“I keep trying to forgive Alasdair. Someday maybe I’ll manage.”
“If I know you at all, it will be soon.”
“And you?”
“He’s dead because of me. The least I can do is forgive him.”
She shivered, and he stood. “Are you cold?”
“No. I’m fine.” Warily she watched him move closer. “Iain, I came to say thank you. I didn’t want to leave without saying it. I didn’t want you to think that I wasn’t grateful. If it weren’t for you…”
“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have been there in the first place.” He stopped just in front of her.
“Maybe not. But Alasdair would have come after me somewhere else, and you, too. It was just a matter of time.”
“When I think of what you went through in that hellhole.”
“I can’t think about it.” She looked beyond him, because she couldn’t look at him. Her eyes focused on Hollyhock, stretched out in a comfortable armchair, like a king. The dog was so replete and satisfied with himself that he hadn’t even wagged his tail when she’d entered the room. “You need to train that dog, Iain. I won’t be here anymore to do it.”
“For the rest of his life Hollyhock gets whatever he desires. I’m his willing slave. He’s the one who found you.”
“Hollyhock?”
At last the dog deigned to wag. Then he slipped off the chair and wandered from the room, as if he were looking for an undisturbed place to sleep—or another slice of roast beef.
“His barking led me to you,” Iain said. “I think he heard you when I couldn’t.”
Billie met Iain’s eyes. “Then I have you both to thank. I’ll send him a genuine American buffalo bone.”
“I was coming to see you tomorrow. I’d already arranged the ride. I’ve been warned not to drive until all the dizziness is gone.”
“Dizziness? Should you be standing?”
“I’m perfectly fine.”
“Why were you coming tomorrow?”
“To do this.” He lightly touched her hair. She started to move away, but he cupped her head to keep her there. He lowered his face to hers. She closed her eyes because she didn’t want to see doubt in his. “Open your eyes,” he whispered.
She did. All she saw in his eyes was desire. The feeling of his lips against hers was as old as love and as new as commitment. He wooed her to open to him, slowly, gently.
Instead, she moved away. “We already know we’re good at that. Did you need more proof?”
“I need you.”
Her heart was pounding uncontrollably. “I can’t go on this way, Iain. I almost died, and you did, too. But that doesn’t change anything. You still don’t want me in your life for more than a night or two. I need to leave now, before you tear my heart to pieces.”
“Stay with me.”
“Did you hear anything I said?”
“I’ve taken the blood test.”
For a moment she didn’t understand. Then she realized what he meant. “The genetic test?”
He took both her hands. “Aye.”
She couldn’t speak. She was a tapestry of emotions and thoughts, all woven into a form she couldn’t see clearly. Then the pattern, the entirety of it, leapt out at her.
And she knew that they could never be together.
She pulled her hands from his. “I see.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. You’ve used the results to make your decision about us. Heads, you’re free to love me. Tails, you’ll face the rest of your life alone.”
“Is that so bad?”
“Yes! I’m glad your news is good, happier than you can imagine. But, Iain, you’ve never learned what you really needed to know about me. I loved you, and whatever the future held, I would have faced it with you. I didn’t need a note from your doctor. Maybe the news is good this time, but what about next? There are a thousand diseases that could strike you down. And what about me? Do I have to come to you complete with a guarantee?”
“Billie…”
He said her name so tenderly that for a moment she almost wavered. But she steeled herself to go on. “I never asked for proof that our future together would be perfect. I loved you without it. But you’ve never loved me enough to believe that.”
He took her hands again and raised them to his lips. His eyes gleamed. He kissed one palm, then another. “I don’t have the results, Billie. I’ve come to you without them. I won’t know for three months what the blood test will conclude, but I know what my own heart tells me. If you’ll have me, I’ll give you the very best life I can. If we have five years or fifty, I’ll live every day with a prayer of thanksgiving on my lips.”
She searched his eyes. “You really don’t know?”
“I don’t. It’s a complex test, and there’s still a chance that we’ll know very little when it’s completed. Still a good chance we’ll never be able to have children.” He held her hands to his heart. “Will you take me this way? With no guarantees at all? Just me as I am?”
There must have been questions in her eyes, because he smiled sadly. “I refuse to lose you again. I’ll keep you here any way I have to. Alasdair, in all his madness, taught me how much I love you.”
She launched herself into his arms, and he held her tightly against him. “I’ll take you any way, Iain. Every way!”
“It may not be easy.”
“I never asked for easy.”
“Then I’m yours. No guarantees, no conditions.”
She lifted her face to his. There was nothing in his eyes that she couldn’t read. He was open to her in a way he had never been before. No part of him was held back. “Sold,” she whispered.
He took her lips in a kiss that was deceptive in its tenderness. He drained her of every drop of doubt, every fear that had haunted the perimeter of her mind. When at last he pulled away, she knew that in the most important ways he would never pull away from her again.
Now there was no need for a gentle wooing. He locked the door, and their clothing drifted like flower petals to the floor. Dressed in firelight, they moved together as if they had made love a thousand times.
“I thought of this when I was in the dungeon,” she said. “I was afraid you would never hold me again.”
“I stayed alive so I could hold you.”
She traced his bruises with her tongue, baptizing each of them with warm, soft kisses. He held her carefully, as if he could feel her need for air and space.
They avoided the sofa and sank to the rug in front of the fire. Time was a new luxury, and they stretched each moment to its breaking point. Each texture, each taste and sound was worthy of exploration. Desire built quickly, but they allowed it, aware that they had freedom to let the storm break when they chose.
Billie cherished Iain’s hands at her breast; she cherished the way that her own hands set him aflame. She couldn’t seem to stop trying to satisfy herself that he was there and whole, and so was she. She knew it would take time to truly believe that they were safe and together.
But he had given her time.
They joined together at last when desire had soared so high that they could no longer pull back, even for seconds. He drew her over him after he had protected himself and gave her the freedom of movement that he sensed she still needed. As she felt them slowly become one, she knew that they would never be truly apart again.
“Iain…” She knew whose name she called, what man she loved.
“My woman. My beautiful woman.”
She opened her eyes and looked into his as they found the supreme pleasure together.
“Iain Ross’s woman,” she whispered at last, when she lay half across him, boneless and fulfilled.
“Never forget it.”
She kissed his shoulder, slid damp, exuberant kisses up his neck, covered his jaw with them and, finally, found his lips. “Billie Harper’s man,” she whispered against them.
“Forever and a day.”
EPILOGUE
&nbs
p; Spring came to the Highlands, and with it longer days, fields of daffodils and baby lambs frolicking in sunlight.
On the first day of spring there was another wedding at the ancient chapel on Fearnshader’s grounds. All of Druidheachd was there, as well as a mob of Floridians who oohed and aahed over Billie’s new home. She wore her grandmother’s satin wedding dress and pearls of Mara’s, and although no one had asked him to, Hollyhock wandered in at the first wail of bagpipes to help Billie’s father escort her down the aisle.
She was surprised to discover how quickly her family accepted her new life. She convinced her father not to inventory all Fearnshader’s antique-smothered rooms, and she convinced her youngest brother not to chase after the village daughters unless he was willing to stay in Scotland forevermore.
Her mother served a more useful purpose.
“You’re sure you know what you’re doing?” Sandra Harper asked two days after the ceremony, as she eyed Andrew’s sturdy boat.
“Yes.” Billie kissed her mother’s cheek. Sandra was the vision of what Billie would look like in twenty-five years, and Iain claimed he anticipated it with satisfaction.
“It seems like a sacrilege. That stone’s been in the tower for centuries.”
“Well, the time’s come for that to change.”
“I think I hear them coming.”
Billie turned. It had taken Andrew, Iain and Duncan the better part of three days to remove the inscribed stone from the tower wall. And now it took all of them to carry it to Andrew’s boat.
But instead of setting it at the stern, where its matching half waited, the men set the stone on the ground beside Sandra.
“We’ve discovered something we didn’t suspect,” Iain said.
“There’s another inscription on the other side, the side that couldn’t be seen.”
Billie thrust her hands in the pockets of her jeans. She was suddenly cold all over. “I don’t want to know.”
“Nonsense,” Sandra said. “I didn’t raise you to hide your head in the sand, Billie.”
“There’s very little sand to hide in here, Mom.”
“Can you read it?” Iain asked his new mother-in-law. “We’ve cleaned it off as best we can.”
Sandra knelt and peered closely at the inscription. “Someone give me a pen and some paper.”
Both were fetched. Sandra scribbled, crossed out her own letters and scribbled some more. Then she stood. “This is something you and Iain will want to share when you’re alone, Billie. I’ll translate it for you.”
Billie watched the men hoist the stone into the boat as her mother used a fresh sheet of paper for the translation.
“Mom…”
“Go. Do what you have to.”
Billie took the paper and shoved it in her pocket. “I love you. We’ll be back before long.”
“Don’t hurry. I’ll be here for the rest of the week.”
Billie walked out on the dock where the boat was moored. It was a large boat, fitted out to take tourists to look for a glimpse of the resident creature—the creature that Andrew called his darling. The two halves of the stone were perched on the rear of the stern.
“Now, you’re certain you know how to operate her?” Andrew asked Iain.
“I’m certain.”
“I could come and help.”
“No, this is something Billie and I have to do ourselves.”
“When you reach your destination, warn my darling. I’ll no’ have her clobbered from above.”
Hollyhock barked from the dock, but Poppy, Andrew’s dog and Hollyhock’s brother, engaged his attention, and in a moment the two were running in circles.
“Time to cast off,” Iain said.
Billie watched Iain guide the boat into deep waters. He handled the boat with ease, this new husband of hers, just as he did nearly everything. The spray was icy cold, but she reveled in the feel of it against her face. At high speed they reached the deepest waters in fifteen minutes.
Iain cut the engine. It was silent this far from shore, and the loch was as smooth as glass.
“It’s time,” Iain said.
The scholar in Billie warred with the woman. “Are we sure this is the right thing to do? We’re destroying a piece of history…two pieces.”
“It’s right.”
They walked to the back of the boat, hand in hand. “I feel like we should say some words,” she said.
“I have some to say.”
She was surprised at the seriousness of his tone, and suddenly afraid again. She thrust her hands in her pockets and felt the paper with her mother’s translation. “Well, I guess I’ve been given some words, too.” She took it out. “Who should go first?”
“Read what your mother gave you.”
“I don’t know if I want to….”
“Read it, Billie. Let’s be done with this.”
She unfolded it and ignored the temptation to read it silently first.
“But if their love is as true, as pure as the love of Christina and Ruaridh, may this curse be lifted for all time, and my family and his live in peace and in harmony.” She stared at the paper.
Iain spoke. “It’s the final portion of the curse. The part that we thought had been lost forever. Don’t you see? It’s talking about what can happen if children of the two families fall in love again. It’s the part that Christina’s father added when he realized how terribly he had doomed his own descendants. It’s the way they can free themselves of the curse. Love true and pure. Whoever chiseled the curse into the stone added this later, after the stone was split, in the same way the ending was added to the curse.”
“Do you think the curse is over for all time, then?”
He brushed her cheek with his wedding ring, the only ring he wore now. “Two days ago you took me for better or worse.”
Her fear blossomed, and suddenly she knew what he was going to say. “Iain, did you get the test results already?”
“Aye. They came back sooner than expected. Dr. Sutherland called this morning.”
“Tell me.”
“You got the better, not the worse, Billie. I’m one of the lucky ones. The test was absolutely conclusive. I don’t have the gene. I won’t die as my father did.”
She threw herself into his arms and began to cry. He stroked her hair. “It’s over. There are no more Rosses alive to pass down the disease. For my family, at least, it’s over. When you and I have children, they’ll be safe from it.”
“Children.” She lifted her face to his. “Little lords and ladies?”
“Not if your parents have anything to say about raising them.”
She laughed through her tears. He kissed her, and for a moment they clung together.Then Iain turned her toward the distant view of Ceo Castle. They stood locked in each other’s arms until wind began to ruffle the calm waters.
“It’s time,” Iain said.
“Aye.”
He smiled at her accent. “Will you help?”
“I will, but you have to warn Andrew’s darling first.”
They knelt on the seat behind the stones and he called a warning. Then together, using all their combined strength, they pushed the first stone into the water. In a moment the second joined the first deep in the loch.
Billie didn’t know what to say. The moment was charged with the same awe she’d experienced as she repeated her wedding vows in the chapel where Duncan and Mara had been married.
In the reverent silence she heard the beating of wings from the sky just above them. She shaded her eyes and pointed. “Iain, look.”
A trio of wild swans flew overhead, returning to the Highlands for the warmer season.
“May they be freed from enchantment and find what they’re looking for,” Iain said. “May they become what they were always destined to be.”
“I wish them well.” Billie gazed up at her husband. “May they someday be as happy as we are.”
He kissed her again as the loch gently rocked the boat beneath t
hem. And it was far later than either of them had intended before they finally reached the shore.
* * * * *
“Complex characters, compelling emotions and the healing power of forgiveness—what could be better? I loved this book!”
—#1 New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods on One Mountain Away
Looking for more memorable stories by USA TODAY bestselling author Emilie Richards?
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One Mountain Away
Somewhere Between Luck and Trust
No River Too Wide
The Color of Light
When We Were Sisters
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CHAPTER ONE
Robin
The stories of our lives can be told in so many ways, but no one account, no matter how carefully rendered, is completely true. Words are, at best, only an outline, something I discovered years ago whenever I was asked about my childhood. In the same way, I’m sure I’ll tell the story of last night’s accident differently every time I’m forced to recount it.
I hope that won’t be often.
Right up until the minute I slid into the backseat of Gretchen Wainwright’s Camry, I remember everything that happened yesterday. For better or worse I remember little that happened afterward. The neurologist on call at the hospital promised that wisps of amnesia are not unusual, that after even a minor brain injury, patients often recount “islands of memory,” when past events are viewed through fog. Sometimes the fog lifts, and, blessedly, sometimes it does not.
Men of Midnight Complete Collection Page 49
