It was what he wanted, more than his next breath, but he walked away, pacing the chamber. “Nay, Charlotte. I willna shame ye. If I never return—”
She rose from the bed, took his hand and held it to her breast. “If you don’t come back, at least I’ll have the memory of lying with the man I love. I’ll never want another as much as I want you.”
His heart stopped. “Ye love me?”
“From the moment you emerged from the cells.”
He searched his memory. “But I was filthy. I looked like a barbarian.”
She stood on tiptoe to kiss him again. “Aye, and I wanted you for my own. I know it now.”
“And I loved ye as soon as I set eyes on yon wig,” he quipped.
She giggled, intensifying his need.
A ludicrous idea filled his brain. “We must wed afore I leave, then if there’s a bairn—”
She frowned.
“But yer uncle will never give permission, and—”
She put a forefinger to his lips. “I believe my uncle is already of the opinion we must wed because I spent time alone with you in your chamber, and now he’s heard John Reade’s story and knows you’re of a noble family—”
If death had taught him anything it was that life was for living. He bent the knee before her and took hold of her hands. “Will ye wed with me, Lady Charlotte Tremayne?”
She kissed his knuckles. “Aye, Sir Braden Ogilvie. I will.”
~~~
Braden whooped his glee, tossed Charlotte on the bed, shucked off his boots and climbed up beside her to rain kisses along her throat.
The notion she’d lost her wits flitted into her brain.
A lifelong Protestant, she was willingly giving herself to a Catholic. But Braden had no knowledge of the Reformation and the religious strife it had brought.
She was an independent woman, a clandestine novelist, the creator of a famous picaresque hero, but those things seemed insignificant now. Pilgrim Peter would never warm her heart the way Braden Ogilvie did, or spark the desire that swamped her whenever she looked at him.
He was honor bound to attempt a journey to his own time, and might never find his way back, but she would hold him in her heart forever. A life filled with regret of not having loved him and been loved in return wasn’t for her.
She wanted him, shaved head, big hands, big feet and—
Her body heated. “I’ve never seen a man without his clothes on,” she confessed.
He sucked her neck, sending a shiver of delight into her nipples. “Would ye like to see me naked?” he teased.
His warm breath on her skin set her afire. “Aye,” she whispered in a voice she barely recognized.
He stood by the bed, his expression serious as he wagged his finger at her. “But ’tis only fair if I take off my clothes, ye have to do the same.”
She nodded like an imbecile, unable to speak, afflicted with an insane urge to stretch like a cat.
He smiled and wiggled his eyebrows, then peeled off his doublet and yanked his shirt over his head. “Ye can touch me,” he whispered.
Before her parents’ untimely deaths, they’d taken their daughters to Italy. At the age of fourteen Charlotte had set eyes on Michelangelo’s David, and turned away immediately, hot with embarrassment. Augusta had made some rude remark and been scolded by their mother who’d then embarked on a long dissertation about the Italian sculptor.
Now, it was as if she’d been given an invitation to run her hands over the chiseled muscles of the classic statue. She came to her feet and touched her fingers to his chest. “Smooth,” she murmured, immediately aware of the iron strength of his body.
He chuckled. “Aye. That’s Daniel’s handiwork. But the hair will grow back.”
“What color is it?” she wondered.
“Sort of sandy,” he replied.
A golden god.
He looked up at the ceiling and inhaled sharply when she brushed her thumbs over his nipples. She plucked up her courage and risked a kiss on his powerful neck. He growled and took her face in his hands. “Are ye certain ye want to do this, Charlotte? There’ll come a point where I canna stop and I dinna want ye to have regrets.”
“I’ve never been more certain of anything,” she replied, elated it was true. “I have been waiting for you.”
“And I for you," he breathed with a wry grin. "A lot longer I might add.”
A man with a sense of humor. There were few left in Scotland these days.
He stepped back and traced a fingertip from the middle of his chest to the top of his trews. “The hair will grow back in a line down my belly and—”
She shivered with anticipation as he unfastened the trews and pushed them and the silk braies off his hips “—ordinarily…”
He was still talking but she didn’t hear a word. There was nothing ordinary about the rigid maleness jutting from his body. With athletic grace he stepped out of the garments and kicked them away.
Her certainty fled. He was too big, too much male. She would never be enough for such a man. The ready ease with which he’d removed his clothes suggested it wasn't the first time he'd stripped in front of a woman. Mayhap to him this meant nothing more than—
Her breath hitched in her throat as she sank back to sit on the edge of the bed.
He took her hand. “Dinna fash, Charlotte. I ken what ye might be thinking, and ye're right. I’ve bedded other women. ’Twas expected of a young man in my time. But I’ve never been in love. I canna wait to join with a woman who enthrals me, to my wife.”
Her gaze remained fixed on his male member. “But you’re big,” she said.
He drew her hands to his maleness. “Trust me. It will add to yer pleasure, and I’ll make sure ye’re ready. Curl yer hands around me.”
She obeyed, thrilled by the warm silky feel of him, the musky scent. A strange need to taste him seized her. She licked her lips.
“If ye take me in yer mouth,” he rasped, “ye’ll see how easily it slides into warm wetness.”
Liquid heat pooled in her most private place. Her breasts screamed to be free of the whalebone stays. She wanted to tear off her clothes, but her ravenous mouth couldn’t wait. She licked the tip of his man part and groaned with delight as he filled her mouth. He rocked back and forth, his fingers freeing her hair from its tight bun. She gripped his hips. The joining of their bodies in this intimate way transported her to a plane of existence she’d never known.
She came close to wailing like a babe deprived of its mama’s teat when he withdrew and helped her stand. Which was as well because she was trembling from head to toe, her body craving something, though she wasn’t sure what.
He removed her clothing slowly and with great care, heightening her anticipation. Buttons, ties, laces were all undone lovingly. He could teach Simone a thing or two, despite the fact he'd likely never seen the undergarments she wore. She giggled. There it was again. He made her feel like a child, a wanton child.
Soon she was wearing only her mother’s amber pendant. Threaded on a leather thong, the smooth barrel-shaped stone nestled between her breasts. She never went anywhere without it.
She folded her arms across her breasts, embarrassed when he stared at her nakedness, but he slowly pulled them away. “Ye’re beautiful, Charlotte, let me look at ye.”
He rolled the amber between his fingers. “A keepsake?” he asked.
“Aye,” she whispered, awed to see the fire of the stone burning in his eyes. “From my mother. It’s Baltic amber. Very old. An ancestor brought it back from the Crusades.”
“A fiery gem for a fiery woman,” he said hoarsely.
He cupped her breasts in his big hands and bent to suckle a nipple, igniting tendrils of aching need in her womb. The harder he sucked, the more insistent her craving.
She gasped aloud when he switched to suckling the other nipple but still squeezed the one he’d laved with exquisite gentleness between his thumb and forefinger. She hadn’t thought she could be any more aroused. Perhaps m
en weren’t useless creatures. Now she’d tasted him, how to live without him?
Then his fingers wandered to the pulsing need in her woman’s place. The moment he touched her, an explosion of delight buckled her knees and rocked her off her feet, but Braden held her, crooning words of love, stroking her back. “I want, I want,” she stammered.
“Aye, lass, I ken what ye want.”
~~~
Wrong century, wrong time, wrong place; Braden recognised these truths, but as he knelt between her legs and joined his body to Charlotte’s his heart acknowledged she was the right woman.
Exhilaration washed over him when he penetrated her maidenhead. He was where he belonged, one with a beautiful, intelligent woman he’d journeyed centuries to be with. He had come home.
She cried out, but her wide-eyed surprise betrayed the moment the pain passed and the pleasure began. Her pulsating heat was all-consuming. She fixed a lustful gaze on him when he lifted her hips. “I have to be deeper,” he rasped, “but I don’t want to hurt you.”
She smiled. “Deeper is good,” she crooned. “You’re not hurting me.” She stretched, arching her back. “Feels wonderful,” she whispered in a throaty voice that had him plunging faster, harder, his arms clamped around her thighs.
Something was coming. He knew what it was, yet he didn’t. This would be different. He was going to spill his seed inside a woman he not only loved, but with whom he wanted to spend his life, make bairns, raise a family. It had taken three hundred years, but he was finally a man.
Charlotte closed her eyes, keening her ecstasy as his essence erupted from his body. He growled his euphoria, hoping whatever he’d called out at the moment of release wasn’t an obscenity. Trembling, he gripped her ankles and let his head fall forward, trying desperately to catch his breath.
“You’ve made me a woman,” she whispered. “I never imagined joining with a man would be pleasurable.”
He looked up, awed by the love in her sated gaze. “Nay, Charlotte,” he replied. “Ye were already a woman. Now ye’re my woman.”
“Forever,” she murmured.
“Aye. Forever,” he swore. He scooped her in his arms and pulled her on top of him as he rolled over onto his back, determined to stay inside the warm sheath.
“I’ll love you, Braden Ogilvie,” she whispered into his neck when his happy cock curled up at her entrance, “as long as I draw breath.”
He cupped her face in his hands and looked into her eyes. “Nay bad for a three hundred year old man, eh?”
“A braw laddie indeed,” she teased.
They laughed together, but he recognized the uncertainty in her eyes. “I have to be truthful, Charlotte, I dinna ken what forever means any more, but ye are more than my woman. Ye’re my life. No matter what happens, I’ll ne’er regret lying with ye.”
“Nor I with you,” she promised.
AGONY
Braden braced his legs on the pebbled beach and enfolded his cherished wife of a fortnight in his arms, protecting her against the chilly wind whipping off Linne Fharair.
“Ye promised me ye wouldna cry,” he teased.
“’Tis the wind,” she sniffled in reply.
He ached for her breaking heart, and for his own despair. “No matter what happens, or where I am, Charlotte, we will always be one, together forever. I’ll ne’er forget the joy and passion our joining has brought me.”
She buried her face in his shoulder, sobbing quietly.
The outcome of his journey was by no means certain. He’d donned his old plaid in the belief it was a link to his past, a talisman perhaps, but he’d kept the warm trews, boots and doublet—and the braies. A man would be a fool to leave them behind.
Mayhap he was being a fool leaving Charlotte. If it proved impossible to get back, how was he to live without the euphoria of making love to her, of enjoying her humor, her intelligence. She’d confided her secret identity, filling him with pride in her accomplishments. He’d laughed heartily when she’d read her novel to him in the privacy of their chamber. It had taken a while. Her nakedness had been a distraction.
“Promise me ye’ll keep writing,” he rasped. “Tell my story.”
Jaw clenched, she removed the leather thong from around her neck. He protested when she tried up to loop it over his head. “Nay, Charlotte, ’tis a memento of yer mother, and I hae the wedding ring ye gave me.”
He’d been humbled when she’d offered him her parents’ rings before the ceremony. While they were apart the engraved rings would serve as a tangible reminder of their love.
She kissed the amber stone and tucked it into his doublet. “You’ll bring it back to me,” she said hoarsely.
The Duke’s voice reached them over the wind. “There’s a storm brewing, Braden. Best we leave soon.”
They both looked to the rowboat bobbing in the waves, manned by her uncle and John Reade. It hadn’t taken much to convince the Duke to their way of thinking. He’d seemed relieved to approve the marriage and had pulled strings to facilitate it quickly.
John had been more difficult to persuade, until Charlotte pointed out he wouldn’t be alive if Braden hadn’t appeared to his sister. Rheade and Margaret Robertson may never have married.
The two noblemen were unlikely conspirators in a plan to drown Braden in the Firth.
~~~
Charlotte watched the rowboat make its way to the open sea, the taste of her husband’s farewell kiss still on her lips. He faced the shore, his gaze fixed on her.
The men had decided Braden would enter the water too far away from land for him to swim back. He’d made them swear an oath they’d do nothing to aid him no matter how strident his pleas.
They’d gone over the plan. Reade had told them the name of the nunnery where his sister was to be found. Once he was in the water, he’d repeat the mantra over and over—Margaret’s name, Emanuel Priory, and the year 1437.
She knew this, had accepted the inevitability of it, yet when he gave a final salute before leaping into the waves her heart stopped. “No, no,” she screamed as her uncle and Lord John pulled hard at the oars, leaving her beloved to drown.
For a while he was a dark dot in the distance, disappearing then reappearing, his ordeal robbing her of breath. Then the sea took him. Pebbles crunched as she collapsed to her knees, sobbing into the blue bonnet he’d thrust into her hands before striding away.
One thing was for certain. He’d urged her to tell his story, but she would never be capable of expressing in words the agony of his loss.
MARGARET'S DREAM
Braden awoke soaked to the skin.
At first he thought he was still in the Firth, but then it came to him he was curled up in a vegetable patch in the pouring rain. The air smelled fresh and clean, and there was a hint of something—lavender perhaps.
He sat up and looked around for shelter. To his right stood a large edifice that looked distinctly like a convent. His hopes soared. Mayhap the lunatic plan had worked. However, it wouldn’t be a good idea to appear to Margaret in a sodden plaid.
To the left was a wee shed, the sort of place a gardener might store tools. He could dry out there and plan his next move.
However, when he got to his feet, he discovered his plaid, trews, doublet and boots were bone dry, despite the continuing downpour.
He glanced over to the shed. A man stood in the doorway. A bulky man who looked familiar.
Joss!
He waved. Joss waved back, then disappeared inside the shed.
It was perplexing. The rain was having no effect, as if he was a phantom, yet Joss had definitely seen him. He only hoped Margaret would see him too.
As darkness fell he entered the convent. He wasn’t sure how he knew which way to go, but soon came across her lying in an Infirmary, asleep. His throat constricted. He longed to tell her of his sorrow at leaving her vulnerable.
She was alone except for an elderly nun whose face was illuminated by the flickering glow of a lone candle on the tabl
e in front of her. But the woman was too far away to hear.
“Margaret,” he whispered, hoping his loudly beating heart wouldn’t alert the nun.
His sister must have heard. She lifted her head.
“Margaret,” he whispered again.
She raised up on her elbows.
The nun keeping vigil didn’t look up.
Margaret peered into the shadows. “Who’s there?” she whispered hoarsely.
“Do ye not know me?” he teased.
She clamped her hands over her ears. “No. Go away. Leave me be.”
“Ye dinna want me to go,” he said. “I’ve something important to tell ye.”
She gasped. “Braden?”
His heart rejoiced. “Aye, sweet sister.”
He discovered to his amusement that he sensed what was in her mind. She had an urge to scream Bollocks! at the top of her lungs.
“That’s nay a proper word for a lady, Margaret. It was remiss o’ me to teach it to ye.”
“But I didna say it out loud,” she protested.
“But ye thought it,” he said.
She looked over at the nun who still seemed oblivious.
“She canna see or hear me,” Braden whispered. “I’m beside ye.”
She turned her head and her eyes welled with tears when she saw him. “Braden,” she sobbed, reaching out her hand. “What have ye done to yer hair?”
He chuckled, recalling Charlotte’s delight at running her hand over the sprouting fuzz. “Ye canna touch me, Margaret, but dinna worry for me.”
“But ye’re dead,” she wailed.
“Nay,” he replied with a smile. “Corryvrechan was only a portal. It carried me to the future, and I must admit there’s a lot going on there I dinna understand. And I havna located our brothers yet. But it’s Scotland, and everyone is still fighting over who is the rightful king. Which brings me to the reason for my visit to ye.”
Margaret blinked rapidly, probably thinking she’d lost her wits. “Portal?” she parroted.
“Aye,” he replied. “But what I have to tell ye is they’re searching in the wrong place for Robert Graham.”
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