Kieran shrank away, only to feel a surprisingly strong hand manacle his wrist. “Do you dream of my wife?”
Kieran could not look his dying officer in the eye.
“You will go to her and tell her of my fate. You will tell her my last thoughts were of her, and her smile. You, Thompson, will be the one to go to her. It is my last wish.”
Kieran shook his head, tried to free himself, but Pembrooke held on with the last of his strength.
“Did you think I didn’t know? I have always known—always,” Pembrooke said. “I used to sit and watch you, looking at her picture by the light, touching her face. I doubted a man could love a woman more than I loved Sinead. But when I saw you look at her…I…I knew I was wrong. There is another who could love her—perhaps even more—”
“Forgive—”
“No,” Pembrooke said, his blue gaze dull with pain and approaching death. “Protect her. Provide for her. Love her. And tell her that one day, I will return to her. You…you have my blessing.”
Kieran looked down at the picture, now covered in blood. Pembrooke’s blood. Pembrooke’s wife.
He had been in love with Sinead Pembrooke from the moment he had read her letter to her husband and seen her picture. With every letter she had written to them, her husband’s soldiers, he had fallen deeper and deeper into a secret love affair with his commanding officer’s wife.
For two long years he had loved from afar, had longed in secret. Had wanted, and dreamed, and fantasized about another man’s wife.
She had never known him. Had never heard the name Kieran Thompson. Could never imagine that there was another man in the world who loved her, who wanted her with such fierce passion—a fierceness that he was certain surpassed even that of her husband.
The crow of the cock awakened Kieran with a start and he sat up with a jolt and stifled scream, sweating, despite the frost in the air. Daylight was just breaking over the horizon, and he fought to return from the darkness of memories. He was not in a trench in the Crimea. He was not dead, but alive.
Sinead.
He thought of her, of last evening in the cottage when he had felt her skin beneath his palms and her breasts in his mouth. She had come alive beneath his hands. He’d seen the glimpse of her hidden desire—desire for him. Her passion was deep, waiting to be unlocked, and he had wanted her, had wanted to take her against the wall, bending her to his will, giving her his body while exorcising the last remnants of her husband’s possession.
She had been his in that moment. Not David Pembrooke’s.
The smell of her sex was still upon his fingers and he inhaled her scent, savoring it, urging on his hunger ’til it was not just a gnawing need, but something he could barely control. Licking his finger, he tried to taste her, but the scent was fading, and so, too, was her taste. It tormented him, knowing he had been so close, that he could have gone to his knees and buried his mouth in her quim, a quim that had been wet and heavy and aching to be filled. She would have clutched his hair in her hands, holding him to her sex as he worked her with his tongue, spreading her lips so that he could leave no inch of her uncovered. She would have cried out, would have panted his name, and he would have taken her right there, against the wall, thrusting into her with unchecked emotion. And she would have begged him not to stop until she screamed as she came.
He had been so close, yet she had stopped him. Why?
Making his way to the window, he shrugged into his shirt as he gazed across the path that led to Sinead’s small, ramshackle cottage. Through his frosted window he saw the figure of someone dressed head to toe in black, shoveling her garden path. It was a man—there was no mistaking the height, the broad back. Every fighting instinct he had came to a head, and he reached for his trousers, jamming his foot into the leg while he kept his gaze on the stranger, then stilled as the man turned to face him. The stranger stared at him for several long seconds. There was something about those blue eyes that felt so familiar. Yet the face was all wrong—harder, older. And the hair was not fair and golden, but light brown, and long.
Blinking away the vision, Kieran opened his eyes again and found himself staring at nothing but white, and a garden pathway that was full of snow. There was neither man nor shovel to be seen.
A dream? A vision? A reminder of what might come?
It was the dawn before December twenty-first. The winter solstice. The moment when darkness and light were equally balanced, if only for a minute of time. But that minute, Kieran knew, could be life altering.
His life had been forever changed since first seeing Sinead’s picture flutter to the ground from a letter. He knew it. Had accepted it. Why couldn’t she see that they were destined to be together?
What fate, Kieran wondered as he looked up into the slate-colored sky, could be implored upon to make it all happen?
3
THE WALK TO THE VILLAGE WAS ALWAYS SOMETHING to be dreaded. Sinead loathed the looks, the whispers behind raised hands, the venomous glances of women when men turned their heads to watch her progression through the tiny village. The men thought her easy prey, a fallen woman who indulged her sexual nature. The women thought her a seductress who would steal their husbands and sons from beneath their very noses.
Sinead knew the slanderous accusations of the townsfolk, knew she was considered a witch. For there had been that unfortunate incident in her past when the vicar’s son had sought her attentions. It would have been a profitable match for someone of her lowly station, yet she had despised the young man and his pawing hands. Everyone knew of her distaste and her refusal of his suit, despite the obvious advantage in marrying someone so far above her. Yet still he pursued her, cornering her in the woods, pulling at her bodice as if she owed him her body because he was above her. When he had been discovered facedown in the river that ran alongside the village, everyone had believed that she had driven him to his death. Most had speculated that she had seduced him, had taken him to her bed and corrupted him with her body before killing him in the river.
She had not, of course. She wielded no special power, no magic. Yet from the day of the grisly discovery of the vicar’s son, she had been held up to the scrutiny of the people who entertained the idea that she performed black magic, that she cast spells on men, young and old, so that they might desire her. The dark powers had been the answer to everything. For how else could she have caught the eye and hand of the second son from the richest family in the county if not by some forbidden magic?
Sinead had first seen David when he appeared at her father’s blacksmith shop. From the moment their gazes collided, the current in the air became charged, enchanted, and for the first time Sinead had felt true desire. The other men in the village who had tried to press her into a kiss or a stolen embrace had never made her blood quicken the way it did at that first glimpse of David standing before the forge, waiting for her father to repair the iron harness from his carriage.
As she had continued with her business, she had been aware of David’s intent perusal. She was used to men looking at her, desiring her. But they never wanted more than a tumble. No one wanted to know Sinead as a person.
“You’re as pretty as a picture,” David had once told her, “with a body made to give great pleasure to a man. You should be proud, not shamed by such a thing.”
Yet her face and voluptuous figure had been nothing but the bane of her existence. Had she been plain and fat, she would not have to live as she did, alone, with the village gossipers always repeating stories about her.
Bells tinkled as she stepped into the only textile shop in the village. The small store was crowded with people purchasing warm woolens for the long winter ahead. Heads turned in her direction and she braced herself for the murmurs she knew she would hear.
“There she is,” someone hissed. “Brazen woman.”
“Aye, and wearing a scarlet cloak, too. ’Tis fitting, for it is the color of harlots.”
Keeping her head down, Sinead ignored the insult
s. She had heard all the accusations before—she was a wicked enchantress of men, even though she had only ever had one lover. David.
“Mr. Thompson had better have a care if he does not wish to follow in her husband’s footsteps. Blinded by lust, he is. The witch has cast her spell.”
The slurs no longer stung as they once had. She no longer felt the compulsion to correct their assumptions, or defend her honor. She knew what she was, and a seductress of men was not it.
Sinead, like everyone else, had been shocked by David’s relentless pursuit of her. He had lingered at her father’s smithy long after the harness had been repaired. He had gone to the solstice festival, watching her through the standing stones. He had swept her up in his arms and danced with her, even stolen a kiss at the end of the night. The next morning he had been there, at her father’s door, requesting her company on a walk.
For Sinead and David it had all been so simple. Fate had brought them together. For the superstitious villagers and David’s aristocratic family, some darker force was at play, for how could a man from as noble a family as David’s desire a blacksmith’s daughter for more than a dalliance?
Yet David had loved her. And she had loved him. It all seemed a lifetime ago when he had courted her and married her. It seemed only a dream, the memory of their wedding night, when David had taken her to his bedchamber in the Pembrookes’ country home and loved her most passionately until dawn.
“I see Thompson at her cottage every day, letting himself in, coming and going as he pleases,” one of the gossipers whispered with feverish delight. “She has already ensnared him with that body of hers. It is only a matter of time before he winds up dead like the Pembrookes’ poor son. You mark my words, she will have him, then she will move on to the next man unfortunate enough to be taken in by her cunning wiles.”
Hating how they spoke of Kieran, Sinead walked away, toward the stockings and garters—the purpose of her trip into the village. As she always did whenever she came to the shop, she looked longingly at the beautiful silk stockings that were much too expensive and impractical for someone like her. Still, she had always longed for a pair. The closest she had ever gotten was a pair of plain white cotton stockings that she had worn on her wedding day. Perhaps, if David had lived he would have come home from the Crimea to spoil her. As it was, their courtship had been brief, and their marriage even shorter. There had been little time for such frivolity. She had been packing her husband up to go to war—silk stockings and the finer things in her life had ceased to attract her. Instead of buying her things, David had lavished her with attention and kisses. It had been enough, more than enough for Sinead.
Running her gloved hand over the delicate crème silk, Sinead marveled at the overt sensuality of the pink satin bows. Even the gold embroidery at the top of the stockings was romantic and elegant. The garters, too, were scandalously sensual with pink ribbons and tiny seed pearls threaded through the gold thread. How decadent and luxurious to wear something like this, so lovely and feminine.
“Imagine the wicked deeds and goings-on in that cottage,” someone muttered as they watched Sinead fondle the expensive and seductive stockings. “Wonder what spells she uses to keep him so enthralled with her.”
Kieran had never been anything but kind to her, seeing to her safety and comfort when no other could, or would. Her father was dead, and David’s mother had tossed her out of their home after David had been dispatched to the Crimea.
She had been all alone since David left, alone to fend for herself the best way she could. Alone with only her thoughts and memories—and fears. Alone to bear the brunt of gossip about her marriage, and the slander against her.
They could say what they wanted about her and David, but they had no right to discuss Kieran in such a way. He was a good man, a man whose kindness did not deserve such harsh scrutiny by the village gossipers who lived for nothing but spreading tittle-tattle about her.
No, they did not know Kieran the way she knew him.
Kieran, she thought, allowing herself to remember last evening when she had felt his hands on her thighs, his fingers in her sheath. The strength in them, the calluses that were rough against her tender flesh. Such power, virility, yet unbearable softness, too. There had been passion in his touch, a dark, desperate need that she had feared—and desired.
He had not come around that morning as was his usual custom. She had breakfast waiting for him on her worn table, oatmeal and cinnamon. A part of her had known he would not return; the other part had longed that he would.
Perhaps he had grown tired, or worse, resolved to her inability to give herself to him. She was not an innocent girl. She knew what Kieran wanted. After last night, she finally admitted to herself how much she wanted it, too. Yet, she could not see past the betrayal to David. Her mind would not release his memory.
It had been a year since she had first seen Kieran, standing on the threshold of her door, dressed in his best uniform, his hat beneath his arm as he looked down upon her with his dark, unreadable eyes.
She had known that David was gone. She had felt him leave her, months before. Yet the words needed to be said, and Kieran, she knew, had been sent to say them.
“I am sorry to have to tell you, Mrs. Pembrooke, that your husband, my lieutenant, gave his life on the battlefield of the Crimea. He died with honor, and the admiration and loyalty of his men.”
She had not crumpled. Not then. She had asked Kieran in for tea, and he had accepted, sitting by the fire. She had busied herself with making tea and arranging the few biscuits she had on a plate. They had spent the afternoon discussing her husband, his bravery, Kieran’s respect for his superior officer. And only when Kieran left had Sinead allowed herself to weep with unbridled emotion.
Despite feeling the loss of David, she had still held out hope that she had been wrong. Perhaps he had only been wounded. Perhaps she had not felt it at all, the strange feeling of emptiness where David had once resided. Yet, she had felt that piece of David that she had clutched steadfastly to her breast leave her. For hours she wept. She had not seen him in two years, yet still the knowledge that he was never coming home to her ravaged her heart and soul.
He was dead. She was officially all alone in the world with no one else who thought of her, who cared for her or what would happen to her. There was no further use for the dreams of his homecoming, for thoughts of the family they would have when he returned. They were all lost the moment David had left the world.
Had it not been for Kieran and his compassion, his company, she would have given up in those months after learning of David’s death. Kieran had been her touchstone, her talisman. He had kept her alive, at least physically.
But Kieran’s company in the past months had ceased to bring her comfort, bringing something else instead. Desire. She craved him, the sight of him working in her small garden, cutting wood, repairing the fence and the leaking roof. She watched him, his large, well-muscled body working, sweating. Her own body had responded to the sight of him and his sweat-drenched skin in the summer sunshine. She wanted that salty wetness covering her naked skin, wanted to lick it off his shoulders as he was filling her. Raw and elemental, that was Kieran, and Sinead wanted him no other way.
Over the following months, she had thought less and less of David, and more about Kieran. Her dreams were filled with him. In the dark, with her head on her pillow, Sinead thought not of David’s head next to hers, but Keiran’s.
Kieran…everything came back to him. His onyx-colored eyes. His hands, the ones she had dreamed of touching her, the ones she now knew intimately against her flesh. Last night had been but a forbidden, haunting tease. She craved more. She wanted to feel the hardness he had brushed up against her, thrusting inside her. She wanted the barely controlled passion she sensed bubbling just beneath his skin.
David had been soft and easy in his embrace. It had been romantic and pleasurable. But with Kieran, it would be rough, untamed. He would be forceful where David had
been considerate. With Kieran, he would take her like a woman, not a fragile china doll.
She had grown over the years, and while she longed for David, she wanted to discover the kind of pleasure Kieran could show her.
“May I be of assistance?”
Sinead looked up from the French stockings and into the wrinkled, disapproving face of the surly shopkeeper, Mrs. Peabody.
“I am looking for woolen stockings,” she replied, reluctantly moving from the pretty pile of silk to the more practical woolen hose that would keep her warm beneath her thin skirts and the stiff leather of her half boots.
She had only enough money for one pair of new hose. Woolen hose. Not silk. Such was the life of a widow living on her husband’s army pension. There was little enough for food when the bills were paid, let alone frivolous items like pretty stockings.
“That pair will do very well, thank you,” she said, pointing to the gray wool. Gray did not stain, nor turn color after repeated washings. Gray was sensible, and above all, Sinead needed to be practical. This would be the only pair of hose she could afford to buy this winter. She should not even be buying them, but she had mended hers so often that it hurt to walk on the seams that had been sewn and resewn so many times that she had lost count.
Passing Mrs. Peabody her coins, Sinead accepted the hose and dropped them into her basket. She did not tarry, not with the gossipers milling about the store, watching her, whispering about her, nor did she take one last look at the crème stockings that had captivated her.
Rushing out the door, the bells tinkling behind her, Sinead ran headlong into a tall, firm body.
“My apologies.”
“Kieran,” she gasped as he put his arms around her, steadying her. “I did not see you.”
Had he seen her through the store window? Had he watched her while she had been lost in thought, woolgathering about David, about him?
“Shall I escort you back home?”
“I…I…” She glanced around the busy street. Everyone was out running errands before the solstice festival began that night. No one appeared to be watching them, yet still she felt as though all eyes were upon her—them.
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