‘I’m fine.’ She was shaking, but she pushed herself free and went to stand at the window. Across the loch, the clouds were gathering, turning the water on the far shore iron-grey in stark contrast to the deep blue, white-crested waves lapping the shore nearest to the house. It was one of the things she loved about Glen Massan, the sheer drama of the constantly changing weather, but as the sun disappeared behind the scudding, rain-sodden clouds and the drawing room darkened, she could not help but think it was an ill omen. Winter was approaching here in the Highlands, and it would descend, too, on the trenches of the Western Front. It signalled the end of the campaign season, which meant months waiting for the conflict to resume in the spring, though it also meant that the men at the front would be relatively safe in the interim. Cold, but safe. The war would not be over by Christmas. Even the most jingoistic of supporters acknowledged that much.
‘I don’t think you’re selfish.’ Geraint stood at her shoulder. ‘To want to leave here, I mean. I think your parents are the selfish ones, wanting to keep you here.’
She turned around to face him. ‘You don’t think I’m being disloyal?’
‘No. And before you say it, I know that’s contradictory of me.’
‘Can’t you find a way to make your peace with your parents?’
Geraint shook his head sadly. ‘It’s complicated.’ He looked at his wristwatch. ‘They’ll be setting up this room this afternoon. The last one. Why don’t we get out of here, get some of your fresh Highland air?’
‘Won’t they need you here?’
‘I’ve put one of the new lance corporals in temporary charge. When the company arrive tomorrow, we move into full service mode. It might be our last chance to get out together for a while, though it looks as if it’s about to pour.’
Flora smiled, looking out of the window where the rain clouds were already passing overhead. ‘Four seasons in one day, that’s what we get here. I think we’ve missed the worst of it. Let’s take our chances.’
* * *
They left by the front door, but instead of taking the path down to the loch with which Geraint was familiar, Flora led the way through a gap in the huge rhododendron bushes that grew on one side of the driveway, and onto a narrow track. She had pulled on her old mackintosh coat, which sat incongruously over her emerald-green dress. As usual, she seemed to glide rather than walk, which had the odd effect of making it look as if the coat itself was floating along the narrow, rutted path as he walked behind her.
Geraint had tried very hard since that day on Ben Massan not to give in to the temptation of kissing her again. For long periods of time, when they were involved in the detail of packing up the house and writing out the various lists and inventories, he’d succeeded, after a fashion. Then Flora would laugh at something he said, or stop in the middle of wrapping some object to tell him its history or, more often, some story associated with her own childhood. She would go misty-eyed on those occasions, and her smile would soften, especially when she spoke of her brothers, both of whom she adored unreservedly and in equal measure, just as he loved his own siblings. Listening to her speak of their games of make-believe, their childish squabbles, the endless aligning and re-aligning of loyalty that went on as they grew up, made him think of his own childhood. It disturbed him, this affinity, more even than the depth of his desire for her. He had warned her they must not get in too deep. He would do well to heed his own warning.
Flora stumbled on a tree root and righted herself, looking over her shoulder at him, her face flushed with the fresh air and the cold. ‘You haven’t asked where I’m taking you.’
Because he didn’t much care, so long as he was with her. Geraint quickly cornered this thought and bundled it away. ‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘Where are we going?’
‘It’s a surprise.’
He laughed. ‘Then I won’t ask.’
She stopped and turned towards him. The wind had whipped her hair, loosening long tendrils from the confines of her elaborate bun to cluster around her face. She seemed, now they were away from the house, to have cast off her oppression. ‘Don’t you want to guess?’
‘I prefer to be surprised. You smell of flowers.’ He hadn’t meant to say it, but for once spoke without thinking. ‘Flora,’ he said. ‘You were well named.’
‘Geraint was a knight at King Arthur’s court. I wish you had a white charger to carry me away from here, just for a while.’
He brushed her hair from her face. ‘I’d do it gladly, if I could.’
She caught his hand and to his surprise pressed a kiss on his scarred knuckles. ‘Does it all feel unreal to you? I read the reports in the papers of the fighting, and I think, this can’t be happening. It is almost Christmas. Alex will be home then, but our soldiers will not. Christmas in the trenches. I cannot imagine...’
‘Then don’t.’
‘But I have to, I have to try to make it real. You were right to try to open my eyes about the—the horror of it. I’m frightened about the future.’
He caught her to him, wrapping his arms tightly around her, resting his chin on the damp silkiness of her hair. ‘You’re right to be,’ he said, wishing he could say otherwise but knowing her well enough to understand that her need for reassurance was second to her need for the truth. Her hands rested on his chest, caught in the warmth of their bodies pressed together. ‘Let’s not talk about it,’ he said. ‘Just for this afternoon, let’s pretend it’s not there. That there’s only us.’
‘A brief return to no man’s land,’ Flora said.
‘If you like, yes.’
* * *
When his lips touched hers, it was all she wanted. Pressing herself against him, opening her mouth to his, she wrapped her arms around his waist and kissed him back fervently. He pulled her with him under the shelter of a tree. Raindrops fell from the bare branches onto her hair, her face, stinging cold on her skin, mingling with the heat of his kiss.
It was not like before. There was an urgency in both of them, in the way their lips clung, their tongues touched, their hands clutched and stroked, hindered by the damp, by the layers of their clothes. Heat and desire flooded her, making her reckless, beyond thought. An urgent need possessed her to prove that she was alive, that he was alive, that here was something that had nothing to do with war and destruction and the real world. Something ephemeral yet utterly earthy. The primal urge to connect, unite, join with another.
His hands were inside her mackintosh, sliding up her back, cupping her bottom, stroking her sides, her waist. Her breasts were pressed against his tunic. She stroked his cheeks, ran her fingers through his hair, flattened her palms on his chest. His kisses deepened. She slid her hands down to rest on his flanks and he moaned, pulling her closer. He was hard. It excited her, knowing that she was doing this to him, that this man, so different from any other she had known, so determinedly difficult, at times so deliberately obtuse, the fascinating, intriguing, lethally attractive, determinedly solitary, dangerous Geraint Cassell desired her. Wanted her. Knowing all this made her want him even more. She had never wanted any man like this. Never, in such a basic, uncomplicated way, wanted to use her body to show what she felt.
When he tore his mouth away from her, she had to bite back a moan of protest. ‘I’m not going to apologise this time,’ he said. His hands were still on her waist. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes dark and heavy lidded. ‘I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it since the last time I kissed you. It is a very bad idea. You know it and I know it, but right now, I don’t give a damn.’ He looked up at the sky, now guilelessly blue. ‘Come on, you’d better show me this surprise of yours while the rain holds off.’
* * *
They walked to the end of the woods, emerging suddenly at the edge of the loch where the path skirted round the rocky shore to a small inlet. The ruined church stood on a raised promontory surrounded by a low perimeter wall. ‘It dates from the fourteenth century,’ Flora said, ‘though there was a monastery here fro
m about the sixth. They say the Vikings razed that.’
They entered the burial grounds through a creaking gate. The gravestones, some flat, some lurching at haphazard angles into the soil, were ancient. Wandering slowly around, they read what they could of the faded stones until they came to the wrought iron enclosure set apart from the rest that contained the Carmichael family graves. The crypt faced out over the loch.
Geraint gazed out at the choppy waters, which turned from blue to iron-grey to blue again as the clouds scudded over the sun. ‘It’s a beautiful spot,’ he said. ‘There’s something about it. Peaceful. Calming’
Flora squeezed his hand. ‘Enduring. This place has survived so much. It gives me hope. Don’t laugh at me.’
‘I’m not.’
They walked back up the hill towards the ruined church. There was shelter from the wind here, and a wider panorama that swept out over the loch to the mountains beyond. Aside from the distant bleating of a sheep, there was not a sound. Geraint drew her down to perch beside him on one of the inner walls, putting his arm around her and hugging her close into the shelter of his body.
‘I know we agreed not to talk about it today, but I hate to think of you being ordered to the front,’ Flora said, after a short silence.
Geraint’s expression tightened. ‘I joined up to fight with my countrymen. The men I enlisted with are at the front. It’s where I should be.’
‘I know it’s wrong of me to say it, but I don’t want you to go to war and I don’t want Alex to sign up or Robbie, either.’
Suddenly it was all just too much. She had not allowed herself to cry, not once since the army had arrived. There were others enduring so much more than her, she had not felt as if she had the right to cry, but now the tears came, hot and acrid and unstoppable. She tried desperately to brush them away with her hands, rubbing her eyes furiously. ‘I’m sorry. It’s unpatriotic of me.’
Geraint laughed. Not a humorous laugh, but a bitter one. ‘Unpatriotic but healthy. I sometimes wish I could cry.’
This unexpected admission brought her tears to an abrupt end. ‘I cannot imagine such a thing.’
He flushed. ‘Because tears are for women?’
‘No. No, I did not mean that at all. Are you afraid, Geraint?’
‘A coward, you mean?’
‘I meant nothing of the sort! I cannot believe there is a man in uniform who has not been afraid at some point. I merely meant...’
‘Forget it.’ Geraint pulled out a handkerchief from one of the capacious pockets of his tunic.
His expression was closed, unreadable. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you, or to imply...’
‘I said forget it.’ He closed his eyes, took several deep breaths before opening them again. ‘Let’s not talk about the war, Flora,’ he said in a gentler voice. ‘Let’s pretend it’s not happening, for just one day.’
Hurt. He was hurt, and he was hiding something. What had he said earlier? It’s complicated. Flora longed to ask him what, exactly, was so complicated, but he was so very determined that she should not know, and she could not bear the thought of him walking away from her. Not today. She shivered. ‘It’s getting cold, but I know a place nearby, a shepherds’ bothy, which has a fire.’
Chapter Seven
The bothy was a rough hut used by local shepherds to shelter from the weather. Pulling a box of lucifers from her coat pocket, Flora set light to the kindling, which was always left for the next occupant.
‘What a surprising wee lassie you are,’ Geraint said in a fair attempt at a Scots accent.
Relieved that his mood had lightened, Flora laughed. ‘I’m five foot eight. Not so wee, thank you very much, though beside you I feel like a skelf.’
‘You’ve lost me now.’
‘A skelf is a Scots word for splinter.’
‘Given that a splinter is something that gets under your skin, you might have a point, Miss Carmichael.’
‘I doubt I’d get under anyone’s skin in this old thing,’ she said, holding out her mackintosh and making a twirl, as if she was wearing a ball gown.
His smile was completely unguarded, a rare thing for Geraint. He pulled her to him, his arm circling her waist, and spun her around again in the tiny stone hut, making her giddy. Her laughter faded when he looked down at her, his eyes dark with the passion she had witnessed earlier.
‘You have certainly managed to get under mine,’ he said, pulling her backwards into his embrace and kissing her.
This time he did not stop. He kissed her, and she kissed him, and it was as if they had not left off kissing in the woods at all. They sank to the hard earth floor in front of the spluttering fire, still kissing. He kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, her throat. Her mackintosh fell onto the ground as he nuzzled the hollow at the base of her neck.
Lips. Tongue. His. Hers. She could not tell, and did not care. Who would have thought kisses could make you feel like this, melting and on fire at the same time? Who would have thought that so quickly, kisses would not nearly be enough?
She struggled with the brass buttons on his tunic. Geraint swore and unfastened first his belt and then the buttons, still kissing her. He shrugged out of the jacket. His singlet was pristine white, stretched taut over his chest. His arms were muscled, just as she had imagined them, smooth skin, knotted underneath, like whipcord. The hardness of his body made her shiver, made the tension twist low inside her. She smoothed her palm over his chest, feeling the heat of his skin through the cotton, feeling his heartbeat, slow and certain, enjoying the sharp intake of his breath as she touched him.
He pulled her to him, wrapping his arms tight around her so that she was pressed against his chest, and she felt the heat of her passion rise another notch. The dry wood on the fire sparked and crackled as Geraint slid his hands over the soft woollen sleeves of her dress, flattening his palms on her breasts in an echo of her own action, making her shudder. Her nipples hardened. He stroked them through the layers of her garments, so delicately it was almost painful. She moaned his name, shocked by the strength of her response, even more shocked by how much more she wanted.
He managed the hooks and buttons of her gown far too deftly to have been anything but familiar with such impediments. She wouldn’t think about that. The emerald-green woollen dress was worn under a tunic patterned in the new jersey fabric, but Geraint managed to pull both from her shoulders at the same time, sliding them down her arms, leaving her in her camisole. She had always thought it would be embarrassing, to have a man look at her in her underwear. Geraint’s breathing quickened, his eyes darkened as he looked at her, leaving her in no doubt about what he thought. She felt powerful, liberated.
He laid her down with the mackintosh to protect her, sliding her gown out from under her before stretching out at her side, his legs tangling with hers, half-covering her with his body. He kissed her more languorously this time, deliberately slowing her, when she would have touched him, gently putting her hands aside. ‘Wait. Let me,’ he said. His touch was like the whispered breath of a warm breeze on her skin, fingers and lips. Her arms, his mouth warm on the sensitive skin inside her elbow. Her chest, the valley between her breasts, stroking and licking his way along the lacy frill of her camisole. He cupped her breasts and circled her nipples with his thumb, then he kissed them, his mouth warm, dampening the rayon, making it cling.
He undid the ribbons of her camisole and pulled it open. His hand on her skin, so much more. How could there be so much more? His mouth enveloping her nipple, sucking, licking, making her shiver, making the knot inside her tighten.
She could feel the hardness of his erection pressing into her thigh. His kisses became more heated. He slid his hand down, under the waistband of her knickers. She tugged his singlet free of his trousers to run her hands up the knotted length of his spine, revelling in the way his muscles flexed beneath her trembling touch.
His hand cupped the heat between her legs. ‘More,’ she gasped, not meaning to say the word aloud, even thou
gh she was thinking it. He slid his finger inside her so easily. Deeper. Then he touched her, a sliding, stroking touch that made her lose all sense of everything except what he was making her feel. His mouth on hers. Her hands on his skin, clinging, digging into him, and his fingers sliding, stroking, until she could bear no more, and it was as if she was tearing apart. Her climax ripped through her. When she finally opened her eyes, it was as if she was another, quite different Flora.
He was gazing at her, dark eyes, flushed cheeks, unreadable expression. ‘Geraint?’
* * *
He rolled away from her and got hurriedly to his feet. Dazed in the aftermath of her climax, she stared at him as he tucked his singlet hurriedly back into his trousers, picking up her gown, holding it out for her to step into. ‘It’s gone too far, Flora. Much too far.’
His voice sounded curt. As he turned her around to fasten her dress, she flinched. Fool. What a bloody stupid fool he was. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t say that.’ She turned on him, her face stricken. ‘Don’t apologise. It makes it worse.’
She was searching for her shoes under her mackintosh. It had grown dark outside, though it couldn’t be much after four. He stooped to help her. ‘Here.’
She snatched the shoes from his hands and tried to put them on, hopping on one foot, and when he tried to help her, she pushed him away. ‘Leave me alone.’ She dropped onto the wooden bench, staring dejectedly into space.
He took her shoes and knelt before her to put them on before sitting down beside her on the bench. ‘Flora, it’s not that I don’t want you, you must not think that. I have never, ever wanted anyone as much as I want you, but it would be wrong. You know that. We both do.’
She refused to meet his eyes. ‘Flora, it’s because I care for you that I stopped.’
Finally, she looked at him. ‘Do you?’
‘More than I realised. More than is right.’
‘Right? Please don’t tell me that it’s because of who I am, Geraint. Please don’t tell me that it’s because we are from—what did Sheila call it?—different sides of the fence.’
Never Forget Me Page 6