfume’s fragrance. Like a bull scenting the heat of a cow was Aodhan, mindless once his nose caught the promise of joining.
He took the vial from her and tipped it to coat two fingers before shoving up her skirts to rub it between her legs. In the next heartbeat he was there, loving her.
“You saw yourself,” he ground out. “A strangewoman. Dinna fash yourself over Darcy. I’m the only man ye need think about at the moment.”
“Yes,” she sighed, giving herself over to his forceful coupling. As always, his initial thrusts were uncomfortable, but the oil helped. Besides the customers who purchased her perfumes at market, a secret patronage sought after her scented oils designed to make coupling feel grand. But her personal supply did much more than that. Thanks to a dose of quinine mixed in, it kept her from catching a bairn. Of course, quinine was costly, so she only added it to her own supply and to the supply she sent to one unsuspecting couple.
But she couldn’t think of Steafan and Ginneleah now, not when Aodhan was hitting that secret place inside her over and over again. Not many men could find it, and Aodhan was the only lover she’d ever had who refused to release himself until he’d coaxed that spot into flooding her with ultimate pleasure.
Proving tonight was no exception, he reduced her to a crazed, mewling animal in mere minutes. When pleasure drowned her in a wild torrent, she bit back her screams, not wanting to wake the stable master. As she floated back to Earth, Aodhan shivered within her. His growl of satisfaction rumbled through the dark tack room.
After they had both regained their breath, he lowered her to a bed of saddle blankets on the floor. “We wouldna have to keep quiet had we a marriage contract,” she said half in jest. Of all the lovers she’d taken, Aodhan was the first to make her consider marrying him instead of pursuing the goal that had driven her for the past four years. But Aodhan had never offered, and she would never beg.
Only for one man would she consent to beg. Only for her laird.
“Ah, Anya lass, keeping quiet is part o’ the fun.” He nipped her jaw, predictably avoiding her none-too-subtle hint. But she didn’t mind much, not when he began lazily unlacing her dress and pressing hot, wet kisses to her breasts. Not when she kent he wasn’t nearly finished bringing her pleasure tonight.
Besides, ’twas a laird’s right to put away his wife if she failed to give him bairns. She may yet manage to wed Steafan. As long as that hope remained, she’d not seriously consider marrying another.
Chapter 7
Melanie hadn’t ridden a horse in years, not since childhood riding lessons back in Georgia. But lessons in an indoor riding arena on a gentle quarter horse had failed to prepare her for the terror of cantering through a night-darkened forest in a saddle as high as the roof of an SUV. She clung to Darcy’s arm around her waist with one hand and to the horse’s mane with the other, and tried not to contemplate how disastrous a fall from this height would be to her and her baby.
“Dinna fash, Malina,” he said in her ear as the wind licked locks of hair out of her up-do. “Rand willna let you fall. Nor will I.”
Her racing heart had the gall to calm at his assurance, and her body had the gall to settle into the cradle of his chest, arms and thighs. She wasn’t enjoying the security of his embrace, she told herself. She was merely trusting her safety to an experienced horseman. Those weren’t giddy butterflies dancing in her tummy each time his fists brushed her lap. It was just a side effect of trying not to hyperventilate.
The ride to Berringer’s field took a fraction of the time their march to Ackergill earlier that evening had taken. Upon drawing his horse to a stop, Darcy dismounted and reached up for her.
“
We’re here already?” Her fingers curled into Rand’s mane.
“Aye,” he said. “Come along. The marker’s just here.”
She looked past him into the darkness to see muted moonlight making a blue edge on the leaning stone. A lump formed in her throat, which was silly since she was eager to return home.
She forced her fingers to release their grip on Rand’s mane and trusted herself to Darcy’s hands. He lowered her to the ground.
She didn’t step away. She stood chest to stomach with him for a good minute, remembering their talk in the barn.
There was no way he could have faked the sincerity in his eyes when he’d asked her to stay and be his wife. Or the pain in them when she’d refused. If those vulnerable eyes of his hadn’t convinced her of his honor, the precious gift sunk deep in a pocket of her gown was incontrovertible evidence. He had given her about five pounds of raw gold. In her time, it would be worth a small fortune, but in Darcy’s time, it would be worth an immense fortune. In his mind, he was providing for her for her whole life, and providing for her well. The weight pressed her leg and her conscience. She didn’t want to take this treasure from him. It might represent all his savings. But if she didn’t take it, she’d be refusing him the means to fulfill his vows the only way he could. And she had no doubt that’s what the gift was about. He might have married her for convenience, but he took the vows seriously.
She would never again question his honor.
She wouldn’t have a chance to. She was leaving him. The permanence of the thought sat heavy in her stomach like the gold in her pocket.
Darcy’s fingers pressed her waist. His linen and plaid-covered chest sheltered her from the night. Like in Steafan’s office, she couldn’t bring herself to look higher than his collar. The goodbye she owed him got lodged somewhere in the vicinity of that pesky lump.
