I didn’t mind at all. If Vegas was only an airplane away rather than several hundreds of years, I would have suggested we marry the very next day. I moved to run my hands through his hair, kissing his nose as I snuggled into him. “I don’t mind at all. How soon can we be married? I mean, I’m not very familiar with how weddings work here.”
He rolled over onto his stomach, propping himself up on his elbows as he looked down at me. “As soon as ye wish, lass. I dinna wish to rush if ye wanted to take some time, but I’d marry ye today if I could.”
“Today? Could things be arranged so quickly?” I closed my eyes and smiled, delighting in the feeling of his fingertips as he ran feather light touches up and down my bare arm.
“’Tis no so much to arrange, but I’m afraid I must leave for a day or two to make special preparations.”
“Preparations for what?” Fear that I’d managed to lock away for the night crept back. “You’re not…Eoghanan, I don’t want you to go after her.”
“No, lass. I am no afraid of the witch, Jinty. Without me brother to act as her puppet master, I doona think she is capable of real harm. Though should I get the chance to end her life, I will do so for all the pain she helped bring upon this family. ’Tis only that I wish to prepare a surprise for ye. Baodan and I will leave this afternoon.”
I knew it was ridiculous. I was too grown to allow such a notion to find a resting place in my mind, but the thought of him being away for a mere two days made me rather sad. “Must you leave? In the middle of the gathering?”
“Doona worry yerself, Grace. The gathering will last for weeks. Few will even notice our departure. Eoin and Arran will be here to care for things in our absence. Trust me, when ye see what I’ve planned for ye, ye will be glad I left.” He flipped over onto his back and stood rather abruptly. “In the meantime, I need ye to stay here a moment while I check on yer other surprise.”
He dressed quickly and left, leaving me with a mind full of confused wonderings. He’d not left my side all night. How could he have so many plans already in place?
He didn’t leave me long to imagine what he had planned, arriving back in the doorway within a matter of minutes, the largest smile I’d ever seen on his face.
“I think ye best get dressed, Grace.”
I stood and did as he asked. His excitement roused my curiosity greatly. “Okay, what is it? What have you done?”
He shrugged nonchalantly. “’Tis no so much what I have done, but Morna. Ye see, I had a conversation with wee Cooper before we traveled back here, and he spoke of a man verra important to ye all. When I told Morna of him, she promised that she would check in often to see how things progressed between us and should they lead to marriage, she would send ye, Cooper, and Jeffrey a gift. Yer gift has arrived.”
Surely he couldn’t mean what he made it sound like. The man who the three of us leaned on more than any other and the last missing piece in our little puzzle couldn’t possibly be here.
I fumbled with the laces in my anticipation and eventually spun my back toward Eoghanan, lifting my hair and pointing to my back. “Help me, please.”
He obliged, working quickly with the laces. “There. Ye are properly covered and free to go and see yer surprise. I hope ye are no disappointed.”
I hoped so, too. He’d built up to it so much, making me believe it could only be one thing, that I knew if it wasn’t I would have a difficult time masking my disappointment.
I walked quickly down the hallway, unsure of just where my surprise lay. Then I heard it—the same voice that I’d gone to my entire life for guidance and comfort, the same voice that Cooper loved second only to mine and Jeffrey’s.
I turned the corner and nearly wept. There, with Cooper clinging to him, grasping his neck so tightly I was surprised he could breathe, stood Bebop.
*
“So one day, I was sitting on my back deck fishing, and I closed my eyes for just a moment,” Bebop winked at me, “resting my eyes as I do, and the next moment I’m sitting in a stranger’s living room with an old man and woman staring back at me.”
He had us all enraptured, Cooper, Jeffrey, Eoghanan and me all standing around him, listening intently to his tale of how Morna had brought him here. He had the unique ability to tell any story, even everyday stories that weren’t truly as interesting as the one he told now, as if they were the grandest of tales.
No wonder my son had such a vivid imagination and that he’d developed an early love of books. Who wouldn’t with a grandfather like that to tell you stories? He was the sort of man one could listen to for hours.
Bebop, whose real name was Charles Oakes, was a good decade older than both of my parents. He and Maggie had given birth to Jeffrey later in life, after over a decade of trying to have children. Bebop stood the same average height as Jeffrey, about five-seven, although his shoulders now hunched a little, making him look shorter than he really was. An avid cyclist, he was in phenomenal shape for a man his age, but he still looked very grandfatherly—like a surprisingly sprite Gepetto.
He still had a full head of hair but it was entirely gray, and he wore a pair of spectacles that often lingered on the end of his nose. He continued relaying his tale, laughing as he spoke.
“Well, I’ll tell you. For a moment I thought my mind had either caught up with the age of my body, or I’d had a heart attack sitting right on my deck and heaven was just very different than I’d ever imagined it.”
Cooper leaned back, still in Bebop’s arms and gripped either side of the man’s face, as if he couldn’t believe he was really here. “So how did she make you believe everything? These two,” he pointed to me and his father, “had a real hard time with it.”
Bebop leaned in and pressed his forehead to Cooper’s, speaking only to him. “Did your mother read you the story that your Dad and I picked out for you?”
Cooper nodded, their foreheads still touching. “Yeah, I loved it, Bebop. When I first saw E-o, I thought maybe he was like that little prince in the book, and he’d come here on a spaceship.”
Bebop, pulled back, his cheeks still framed by Cooper’s little hands. “Well, I’m not ruined like the grown-ups in the book. I can still see things like a child. I’ve always believed in a bit of magic.” He turned his head to the side to look at us ‘ruined,’ grown-ups. “But, I’ll tell you. I don’t know if I could have dreamed up something like this. How very exciting. Now,” he shifted Cooper into his left arm and reached up to grip his head with his right hand. “I need someone around here to give me something to help with this bloody bad headache.”
Chapter 37
“How’s my sweet girl doing? You look stunning.”
I turned and threw my arms around Bebop, still stunned and delighted at his sudden appearance here. “I’m great. How’s your head?”
“Oh, that,” he dismissed it with his hand, “much better actually. I have to tell you Grace, the last time I saw you in a dress about to walk down the aisle, the sight made me ill.”
I snorted, laughing into his shoulder. It had made me ill as well. “Geeze, thanks.”
“You know what I mean, Grace. My heart was broken for you that you planned to do something so foolish as to marry my son. This is very different. I don’t pretend to know the man you plan to marry, but it feels very right to me. And my gut is always right.”
It was. Bebop’s advice was something I’d never taken lightly.
“Thank you. I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re here. It seems rather impossible to me.”
“Less impossible to you than me, I imagine. Childlike I may be, but truthfully, all of this is a lot to take in.” He paused, releasing me so that I could take one last glance in the mirror. “Can I tell you a story?”
I would never turn down a Bebop story. “Of course you can.”
“Good. Are you ready? I’ll tell you while we walk down if you are.”
“Yes.” I smiled and looped my arm in his.
I wasn’t altogether s
ure where exactly the wedding would take place. We’d announced our impending nuptials the morning after Bebop arrived, but had decided to have a private ceremony with only the closest of family. Cooper, Jeffrey, and Bebop on my side. Baodan, Mitsy, and Kenna on Eoghanan’s.
As a result, there’d been very little to prepare, and I gladly allowed Eoghanan to plan all of the little surprises he seemed so intent upon.
As we moved down the hallway from the bedchamber where I’d readied myself with the help of Mitsy and Kenna, Bebop began his story. “Do you remember what I told you when you were pregnant with Cooper? When you were so worried that you would be a terrible mother?”
I smiled, he had no way of knowing just how well I remembered every word of what he’d told me that day. “Of course I do.”
“Maggie hated that story. It was what I used to tell myself every time she miscarried. For all those years that we tried to have a child, I would rationalize the loss by saying, ‘that soul wasn’t meant for us. Ours is coming.’ I could always tell it made her angry. She felt that me saying that made it seem like children born to abusive, cruel parents were meant to be placed in such situations, and she couldn’t stand it. Of course, that’s not how I meant it. It’s just something that made me feel like I hadn’t lost something; that the person meant for me was still on its way to us. And of course he was—Jeffrey.”
By this point we were already nearing the main doorways of the castle, and it surprised me to find the hallways and other rooms entirely empty. Either there would be many more guests at our wedding than I anticipated, or they’d been instructed to clear out until after the wedding. I hoped it was the latter. Still, I could tell we neared our destination, for Bebop slowed his pace markedly, clearly not finished with his story.
“As I said, Maggie hated when I would say that, taking my words too literally when they were only meant to soothe my heart each time after a new loss. She never said anything about it though until after you had entered our life.”
I couldn’t imagine what I had to do with it.
“We already had Jeffrey at that point, but to our surprise Maggie became pregnant again, only to miscarry the child a few weeks later. As per usual, I said something about the child not being meant for us and for the first time in a decade, she lost it on me. She said that I was a fool to think such a thing when we had the likes of you to show us what an untrue notion that was.
“She said that anyone with half a brain could see that your parents didn’t come close to deserving you and that if you were meant to be anyone’s child, it was ours.” He paused and brought my hand up to his lips, kissing it gently. “I understood then how stupid it was, but it had brought me comfort when I needed it so I never spoke it again until I told it to you when you were pregnant because really, Maggie, was right.”
I’d never looked at it as Maggie had either, but it was certainly a way of thinking that could be seen from several viewpoints. As a soon-to-be mother I’d taken it as Mitsy had, words to calm my doubt that I could be the mother I wanted to be for my child. For someone more empathetic to the woes of others, as Maggie had been, or as a child who’d grown up under terrible circumstances, I could see how the thought could be seen as placing uncalled for guilt on a blameless child. No child is meant to grow up in anything less than a loving and caring home.
Still, I didn’t understand what him telling me all of this had to do with my getting married in a matter of moments. “Okay, forgive me, Charles. What are you trying to say?”
“Only this, Grace.” He stopped walking.
I looked up to see where we were. We were just at the end of the path leading to the secluded tree with the low sitting branch—Eoghanan’s special place of thinking where he’d taken me the night Cooper and Jeffrey had disappeared. It would be good to make a new, happier, less-stressed memory in that place.
“That is always how Maggie saw you…as hers, no matter who you were born to. While I know that your real parents aren’t here to see you marry the man you’re meant to, I am here and,” he choked up slightly and I squeezed his hands in comfort, “she is watching all of this from heaven and beaming. I couldn’t love you or be any more proud of you than I am right now.”
I was full out crying now, and Bebop quickly moved to dab the tears from my face, shaking his head in apology. “Forgive me, I’m a stupid man. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“No, you didn’t.” I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you. My whole life I wanted to be your child rather than the child of my parents; to know that you wanted me as much as I did you…nothing could be more pleasing to hear.” Inhaling to gain my composure, I turned so that I faced the front of the tree-lined path that served as my aisle. “I love you, Charles. Now, let’s get me married, shall we?”
*
I wondered just how many brides could recall very much about the actual ceremony part of their wedding, for as it drew to a close and Eoghanan leaned in to kiss me, I realized that I’d been rather lost in a haze of happiness, my emotions so swelled that I couldn’t remember anything.
I felt his lips touch mine and guilt swarmed me, until he leaned in and whispered in my ear.
“Ye have made me the happiest man in the world, lass. I am now yers forever, and ye are mine.”
It didn’t matter that I couldn’t remember the ceremony, or just exactly what words had been said. The last words he’d whispered to me were what it was about anyway. They were all that truly mattered.
I just wished I could shake the feeling that everything was going too well.
Chapter 38
Eoghanan McMillan was an utter fool if he thought keeping her off McMillan land would protect them. Jinty had other ways to keep herself abreast of what went on in the castle, other ways to look for the perfect opportunity to take the boy.
She’d been right to think the boy was special to him. The warning in his eyes had been clear enough the day he’d seen her inside the castle. She’d known he suspected who she was. It didn’t matter in the least.
She watched them now; Eoghanan and his new bride riding away from the castle. They would be gone for days, the boy left in the care of his real father, a man far less threatening than Eoghanan. She’d continue to watch the child closely and, at the opportune time, she would take him away.
Eoghanan would return to find his new son gone.
*
“If ye look back in the direction of the castle once more, lass, I shall turn me horse around and we will go home.”
“I’m sorry.” I turned my head around and leaned back into him, kissing the underside of his chin. McMillan Castle was far from view by now but, for whatever reason, looking back toward the castle helped to ease my nervousness at leaving Cooper.
He’d be fine, of course. He stayed with his father at least two nights a week back in New York, but for some reason, I was irked by an unexplainable sense of worry. Whether it was the newness of our situation or the vastness of the castle and its endless ways for Cooper to get in trouble, I didn’t know, but it wasn’t fair of me to give Eoghanan anything less than my full attention.
“How much farther are you taking me?” I reached my arms up behind his head, gently massaging the back of his scalp while I leaned into him, just as I’d done the day I’d cut his hair.
He let loose a deep contented sigh of enjoyment. “Ach, Grace, as much as I love the way that feels, I doona think I can stay sitting up properly on me horse if ye continue that.”
Following our wedding, we joined the others residing at the castle for the gathering at a large celebratory dinner that lasted well into the wee hours of the morning. We’d collapsed so exhaustedly into bed that thoughts of binding our marriage vows through consummation hadn’t crossed our minds for a moment. Now, however, it was all I could think about.
“So why don’t you get off your horse for a bit. Seems to me like we’ve still got quite a ways to go.”
“Aye, that we do, Grace. At least a full day more
which is why I doona understand why ye think I should get off me horse, ’twould only delay us further.”
I laughed against him, rather shocked at his daftness. It was the one thing constantly on the mind of any man and the moment it was so clearly on mine, he couldn’t take the hint. I shifted my bottom, rocking it into him a bit to emphasize my point. “Who cares if it delays us a little? I want to be…” I hesitated, trying to think of the word I’d heard once. “What is it that you all say? Tupped? I want to be tupped by my husband.”
The catch of his breath was instant and so was the slight pull on the horse’s reins. “Tupped is no a kind sort of reference, lass. Ye should be careful saying just what it is that ye want. I doona think ’tis that.”
I couldn’t tell whether he meant it as a challenge or he just didn’t wish to get his hopes up, but I reached behind him and pulled at the hair along the base of his neck. “I don’t think it’s really your place to tell me what I do and don’t want. I’m more than capable of figuring that out for myself. And right now…I don’t want to be cherished. I don’t want to be caressed or taken slowly…”
He pulled the horse to a stop before I even finished. “Right now, I want to be claimed by my husband. I want you to throw me up against one of these trees and take me so roughly that the only way I can sit this horse again is by sitting sideways.” He nearly choked on his own spit, and his breathing came ragged in my ear.
“I want my husband,” I emphasized the word, drawing it out and speaking in the most seductive voice I could manage. It sounded rather ridiculous to me, but it seemed to do the trick for him just fine. “To fu…”
Morna's Legacy 04 - Love Beyond Measure Page 17
