by Alix Labelle
He watches the slanting light on the lawn, and thinks of his memories of her. That bright, laughing spirit, with her mischievous gaze and grave soul. How can he lose her?
Selfish, he thinks, angry with himself. How can you think of your own petty sadness, when she is suffering?
He shake his head. He should go out. Go riding, perhaps. Take his horse and the dogs and get out. She would like that, he thinks. She loves animals and nature. Comes alive in places of beauty.
She did. She is as good as dead to him, the girl he knew.
He is lost in thought, staring at the golden sunlight on the lawn.
Silvered laughter reaches him, and the sound of feet, running. He stands and moves hastily to the door, wanting for her not to have to see him. He hides himself just in time.
She walks in, flushed and laughing. Her hair is down, and there is dew on her feet. She is wearing an old lace gown from the wardrobe in the upstairs room. Her cheeks are scarlet with exertion, her mouth still smiling.
“Hey, Silver?”
She is patting a vicious-looking boar-hound, and smiling with affection. Her voice is still a little strained from the exertion of the run. She must have run all the way back.
Bryce makes as if to walk towards her. She seems to sense the movement, and starts. Then she walks past, unruffled. She is humming under her breath. She goes up the stairs.
A few minutes later, and she appears in the breakfast room, her feet dried and her hair combed back into a casually-elegant style.
“Is it time for supper?”
Inwardly, his soul leaps with delight. Outside, he smiles, as if they do this every day
“Yes, why not? Pull the bell, and Mhaire will bring it in.”
“Good. I'm famished.”
He steps towards her, a hand lifts, to clasp her shoulder. She stiffens, and he lets it drop. He smiles.
“Good. So am I. I think the menu is roast capon today? One of the men shot some, in the woods. I've been rather looking forward to them.”
“Good.” She touches his shoulder.
Inside, his heart melts. Outwardly, he smiles.
“Just so.”
***
The capon is, indeed, delicious.
The light from the fire weaves gold in Sophie's hair. She is on Bryce's left, at the head of the table. As if she has sat there always.
“Are the men safely back?” Sophie's voice is warm, languorously interested.
“Yes.” Bryce replies, through a mouthful of capon. “We finished our...exercise yesterday.”
“Good.” She smiles at him. The firelight reflects in her eyes, making them more luminous than ever.
He feels his breath catch in his throat. But he keeps his hand where it rests, afraid to scare her.
“You will be away again soon?”
“Not within the month. We'll make one last push before the Winter sets in.”
“Good.” Sophie's voice is soft.
“I need to be here to help the tenants collecting the harvest and helping to stock up for winter.” He smiles, wiping the mulled wine from his lips.
“You're going to work the land?” Sophie asks, grinning.
“What's so funny about that?”
“Nothing.” She is still smiling. “I just can't imagine it, is all. You seem a little fancy for a farmer.”
“Fancy? Me? I'm the least-fancy man. I pride myself on it.”
She laughs. “So unfancy that you're the showcase of unfanciness. The fanciest unfancy man.”
They both laugh. They lean forward, and it is quite natural that their foreheads meet.
They both sit very still. The warmth of her forehead on his seems to shudder down right into his very bones. He tries hard not to breathe. Deep within him, he can feel a need building, a fire kindling, ready to rage through him.
Her hand moves over the table and, warmly, clasps his.
Their eyes meet.
They kiss.
It is all warmth, and firelight, and magic. Her lips are sweet and warm on his, the spices from the wine mingling with the taste of her. He cannot quite believe it.
After a few minutes, they part. Sit back. Look at each other.
Their arms find their way around each other, tentative at first, and then urgent.
They walk, slowly and uncertainly, the long, short, uncertain distance to the bedroom.
And such a night.
Bryce kisses her again, his lips slow, so slow, on hers. Her lips part, and they spend whole minutes in tasting each other, their lips light and soft, then heavy, on each other.
Bryce is unsure, but his need for her, and his care, guide his hands. He reaches up and strokes her throat. She stiffens, then relaxes. He kisses her, and his lips move down to the warm satin of her neck. He bites it, gently.
Her breasts are pale satin. He kisses them, where they gather at the neck of the gown. His eyes are on hers, and she nods. He unfastens the neck and works the dress down.
Her nipples are pale, the skin as soft as the petals of a flower. He takes one in his mouth, and works it, gently, and it hardens at his touch. She gasps at the sweet fire his lips send coursing through her, to ignite, warmly, in her womb. She lets his weight push her back, onto the bed.
His mouth kisses its way down to her navel, his hands easing the dress from her body. She is bare before him, her body pale and curved and quite exquisite.
He bends over her and kisses further. Her thighs are soft and silken, and they part, yielding, as he kisses them. He cannot resist. He kisses her thigh, and moves inwards, parting her legs gently as his mouth finds the warm, pink slit between. She gasps, and parts her legs, his tongue working her and sending pulses of sweet sensation rocketing through her body.
He sits back, his body afire with need. She wraps her legs around his waist.
And then he is sliding into her, and her breath catches in her throat. He pushes in gently, the clinging damp of her a pleasure almost too much to bear. She is soft, and pink and golden, and her body is a wonder he will never stop exploring. He pulls back, and they both gasp as he thrusts in again, deeper this time.
They both feel it, and then they are riding the crest of that sweetness, pulling back and thrusting, their bodies pressing hard and harder as they thrust and meet and part, the pressure and urgency rising like a wave.
Their voices break the scarlet velvet silence of the night together, as first one and then another cries out in an aching, sated sound of unimagined bliss.
He collapses onto her, after a moment, breathing heavily. He is still inside her, their bodies locked together.
As the darkness of the night gives way to greyness, they sink into sleep.
***
Bliss.
Sophie thinks it, as she rolls over and in bed, slowly coming to wakefulness. It is the best thing, to wake beside her lover. Bryce. His name is a sweet pleasure, just in thinking it.
She grins in her half-wakefulness, and rolls over, searching for him in the bed. Rolls back. Fails to find him.
She sits up, long hair ruffled and tumbling loose about one bare shoulder. That is strange, unlike him.
What time is it? She rolls over and reaches for a taper. The clock opposite reads five minutes after the fourth hour.
Bryce? Her heart is suddenly seized with uncertainty and fear. He needs me. She does not know why she thinks that, or how; only that he does. She lifts the taper, and uses it to light a lamp.
Her feet are silent on the floor. It is freezing out here. She hurries downstairs, and finds her outer shoes at the back door, pulls them on. She does not know why she feels her feet take her to the back door; she only knows that she has to go there. Her heart is guiding her outside, towards the path into the woods.
Outside, the night is deepest charcoal-grey, the greyness the only hint of morning. It is silent out here.
Bryce? Sweetheart? Her mind is calling out as she walks. She is walking into the woods
Bryce? The call her heart heard
is somehow fainter, as if the caller faded.
Ten more minutes. She is far from the house, now. The air is becoming colder. It is closer to the dawn.
Then she sees it. Sees him. Ten paces ahead of her, there is a huddle in the pathway. A dark shape, with sandy hair spread limply out before it, one hand thrown forward, the other beneath his body, sprawled on the path.
No! Sophie did not know it was possible for the heart to break.
She throws herself forward, crouching beside the inert form curled in the path. He feels cold. He might not be dead.
She sits back, takes stock. Feels for a pulse at the throat. It is there. Faint, but there. She almost weeps with relief. She does, in fact, stand; words of thanks to whichever deity has preserved him, on her lips.
She takes a breath, and feels along his ribs. He has been shot. The bullet has lodged at the shoulder-blade, not far from where it entered. If it had not, he would be dead. More miracles.
She rolls him over, as gently as possible. He groans.
“You're alright, dear. It's alright.”
She straps the shoulder and chest with a strip torn from her night gown.
“We'll get you back home, dear.” She wonders how. She will have to try.
“Let's lift you up.” She bends over and eases his arm around her shoulders.
Together, they walk back, her dragging his weight, which is lifeless against her shoulder.
It takes almost an hour, but they reach home. She pulls him over the threshold, and they both collapse in an exhausted heap. Then she goes to the kitchen. Calls Mhaire.
Mhaire returns, with Master Leeson, as it will take all of them to cauterise the wound. One to hold the iron, and strong arms to hold him, with a third on hand with bandages for the wound. As soon as Sophie has removed the bullet, they will help with cauterising it.
After about an hour, Bryce, his face sheened with sweat, is sleeping peacefully. Sophie sits beside his bed, keeping watch, half-asleep herself, exhausted.
When she wakes, the candlelight is brushing pale highlights in his hair, his face completely relaxed in sleep. Sophie feels her heart warm with love for him, and she also realises she has come to a decision.
***
“Lover?”
“Yes?”
It is eleven days since Bryce's wounding, and he is in bed with Sophie. He sweated out the fever after five days, and judicious use of yarrow. By the eighth day, he could again eat solids. He has been sleeping beside Sophie since the accident, and they are back to making love, if with care for his wounds.
Now, Sophie is beside him, her head on the pillow.
He is about to fall asleep.
“Lover?”
“Yes, dear?”
“I have something to ask you.”
“Yes? You know you only have to ask.”
She smiles at him, kisses his nose. “Yes, dear. But this is a big question.”
“Try me.”
“Could we...how would it be, if we were not here?”
“Not here? You mean not in this house?”
“Not this house, dear. This land. This war.”
Bryce is silent for a moment.
“That is a big question. But it is one I have thought about myself.”
“And?” She is looking down at him, wide-eyed.
“And...This is nothing, to me. Nothing I would not give up, to see you safe. To see us safe.” He strokes her shoulder. “I don't want to die, either.” He adds. “Not now I have so much to live for.”
They are silent for a moment.
“We could... where would we go?”
“France is... open to us.” She says it, musingly.
“Yes.” Bryce says, after a while. “Clever.”
She smiles, and giggles. “You, too.”
“To have come to the same conclusion?” He smiles.
“Yes. Certainly.”
They laugh. It is a long time before they rise that morning. They tell the staff that they were busy with matters of household concern. The staff smile, but don't believe them for a second.
At the Forest House, all is well in the world.
***
It is night. The sea is roaring. The fire from the torches spills, liquidly, into the rising flow of the tide.
“Bryce?” Sophie squeezes his hand. He holds hers tighter, reassuring.
They are on the beach, just after midnight. It is a month since their talk, and Bryce has found a passage for them, on board a whiskey-trader, bound for France.
His existence is enough to have him shot, never mind any attempt by him of fleeing the country. That would see him hanged. They could both be killed for this.
“He should be here any minute with the boat.” Bryce says. He is looking out to sea, holding the torch.
“Bryce?” Sophie asks. Her voice sounds cautious. “I don't like this.”
“Why?” He sounds genuinely concerned. He knows she has a strong intuition.
“That man...at the tavern. It felt wrong. Felt like he was watching us.”
It is true. At the tavern that evening, a man had sat opposite, watched them very carefully.
Bryce lays a hand on her shoulder, reassuringly. “I know, dear.” He says. He kisses her hair. “We have to hope it will be well.”
“I do.” She squeezes his hand, gently.
They are silent a while. The tides rises, scarlet in the spilled torchlight around their feet. The sound of the sea is constant, a soughing hiss.
“Bryce?”
“Yes?”
“It doesn't feel right.”
“I know.” He is also starting to feel uneasy.
It seems peaceful enough out there. At their feet, the tide is lapping over their shoes.
“Get down!”
Bryce pulls Sophie down beside him. They are both crouching, now, her skirt and his trousers soaked in the salty, icy seawater
“What?”
“Listen.”
They both hear it. Shouts, whipping along the shore, torn on the wind. And horses. Coming closer. Fast.
“Whoa, there! Coastguard!”
“Ride, boys!”
“Sound the horn.”
The watch are calling the other coastguard troops. Soon the beach will be crawling with English soldiers.
“We have to go, now.”
“Where?”
The coastguard is coming straight towards them, and there is nowhere to go.
“We have to swim. We have no other way.”
“Right.” Sophie is brisk.
“Right.”
Sophie removes her petticoats and unfastens the long skirt of her gown, leaving her in her under shift and bodice. Bryce removes his shirt.
“I love you.”
“I love you.”
The look that passes between them, a swift glance, is soft, her eyes gentle, his tear-damp with the weight of his emotions.
Then they are in the water, wading out until it reaches their chests.
“There!”
There are suddenly cries from the beach. They have been spotted.
A shot whizzes overhead, as Bryce and Sophie swim across the aching, wrenching waves.
Bryce and Sophie look at each other, terror and resignation mixing with the deep well of their love.
After ten minutes of aching, bone-numbing cold, they see what they never expected to see, but always hoped for. Ahead of them, rowing out, is a longboat.
“Yes!”
The sound is a hiss of jubilation.
After two minutes, they are hauling themselves, gratefully and exhaustedly, aboard. They flop in the boat, too exhausted to sit.
Ten minutes later, and they are alongside the ship. The coast is a dark blur, now, streaked with morning's grey, and covered with troops. No-one has yet thought to fire on the ship
Bryce is shivering under the blanket around his shoulders.
“Haul up anchor!” The captain is singing out. “We're on course.”
Th
e ship is suddenly a hive of activity, with men climbing in the rigging, setting sails to the wind.
Bryce and Sophie stand close beside each other.
“We did it.” Bryce says it, slowly, and with awe.
“We're here.” Sophie agrees. She squeezes his hand. He squeezes back. They kiss.
The light is brighter, ahead of them. It pulses on the water. All their dawns will be like this, soon. Togetherness, and freedom.
The shore disappears into the mist behind them, and before them there is only light.
***
THE END
FaeFae Guardian
Highlander Romance
CHAPTER 1
Isle Of Skye, Scotland, C. 9th Century
FINN
EVERYTHING AROUND ME DISAPPEARED INTO A SEA of emerald and jade as I flew through the woods.
This is how I preferred to see the world, all rolled up into a unified green blur, nothing physical to distract or keep me from moving forward as my diminutive body sliced through the dense fog. Flying helped me reach a peace of mind unparalleled by anything else I had ever experienced. I fused into the air around me, feeling the invigorating whoosh of chilled air wash against my face as my wings synchronized with my heartbeat to turn me into a perpetually vibrating wave.
I broke through the throngs of trees into the clearing ahead, which was sloped with conical, rocky hills mostly covered in rippling greenery and tiny, isolated pools. Sheep idly grazed on their designated, ridged paths. I dipped down as I glided—reaching below me to let my fingers skim through the cold water. The sun started to peak through the normally flat, gray sky, causing the ponds to glitter around me. This was my favorite place. It was where I went when I needed to escape and be by myself. Everything about the lush landscape aided in providing clarity for my mind. Traveling here was a form of meditation in itself.
I touched down on the soft ground next to a shallow part of the water, the dizzying effects of gravity weighing heavily on my limbs after a particularly vigorous flight. My feet began to sink into the mud. I hopped up onto a nearby rock and sat down, letting my right leg hang off the edge. I dipped the toe of my shoe into the water and watched as ripples broke though the calmness.
“ISLAAAAAA!”