“’Twas before I knew he had such a strong right punch,” Darach muttered. “But I suppose we have room for him at Glenshiel, if he would like to stay,” he added grudgingly.
Laurien lightly kissed his bruised chin. “Thank you, my love.”
Darach sighed. “Now if there are no more good deeds to be done today, may we proceed with the wedding?”
“Not just yet,” Malcolm interrupted from behind them, slipping between Darach and Laurien to place a protective arm around his daughter’s shoulders. He held a mutton chop in his other hand, which he waggled at Darach. “You seem to have forgotten something, lad.”
“And what might that be?”
“Why, to ask her father for her hand, of course.” Malcolm grinned at Laurien.
Darach glanced toward Heaven as if asking for patience. “May I have your daughter’s hand in marriage, Malcolm?”
“Well, now, ’tis an interesting question,” Malcolm said, thoughtfully chewing on the mutton. “I suppose I could be persuaded. Shall I be allowed to visit whenever I like?”
“Aye,” Darach agreed quickly.
“And you shall be generous with your foodstuffs?”
“Granted.”
“And your ale?”
“Done,” Darach grated out.
“And…” Malcolm paused to think. “I shall be freely allowed to bounce my grandchildren upon my knee?”
“Daily,” Darach said with a look of exasperation. “Aught else?”
Malcolm turned to wink at Laurien. “Aught else?”
“Not that I can think of.” She smiled back.
“Then ’twould seem I have no choice, lass, but to hand you over to this rogue. But first.” He withdrew something from his tunic, a small package wrapped in velvet. “I would give you this. Consider it your dowry.”
Laurien unwrapped the package and gasped in surprise. “It is my knife! But how—”
“Nay, ’tis not exactly. It is the other knife from the pair. They are Viking blades. My father won them in the Norse wars and passed them on to me. One I gave to your mother the day I left her.” His voice caught for a moment before he continued. “This one, I have kept locked away all this time. I could not even look upon it. Until today.” He kissed her forehead. “Until I found you.”
Laurien hugged him, unable to express how much his gift meant to her, how much he already meant to her.
Malcolm pointed to the runic lettering on the hilt. “The inscription on the one you had read, ‘May the gods protect you.’ And this one reads ‘Until we are united once more.’”
With tears in her eyes, Laurien hugged him fiercely and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, Father. Thank you.” She stood back so she could look at him. “I have so much I want to talk with you about. About Mother, about your—our—family, and—”
“Laurien,” Darach interrupted, chuckling, “there will be ample time for talking… later.”
With that, she found herself scooped into Darach’s arms.
He grinned down at her, carrying her toward a garlanded arch where a priest awaited. “I have tried to be patient, but I seem to be a complete failure at it. I simply cannot wait any longer to make you my wife.”
Laurien threw her arms around his neck, and he kissed her soundly. A cheer went up from the crowd.
~ ~ ~
It was nearly midnight by the time they managed to steal away from the wedding feast. A cool breeze ruffled the leaves, and the moon ran silver ribbons along the forest floor. Darach rode his black stallion at a lazy pace as Laurien nestled in his lap, his cloak wrapped around them both. Her white mare trailed behind.
Snuggled against his chest, Laurien was surprised to hear a strange sound rumbling there.
He was humming, actually humming. She giggled.
“And what amuses you so, my lady wife?”
“I was thinking that this is the way we started—you on a black horse and me in your lap. It seems I am forever in your lap.”
“I find it a very rewarding position.”
“As do I,” she agreed, her fingers teasing the glimpse of tanned muscle revealed at the opening of his tunic.
“If you are not careful, we will not make it back to the castle, wife.”
“You would ravish me here on the forest floor?”
“In a trice.”
“You did promise my father grandchildren to bounce upon his knee. Along with ale and foodstuffs.”
“Aye, that I did.” He stopped the horse and kissed her softly, teasingly. “I think I could make do with five or ten.”
“Children, or ale and foodstuffs?”
His voice suddenly turned serious. “What do you think of the name Adelle for a girl?”
Laurien’s eyes misted with tears at his thoughtfulness. “Darach, how did I ever find you?” she asked in wonder.
“I found you, remember?” His voice grew husky as his lips traced a path along her jaw to her throat. Lifting her in his arms, he slid from the horse.
The moon shone down on them, new and silver-bright against the night sky, as he lowered her to the carpet of leaves. Laurien knew that she would treasure this night, this feeling of being utterly content, at peace, and complete for the rest of her life.
She was home.
Slipping her arms around Darach’s neck, she pulled him down for another kiss. “I love you, husband.”
His eyes shone with his response, but he said it aloud anyway. “And I love you, my Lady Laurien of Glenshiel, forever.”
~ The End ~
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Dedication
This new edition is dedicated once more to Mark,
yesterday, today, forever.
Thank you for believing in me all over again.
Acknowledgments
Heartfelt thanks to Angie, Carol, Suzie, GDRWA,
and Annabelle and her Thursday night scribes.
My dreams couldn’t have come true without all of you.
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Publishing History
First edition published by Avon Books under the title Falcon on the Wind
Copyright © 1991 by Shelly Thacker Meinhardt
Second edition published by Summit Avenue Books
Copyright © 2015 by Shelly Thacker Meinhardt
ISBN: 978-0-9847646-0-0
Version 6.26.16
All rights reserved. No part of this book, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews, may be reproduced in any form by any means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission from the author.
The scanning, uploading, and distributing of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Cover design by The Killion Group, Inc.
Proofreading by The Passionate Proofreader
Digital Formatting by Author E.M.S.
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Excerpt: Forever His
Stolen Brides Series
Medieval Historical Romance
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Forever His
(Stolen Brides Series, Book 1)
On New Year’s Eve, she tumbles 700 years back in time—and into the bed of a darkly dangerous knight.
Sir Gaston de Varennes wanted a docile bride who would fit into his plans for vengeance and justice, but a trick of time finds him married to a thoroughly modern American lady who turns his castle, his life, and his heart upside down. Will her desperate secret tear them apart after only a few bittersweet weeks of stolen passion—or will they conquer mistrust, treachery, and time itself to discover a love that spans the centuries?
“A Desert Isle Keeper. Touching, ingenious… I love this book. I’ve read it time after time, and even if I haven’t waited quite long enough between readings to forget all the details, I always get drawn back into the story so intensely that I can’t put it down. Grade: A (highest rating).” –All About Romance
~ ~ ~
France, 1300
“I do not remember taking you to bed last night.” He yawned and stretched and sat back down on the mattress. “Though I cannot say I regret it. Noisy though you may be, you felt most pleasing curled beside me.”
He chuckled, a low sound that did an odd little dance down Celine’s back and made her suddenly, uncomfortably aware of the warm spot on her shoulder where he had kissed her.
“You did not take me to bed!” she corrected.
“Truly, ma petite? It was you who seduced me, then?”
“No! I—”
“Come seduce me again.” He fell back on the pillows.
“Absolutely not!” Celine groped her way along the wall, trying to feel her way to the door. “Look, whoever you are, it sounds like you had too much to drink at the party. Maybe there was a power failure or something and you wandered into the wrong room by mistake.”
A power failure. That made sense. It would explain why there wasn’t a speck of light. Or heat. The air was so cold, it gave her goose bumps and stung her throat every time she inhaled. The furnace must have gone out.
He sighed and yawned again. “As I told you before, demoiselle, the chamber is mine.”
It took Celine a moment to realize that the wall felt strange: her hand encountered nothing but cold, clammy, bare stone. The paintings and tapestries that had hung in her room were missing. She tried to find the light switch. It wasn’t where it was supposed to be, either.
Suddenly her cheeks heated with an embarrassing thought: maybe he was right about this chamber being his. Maybe she was the one who had stumbled into the wrong room!
She didn’t remember getting into bed. In fact, the last thing she remembered was looking through her purse for an aspirin, then stepping toward the window as the moon went black. Rays of silver-white light had glanced off the glass and blinded her, sent her reeling, then…
She couldn’t remember anything after that. It was entirely possible that she had staggered out of her room, into the maze of corridors—and into the room of another party guest.
She turned back toward the stranger she couldn’t see in the darkness. “Monsieur,” she said tentatively, a bit chastened. “Perhaps I’m the one who made a mistake. I-I don’t remember—”
“Nay, protest no more, little one,” he interrupted, his voice easing into a low, coaxing tone. “Does it matter how we came to be together? You are here, I am here, the bed is here. You felt warm and soft beside me.”
He paused, and she could almost feel him remembering—because she was remembering, too: what it felt like to lie snuggled against him.
He spoke again, his voice even deeper, softer, just a notch above a whisper. “Come back to bed, chérie. I will seduce you this time.”
“No!” Celine squeaked, not sure whether she was objecting to his command or to her body’s reaction. She was shivering, and not because the room was so cold. That tone he was using sent an unexpected electricity through her, tingly currents that ran from her fingertips to her bare toes and back again in a heartbeat. It left her trembling. It also made her vividly aware of just how little she was wearing: nothing but her silk-and-lace teddy.
She backed away a step, only to come up against the cold stone wall. “Monsieur, I’m—I’m afraid you don’t understand. One of us has made a mistake—”
“The only mistake, ma petite, would be for us to waste the hours left until dawn.”
That confident voice reached out to Celine through the shadows and cold, wrapping around her, warm and rich and dark as sable. She swallowed on a dry throat. Who the heck was this guy? A voice like that should belong to a hypnotist. To a deejay whispering above love songs on late-night radio.
To a suave playboy who could easily seduce unseen women in the darkness.
Celine froze at that thought, remembering her conversation with her sister earlier. Maybe this man wasn’t here by mistake after all! “Oh, God,” she whispered in shock and dismay, “did my sister put you up to this? I can’t believe she would really— Listen, I don’t know what she told you about me, but I am not—”
“Again you speak in riddles, chérie. I know naught of you but that you felt good beside me. Very small and soft and good. Come back to bed. It is cold without you.”
“You’re only cold because it’s freezing in here!”
“I must have been too deeply in my cups to light the hearth last night. Or too eager for you to bother.” He
chuckled. “It is naught. Come here to me and we will light a fire of our own.”
“No! I can’t—”
“Then I will come fetch you, shy demoiselle.”
Celine could hear him getting out of bed. “No! Wait!” She turned and ran but barely made it two steps before her injured ankle gave way and she fell, hard.
Before she could do more than utter a sharp cry of pain, he was beside her. He had moved almost silently despite the crunchy stuff on the floor. The man lifted her to her feet—and into his embrace.
“Shh, sweet, you have naught to fear. Are you hurt?”
Celine couldn’t answer. The sensation of being held against him stole her voice, her breath, her mind. She could not see him in the darkness, but she could feel him.
Oh, God, could she feel him!
His hands—large, warm, callused hands—drew her close until her breasts flattened against the solid wall of his ribs. She gasped at the contact, her heart thrumming wildly. The textures of her lingerie only intensified the friction of his body against hers—heat and muscle sliding across silk and softness and lace.
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