Magic & Mayhem

by Susan Conley

  “Good. You are just a little saddle sore. Your insides will warm up to it.”

  “Are we planning to fit anything else in today?”

  “Ah no. I thought I’d eat my eggs off your belly.” With that picture in mind embers in his belly began flickering to a flame. He rested his hand over that very spot on Beth.

  Her light brows drew together. “Over easy, I suppose. Sorry, I don’t think I’m a yolk in the belly button kind of girl.”

  “Fair enough.” He moved his hand downward. “I’ll find something else to better meet your approval.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  • • •

  They ate their eggs off plates later that day. The sun hung hot and bright over the mountains, close to the solstice as it was. Beth was learning that Calum wasn’t one to sit idle. They hiked down to the lake and along the shoreline. The water reflected a perfect replication of the mountains rolling off the high horizon.

  When they came to a rocky outcrop, Calum stopped to take his shoes off.

  “Come, lass, we’ll go by way of the water.”

  She walked to the edge, squatted and dipped her fingers in. “I don’t think so. It’s frigid. It was likely ice last week.”

  “Ah, it’s nowhere near. Besides, we won’t be in it for long.” He tied his boot laces together and dropped them on the ground.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Calum.” Her warrior wore a look of tomfoolery.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve lost your spirit for adventure.” He took off his pants. “Come, it’ll not reach past your thighs.”

  “That doesn’t sound like fun,” she said, but when that half–naked warrior advanced, she stood still while he undid her shoes and peeled off her pants. Then he scooped her up. Beth screamed and tried to wiggle her way down, but he had too tight a grip. His laugh was devilish as he stepped knee–deep into the lake.

  With one incredibly quick maneuver, he yanked her panties off.

  “Hey! I will never forgive you if you drop me, Calum!”

  “You mean like this. He dipped her naked rear into the water.

  Beth screeched and scrambled up his body. “You are an evil spirit. Just carry me around the rock to dry land. There was no reason for me to get undressed.”

  “No reason? Ah, I keep forgetting, you don’t know me so well as yet.” He smiled like the devil he was.

  Beth narrowed her eyes as scornfully as she could. “I thought the cold shriveled men.”

  He raised his brows. She felt the hard length of him against her leg.

  “You’re insatiable, Calum.”

  He dipped her again.

  “Stop that!”

  For standing in frigid waters, the man was a rapid burner on high. “God, Beth, you look flushed and beautiful when you’re excited as you are. You don’t know what it does to me to have you relying on my strength so.”

  He shifted her so she had no choice but to straddle him. His muscles stretched taut and quivered finely as he positioned her. “Easy, m’eudail, I’ll not drop you. Come down a bit.”

  “Perhaps not. I really don’t want to go for a swim. Can’t we find a plush meadow to lie in?”

  “No. I need you. Here and now.” His teeth scraped along her neck.

  “Then move to shallower waters, Bucko.”

  He shook his head with her neck still between his teeth, then released to show her the lustful look in his eyes and the one that lay behind it — the not–to–be–denied look.

  “The mix of hot and cold will be scintillating. You’ll like it. I promise.” He bent his knees and dunked her again. That time the shock wasn’t as strong, and she began to feel a tingle of excitement at being so exposed, at the element of risk, at the startling temperature differences. “Does every encounter have to be a thrill with you?” Her complaint held little heart.

  She knew he sensed her relenting. “You never used to find that a fault in me.”

  When she loosened her grip a bit, she slid down. He was ready and sheathed her like a sword. Beth sucked in her breath as the sensations shook her. Every time her bottom skimmed the cold water, her nerve endings shivered setting off an exquisite chain reaction. Would she never prove him wrong? It didn’t take long before her worry over an icy dunking was overruled, and she was once again lost in the thrill of Calum as his muscles clenched and shuddered.

  He didn’t drop her. Beth let go a zealous cry that rang off the mountains as she lost herself utterly in the moment.

  He carried her around the rock and deposited her on the shore with a kiss. Then he stripped off his shirt and dove into the lake surfacing with a penetrating yelp. “Bloody hell, that’s cold.” He retrieved their clothes and joined Beth whose heart had yet to still.

  The emotion that coursed through her felt newly awakened. Considering that she’d won the lottery, one would think she knew elation, had experienced thrills. But being with Calum was fresh, decadent in a different sense, elation on a higher level.

  She kissed him as her passion welled like a geyser. “Every time you touch me, every time I look at you, I feel alive, Calum, in every fiber of my being, as if I’ve only now awoken.”

  “I’m glad to know it.” He nuzzled her neck. “I know the feeling well. I only have to think of you, m’eudail, and my soul is roused. All I crave is to be with you, to please you.”

  “Why would I ever want to live without you?”

  “Promise me something, Beth? Don’t ever wish us apart. No matter how black the moment, remember, there’s nothing we can’t overcome.”

  He was such a romantic. “I will never wish us apart.” She thought she saw a cloud cross his eyes. “Is there something wrong, Calum?”

  Chapter 23

  Eternal Bond

  “Nay, lass, all is well.” He kissed her forehead thinking a day or so of unencumbered lovemaking before they must face the real world was not too much to ask of one life. “Shall we go onward then, or would you rather head back?”

  “With you? It’ll always be onward.”

  “Good.” He tossed her pants to her. “Let’s get dressed and see how far we can get.”

  They followed the lakeshore, climbing from rock to rock then pushed through the woods along a trail. It widened out as they climbed the mountain, using the roots of trees and embedded stones for purchase. Calum boosted her up huge granite boulders, till they reached a plateau where the trees parted. The view was spectacular to the lake below.

  If only forever could continue uninterrupted from this moment. He could spend a good part of eternity hill walking like this. Drawing an exhilarating breath of the mountain air, he let the belonging wash through him. He’d already begun to learn the character of this place, the valley that cut through it, the granite that jutted from the earth, the mix of hard and soft woods, the spirit and nature of the land.

  He felt invigorated to travel by way of his own legs. When they came to an eight–foot rock face, he showed Beth where to put her toes and pointed out a hand–hold to grip. Then he climbed it and leaned over to help her.

  “I can do it.” She peered up at him through sunglasses. She did, with his light hold to steady her as she reached the top on her knees.

  Beth got to her feet and looked back over the rolled–out incline they had just hiked.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Let’s sit and enjoy the view.” Sinking to the ground, she dropped her legs over the edge. Her skin glowed fresh and bright. She’d parted her hair on the side and pulled it back into a tail — a harmony of golden shades warmed by the sun. Calum leaned over and kissed the top of her head. He sat down angling his back against a beech tree. She wrapped her arm around his bent knee and rested her chin there gazing out over the landscape.

  “It was a fine day as this, the first I saw you as my true m
ate.” He’d been thinking about the life when they’d pledged their eternal oath to each other. For the first time, he saw how he’d threatened that bond soon after it was sealed.

  “Oh, do tell me about it, Calum. You said we met in Scotland.”

  “Yes. Now, if you need to scoff, do it and get it over with. It was the twelfth century, the time of King David.”

  Her eyes widened with incredulity, but lacked ridicule, finally. “Right, of course, King David, never heard of him. I do know about Robert the Bruce and Charles Stewart, not first hand mind you. I told my sixth grade class I was related to the bonny prince after seeing a Jacobite special on television.”

  “This was a bit before their time and more peaceful for the most part. But we’ll get to the quiet days in a minute. The good life came after a couple rebellions. I fought with the Royal Army. We put the Earl of Moray to rest at Stracathro, and then a few years later the king attempted to push the Scottish border south, and it was from this that I returned to inherit my land and take a wife.”

  “Once a warrior, always a warrior.”

  “Not always, lass, but it’s annoyingly befitting that you should comment so with that look of disapproval.”

  “Oh? I didn’t like warriors then?”

  “No. But it was bad manners to cast judgment before you’d even met me.”

  “That does seem shortsighted.” She squeezed his leg in support. “I’ll bet there were rumours, though.”

  “Ah, you do remember.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Not exactly.”

  “Perhaps you do, buried somewhere in there so deep,” he tapped her forehead, “that when a memory surfaces with no context to attach it to, it gets dismissed as imagination.”

  “If you say so. But, Calum, I’m not having any ancient memory surges at the moment.”

  “Yes, I realize that. So let me bring it back for you, and by the way I love that sheen on your lips.”

  “Lip gloss?”

  He’d seen her apply it from the tube in her pocket. “It’s lovely.” He leaned over and kissed it off. “Now, don’t try and distract me or I’ll forget it, and the story will never be told. As you said, there were rumours. You see, I knew your father. I’d fought with him at Stracathro.”

  “Are you kidding me? You were a cradle robber?”

  “A what? No, I was not so old as your father, so don’t go thinking I was a decrepit thing ‘cause it wasn’t the case, not at all. And you have to remember, ‘twas nothing like it is today. Your father was injured and turned poor. He gave you to me to keep you alive.”

  Beth shook her head. “Ugh, what an awful concept.”

  He steeled his eyes. “You’ve not changed over much, you know. For the record, your ill–favoured opinion lasted as long as it took for you to come to know me.”

  She kissed his knee. “If you were half the man you are now, I’ve no doubt you won me over — grey hair and all. So, go on.”

  He clasped her chin in his hand. “Beth, look at me. This is what I looked like then.”

  “Oh right, I forgot. You were hot, Calum, rather you are hot. Hot enough to bring about changes in states of matter — as in my matter, from solid to liquid. One look from you and I’m pudding.”

  He smiled. It was going to take all day to tell this story, but he was of no mind to complain. Taking time out to turn her to pudding was fine with him.

  “What did I look like?” She fluttered her eyelashes.

  “Ah, you were a rare beauty, smaller than you are now with wee bones. You had hair like copper and amber and cinnabar, long waves of it, and delicate pearly skin were it not for the hard life.” He picked a strand of grass gone to seed and flicked it over her nose. “You had a smattering of freckles right there.”

  She wiggled her nose and laughed. “So why didn’t I like you?”

  “I already told you. Because you didn’t know me. Your family was Norman, newly settled in the Borderlands. Though your da was loyal to Scotland, you and your sisters had a rough time settling in, which generalized your ill–favoured opinion of the Scots.”

  As a cloud drifted in front of the sun, she pushed her sunglasses up onto her head. “It’s hard being new in town.”

  “To be sure. I’d been away a long while, and when the few of us returned there were grand stories told that quickly grew to tall tales, and well, you were a lassie of sixteen. You thought I was a murdering barbarian.”

  “Were you?”

  “Nay, I was a murdering Christian, though it isn’t murder when you’re fighting for your king.”

  She gave him a raised eyebrow look, but he would not defend actions taken nearly a thousand years ago. “Though you didn’t think it at the time, it was a good match your da made for you. I wasn’t so poor, and he thought my maturity an asset and me an honourable man. So he journeyed with you to Rokesburg where we were married that very day.”

  The memory made him laugh. “It nearly didn’t come about. Like I said, you were a rare beauty, that I knew, but I’d not heard tell of your rare temper and wicked tongue — an insolent thing, if truth be told.”

  “Rightly so by the sounds of it. A young girl handed over to a strange murdering heathen. What did you expect?”

  He grimaced. “Not the slew of profanity that utterly belied the innocent look of you. I’ll admit I yielded for a moment to reconsider that marriage, you wee hellion, but then I saw your da was about to give you a beating. And just so you know, were it not your wedding day I would have let him.

  “I can see you were bursting with compassion.”

  “I’ve always loved your spirit, lass.”

  “Tell me about the wedding night,” she said, eyes all a twinkle.

  Calum snorted. “The one where you shut me out of my own bed.”

  She gasped. “The horror.” Then she had the nerve to laugh.

  “‘Twas a long courtship,” he said sternly. Then he shot her that smoldering look that she’d referred to. “But you came around.”

  “I hope I didn’t cave too fast.”

  He cleared his throat. Cave too fast wasn’t even close. “It was five long, lonely, frustratingly punishing months.”

  “No! You weren’t the master of seduction then?”

  “It was a long time ago, Beth.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  “Wipe that smirk from your pretty face, or I’ll not tell you the rest.”

  “Oh, you’ll tell me Mister I’ve-Never-Had-The-Upper-Hand-On-My-Wee-Wife.”

  He laughed. She was right on that mark. There’d always been a fire in her that flared under pressure and, while he’d been scorched a few times, he’d learned not to get burned.

  “We had a remarkable life together, m’eudail. Ours was the envy of every man and woman we knew and those we didn’t, and it wasn’t for fortune, nor renown, but was for the love between us. You took my breath away each time I saw you till the day you died, and it didn’t stop then.”

  She picked up his hand and kissed it. “You say all the right things.”

  “You sacrificed your life for us, m’eudail, for me and our children.”

  He surprised her with that one.

  “Did I?”

  “I don’t know why you’re surprised. I only wish your need to come to the aid of others was not at risk to yourself. When you love someone, Bethia, you love them fierce.”

  “Why do you call me Bethia?”

  “It is your soul name. It’s how I think of you when I think you mine.”

  “Oh,” she said in that weak way she did when he’d moved her. She slid closer to him, and he was relieved to know she wanted him to think it, to claim her as his. God knew he loved the fire in her, but he loved to see it quelled just as much.

  “We were living in Rokesburg when t
he pestilence hit nearby in Kelso. You were ahead of your time. You rallied the people to strengthen their health. ‘Twas a sensible plan, and some even drank the tonics you took door–to–door. Heavens knows we did. Like I said, you were a rare lass. You’d always been interested in herbals and whenever you came upon another as fascinated as yourself, you’d ask questions upon questions. I knew better than to disturb you. I didn’t say it often enough, but I admired you, m’eudail. You were deeply connected to your intuitive powers, you made fine distinctions in judgments, and you always kept a clear head.”

  As he talked, he watched her assimilate this knowledge, and he thought it strange that with the passing of so much time she seemed younger now than she had then.

  “A season passed before one from our clan took ill. You bade me go and talk to the survivors, to learn how it was that they lived. Then you mixed herbs, and you made medicines. When our boy took ill, you fought for him, lass. Then I was sick. And you were on your own, tending us, the garden, the ale house as you could.”

  “One of the desperate folk who’d ridiculed your tonics early on tried to steal the medicine for her family, and there was naught that I could do. You didn’t sleep, but worked to make enough of your brew for all who were sick. You nursed us, you doctored us, and you saved many of us. And then, the vile sickness took you, and in your weakened state, I couldn’t save you.”

  A swell took his eyes. So many years ago, and it was still a wrenching memory. Knowing that she lived, seeing her eyes shining directly into his, didn’t lessen the emotion transferred somehow to the cells of his flesh — the devastation of his loss. He now saw how the fear of losing her had played forward into each life thereafter. Perhaps he had become a touch overly protective.

  “Before you died, you pledged your love to me until the end of time. I made the same pledge, and here we are, m’eudail, and as I look at you I pray we are nowhere close to the end of time.”

  She put her arms around his neck and pulled him close, dropping her head to his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, resting his chin lightly on her head. She is so young again, he thought, remembering how the bearing of children changes a woman, remembering what he could of changes. The memories didn’t come as clear as they had a week ago. But the love was there, fierce as it had always been. That, he remembered.