by Ranay James
Reagan placed her palm on the side of his face, surprising Connor with the tender gesture. “I’m sorry, Connor, but this is a voyage where none can follow, and none will ever return.”
Connor did not understand the sudden anger overpowering him. She was leaving and it was not acceptable to him.
“You owe me for helping you get Nic to go to Morgan last night. He did stay and they have begun to mend the rift between them. You gave me your word that I could name my price. Well, this is my price, Reagan O'Riley. You will come back. And when you return you will spend one year and a day with me at Featherstone.”
“Oh, and is that all you want?”
With the final moments on them, she was frantic covering it with sarcasm. Her heart hurt, her chest was exploding, and there was no time to figure out exactly why.
Fate had not been kind, and she was seeing it. She had no time to prepare mentally for the pain she knew would follow this separation by time and space. Fate was not giving her the chance to say a proper good-bye to the people she had grown to love and think of as family. She would have no closure, either knowing she had no more chances to return.
“No, that is not all I want.” Connor grabbed her and crushed her to him, kissing her with everything in him and pouring into that single kiss all the emotions too strong to convey with words. Emotions even he had no idea existed until she had said she would never return. He pulled back from her lips reluctant to let her go, but did not release her completely.
“Time is short. Now go. Save him. Don’t make this parting be for nothing and know I will await your return. One year and a day, Reagan. That it is my price.”
Stepping away from him she said, “Then it looks like you also have five hundred years to find the way back for me. If I choose to come back,” she said throwing her long auburn hair away from her face in mute defiance.
“Oh, you will come back, Reagan. Remember, M'Lady, we have unfinished business.”
He kissed her once more on the forehead, and he closed his eyes against the urge to beg her to stay. Releasing her, he stepped away and with a shimmer of the veil she and Cullen were gone.
Epilogue
Seabridge Castle
Three-hundred years later
1796
“….So, Sir Nic had slain the old dragon Brentwood, and after Sir Conner kissed the fair Lady Reagan, she took the valiant Sir Cullen over to the other side.
Lady Morgan and Nic returned triumphant to reclaim all that was rightfully theirs.
They had three more beautiful children and lived happily ever after.”
Slowly the dark haired, green-eyed beauty closed the book she had been reading to her daughter. Her mother read the same book to her when she was a child. It was the same story that had been passed from one generation of McKinnon children to the next for the past three hundred years.
She had loved the story then and she loved it still.
Each time The Duchess read it, she kept hoping it would have a different ending each time she did.
One day the Duchess knew it would.
“But Mamma, what happened to Lady Reagan and Sir Cullen? Did he make it? Did she come back?”
The fourteenth Duchess of Seabridge and heir to the considerable Pembridge fortune leaned over and kissed her beautiful daughter on the forehead. Lovingly, she brushed the hair away from her only daughter’s face.
“Well, heart-of-my-heart, we won’t know the answer to that question for another two hundred years.”
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