Ariah's amazement switched to anger. Her eyes sparked like flint on steel. "Then why did you leave me? Why did you go away without a word in the middle of the night like a thief?"
Echoing her displeasure, Apollo barked and nipped at Bartholomew’s pants leg.
"I gave Seamus a letter to give you. Didn't he—"
"Oh, yes, the letter . . . A coward's way out. He gave it to me." She marched away, pivoted and pointed an accusing finger at him, barely visible inside the long sleeve of his coat. "You shredded my heart with that awful letter. I thought you loved me, I—"
In two strides he reached her and hauled her close to his body, muffling her words against his chest. "I do love you. Lord, nymph, don’t you know you're my heart and soul, my very life?"
Her arms snaked about his waist as she nuzzled into his warmth. "Yes, I know," she said with a sigh.
Bartholomew caught her chin on the edge of his hand and forced her to look up at him. "You know?"
"Marry me, Bartholomew. Promise you'll marry me."
Her unforgettable blue eyes pierced him straight to his soul. "Ariah, I—"
She gripped his shirt front and gave him a jerk. "No excuses, Bartholomew. You just said you love me, and I love you more than life itself. We're free now, both of us, and I want to spend the rest of my days with you."
Deep laughter rumbled up out of his chest. "I'm not trying to give you excuses, nymph. Don't you know it's the man who's supposed to propose marriage to the woman, not the other way around?"
"Only if she's too cowardly to take things into her own hands. I'm not taking any chances on letting you get away. Please, stop teasing me now and say you'll marry me."
He sobered as he stared into her bottomless eyes. "Aye, I'll marry you," he said huskily. "And I'll spend the rest of my days worshipping you."
He kissed her nose. "’An hundred years to praise thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze’." While his lips brushed hers, his hands slid inside the coat, up over her ribs to the fullness of her breasts. "'Two hundred to adore each breast, but—'"
A voice cleared loudly behind them.
Bartholomew's hands fell away and he turned to face the man he had forgotten was waiting his turn to greet Ariah. Apollo bounded over to the stranger, and raced back to Ariah.
"Sorry, Bartholomew, but it's getting a bit wet out here and I was growing impatient for my turn," the man said.
Beside Bartholomew, Ariah uttered a gasp. Hesitantly, she moved toward the man. "Papa?"
Scott Jefferson, alias Jeffrey Scott, smiled. "Yes, poppet, it's me." He held open his arms. "Do I get a hug, or do you save them all for this man of yours?"
"Oh, Papa." She threw herself at him. Tears streaked down her face.
For a long time, Scott rocked her in his arms while she stroked his beloved face and sobbed. The moistness glistening in the distinguished attorney's eyes lodged a lump in Bartholomew's throat. Finally, Ariah’s sobs quieted.
"I thought you were dead." Her voice vibrated with emotion. "Uncle Lou—"
"He knew you'd never leave me otherwise, Poppet. He held a funeral with an empty casket to throw Xenos off the trail and went along with your plan to come to Oregon so he could be sure you were safe."
Scott held his daughter away from him and stared down at her sternly. "Had he known about your idiotic scheme to marry a total stranger, he never would have let you go, however. Now, can we get in out of this rain?"
Unchastened, Ariah glared back at him, refusing to move. "He should have been honest with me. Do you know the agony I suffered, thinking you were dead? I could strangle him with my own hands. How could he do that to me, Papa?"
"We do strange, unaccountable things sometimes when we think we're protecting the ones we love." Over her head, his gaze met Bartholomew's. "Don't we, young man?"
Bartholomew, kneeling on the ground petting Apollo, nodded. "Aye, sir, that we do."
Ariah smiled, first at her father, then at Bartholomew. "Gracious Sadie, what am I whining about? Last night I wasn't certain I would even survive the night. Yet here I am. And, best of all, the two people I love most in the world have come back to me."
"Well," her father said in his best courtroom voice, "now that your world is all golden and glorious again, let's go to the house. While we walk, I expect you to explain to me why you're running around in your unmentionables, and why you look as though you've been dragged by a rope over ninety miles of hard ground."
"I'd like to hear the answer to that myself," said Bartholomew as he swooped her off her feet and started up the path.
"I can walk, Bartholomew," she objected lightly. "And, in case you hadn't noticed, it's even stopped raining."
"Aye, but the way you look, I'm not sure you'd make it all the way before you collapsed. Besides, I haven't yet had my fill of having you in my arms again."
From her safe, warm nest in Bartholomew's arms, she beamed at her father. "Don't be shocked, Papa. He may not be my husband yet, but I intend to live him the rest of my life."
Scott smiled indulgently as he walked along beside them. "Exactly where you belong, I would say. Your young man and I had a long talk on the way here. I told him he was a fool for going off and leaving you. When a man finds the woman he loves, no means are too extreme to make her his, even when he knows he may pay for that privilege some day. I know." His smile faded and his expression became wistful.
"Oh, Papa," she cried.
"Don't go getting all weepy again," Scott scolded. "The only regret I have is not being with you when you needed me most. Now, that's enough on that subject. I want to know what went on here after Xenos arrived, and I want to know now."
"So do I," Bartholomew said, "but talk fast because the minute I get you into that house, I'm taking you up to bed—"
"Bartholomew!"
"Let me finish. I want Dr. Wills to give you a thorough examination. After that, you're to get some rest."
"I'm hungry, and I'm not going to bed without a bath."
"Good hell, but you're a stubborn woman."
"I come by it honestly." She flashed her father a wicked smile.
"I refuse to be your scapegoat, young lady," Scott objected. "Your mother was the stubborn one. Now start talking. The way Bartholomew's long legs are eating up ground, we'll be at the house before you get even a sentence out. Pritchard and Seamus already told us what happened when Xenos showed up, and that you've been tending the light ever since. Start with what happened to your clothes."
So, in a precise description, she told them all she had endured in the past two days. She had reached the point when the clockworks had broken down and stopped turning the giant lens when Bartholomew carried her through the gate and headed for his own porch instead of hers.
"Bartholomew, this is your house."
"I'm aware of that," he calmly replied, not even winded after his rush up the gentle slope with her in his arms. "From now on it's also your house. You're not spending another night with Pritchard, and I'm not spending another night without you. In separate bedrooms, of course," he added for the benefit of the older man following them. Apollo, left outside, howled.
Scott gave Bartholomew an understanding smile and discreetly cleared his throat. "Why don't I fetch Dr. Wills while you argue it out with your future wife as to whether it's going to be a bath first, or bed?"
"It will be a bath, Papa," Ariah said, "so bring him in half an hour."
"Bring him now." Bartholomew's tone was dangerously soft.
As Bartholomew carried her into the house, Scott heard him say in husky wolfishness, "I am the eagle, remember, little nymph? Which means I am bigger as well as stronger." And she answered pertly, "But which of us is the most stubborn?"
That night, after Ariah's father retired to the garret room, Bartholomew let himself into his old bedroom and eased the door shut behind him. At the bed, he gazed down at the woman asleep beneath the covers, barely visible in the subtle light through the window from myriad stars that filled th
e clear, dark sky in the wake of the passing storm.
Dr. Wills had pronounced Ariah's wounds superficial. He proscribed a day or two of bed rest, and returned to his patients at the assistant keepers' house.
Seamus had suffered a concussion but was on the mend and would suffer no lasting results. The bullet had been removed from Pritchard's shoulder. His fever had ebbed, and he and Bartholomew had held a very satisfactory discussion about their respective futures.
Bartholomew sat on the edge of the mattress and lightly brushed the enticing mole on Ariah's upper lip. Her eyes opened and she smiled.
"Feeling up to company?" he whispered hoarsely.
Her smile broadened. "As long as it's you."
Anticipation curled pleasantly inside her as her gaze followed the movement of his large hands, unfastening each button of his shirt. Muscles rippled in his arms and under the dark hair of his chest as he removed the garment and tossed it to the floor. When he reached for the placket on his trousers, liquid warmth jetted through her. Her lethargy fled.
Bartholomew saw her eyes begin to smolder, saw her squirm beneath the bedclothes, and the smile curving his sensuous mouth became the primal grin of a predator who knows his mate is eager for him. A smile of possession, and of pride.
The breath caught in Ariah's throat as he kicked off his trousers and paused beside the bed, allowing her gaze to take in his savage beauty. When she could breathe again, she lifted the covers in silent entreaty and he slid in beside her.
For a long moment they stared at each other, her slender, pale body bared to the waist, graceful and glorious; his muscular, broad-shouldered form like some pagan god.
"Bartholomew," she whispered finally.
In answer, he placed an open palm over her breast to let her feel how he trembled. "I'm shaking, I want you so. I feel as though the gods are testing me, and if I fail, you'll vanish before my eyes, like the fairy nymph that you are."
Her voice came back, soft but sure, in the darkness. "I'm neither fairy, nor nymph . . . only a woman who has given her heart to a man and now wants to give him her body as well."
"Lord, how I adore you."
His lips found hers. His ears caught the throaty sound she made, like the contented purr of a cat, and he quivered deep in his loins as his body quickened in response. That light touch was all they needed to bring the coals of desire, damped for so long, into flame. The sensual memories and fantasies that had haunted their dreams since their idyll in the Upham's cabin—embellished and reinforced by their day in the woods more than a week before—now came alive as lips and hands sought, found, teased and pleasured.
Though in reality they had exchanged their hearts long ago, they belonged to each other now in a new way, openly, honorably, and because their love was no longer bridled by guilt or shame, the passion flaring between them seemed achingly new, and infinitely precious. For Ariah, it was the culmination of a dream, for she knew what she had won; she had a strong, compelling man sharing her bed, provider, protector, friend, lover, soul mate. Wherever Demetria Scott was at that moment, Ariah knew her mother was smiling.
For the man in the bed with her, years of loneliness, of unwanted entrapment, of frustration and need, fell away like the chaff that protects a seed until it is ready to germinate, to flourish and grow into something green, strong and beautifully enduring.
And as he sank himself into the heated haven of Ariah's welcoming body, he knew that life—that he—would never be the same again.
Bartholomew Noon had been reborn.
Epilogue
"Mama, Mama!"
The screen door slammed shut as a small girl barreled into the kitchen.
"What is it?" Ariah Noon turned from the sink where she was shelling peas.
"Look, Mama, I brunged you some flowers," the five-year-old announced, holding up a dirty fist.
Ariah's grin softened as she accepted the bouquet of tiny white flowers. "You brought me some flowers, Demi. And they're very pretty flowers, too. Where did you find them?"
"I can't tell you, Mama. It's a secret."
Ariah chuckled softly as the youngster skipped out the door to join her sister on the porch where three tiny raccoons were nestled with their mother in a padded box. The two heads bent over the box below the window where Ariah stood were as opposite in coloring as the personalities of their owners. Eight-year-old, blond Martha Anne was as well behaved and trustworthy as dark-haired Demetria, lovingly called Demi by her mother, was rash, reckless and impudent.
Apollo, the girls' ever-present guardian, lounged nearby. The dog had grown sedate in the nine years since Ariah found him in the woods, starved and half-wild. As if hearing her thoughts, he lifted his regal head to glance at her, gave a dignified yawn and replaced his chin on his paws.
Ariah didn't truly need to hear where her daughter had found the blooms. Though they were common enough in other locations, there was only one spot in which they grew on the cape, a spot she well knew. And loved.
Wood nymphs. How she and Bartholomew had laughed to find the flowers growing there almost a year to the day after their tryst in the secluded glade when they'd first made love.
So much had happened since that day. Bartholomew was Head Keeper again. Pritchard had married Nettie and was well on his way to having that baseball team he wanted. In order to be close to his daughter and grandchildren, Jeffrey Scott had settled in Tillamook and opened a law practice.
The titillating details of his first case were still being whispered behind gloved hands over dainty tea trays, for it was said that his client stood brazenly before the judge and unashamedly testified that although her marriage had never been consummated, she suspected she was carrying the child of another man. Furthermore, the woman's husband was the confessed father of a child conceived by one Nettie Tibbs who had been known in the town for some time as a "scarlet woman." Mumbling over the decadent and irresponsible behavior of today's young people, the judge had immediately declared the union of Ariah Scott and Pritchard Monteer null and void. On Friday, July 3, 1891, Ariah had become Mrs. Bartholomew Noon.
Old Seamus, as though determined to resist being forced into accepting the new century and all the changes it would bring to the country, from "tele-a-phones" to horseless carriages, died peacefully of heart failure on Christmas Eve, 1899, his corncob pipe still clutched in his weathered hand. The memory still brought tears to Ariah's eyes.
But the year 1900 marked a change even more monumental to the Noon family than the coming of a new century, for in a few short weeks the Noon family would be leaving their lighthouse home behind. Having finally completed a correspondence course in veterinary medicine, Bartholomew would be taking up a position at Robert Noon's veterinary clinic, specializing in birds and wild animals.
Ariah had mixed emotions about the move. Cape Meares had become more than a home to her over the years. It was a way of life. It was freedom. It was love. Yet life in town offered new opportunities she would enjoy. Her work as a woman's rights advocate would benefit, and she would be able to take Hester's old spot with the Tillamook Women for Temperance Coalition as well.
"Woolgathering again, are you?"
Ariah turned to find her husband standing in the pantry doorway. Her lips spread in a grin. Here was one thing that had not changed, for he was still as handsome as the first day she'd laid eyes on him, standing on a railroad platform while steam billowed around them from the puffing locomotive that had brought her to Oregon to marry a man she had yet to meet.
Watching her now, Bartholomew's sable eyes darkened in a way she was very familiar with. Deep inside, she felt an answering tingle as heat pooled between her thighs.
Slowly he crossed the room until he stood directly in front of her. "You're looking at me with fire in your eyes, Mrs. Noon."
"Oh?" she retorted saucily. "What sort of fire?"
"The sort I like best." He lowered his gaze to take in the flowers she held, recognizing them instantly. "Have you been to the glade
without me?"
"Umm. And if I have?"
Bartholomew drew her against him. His voice was low and hoarse as he nuzzled her neck. "You better have been alone. Better yet, you better not have gone there without me at all."
Tilting her head back to give him better access, she wriggled against the hard bulge pressing into her. He moaned and slid a hand over her breast.
"Do we have to wait until our anniversary to go back to the glade this year?" He ran his tongue up the side of her neck to her ear and chuckled at the shiver he elicited from her. "I could use a whole afternoon of naughty nakedness with my sweet nymph. No hiding under the covers, no choking down moans to protect inquisitive little ears."
"Those little ears are just outside the door, Mr. Noon."
Bartholomew's arms fell away from her and he glanced guiltily toward the back porch.
"And as far as the glade is concerned," Ariah continued, "I'm afraid it's not our secret any more. Demi brought me the flowers."
She squelched his groan of dismay with two fingers pressed to his lips. "It just so happens, however, that Nettie has invited the girls next door for George's birthday. I rather imagine they'll be too busy to notice if we slip away into the woods."
Bartholomew grinned. "When?"
Breaking away, Ariah went to the door and opened it. "Demi, Martha Anne, it's time to go next door. Be sure to wash your hands first. Nettie's serving chocolate cake and ice cream."
The moment she stepped back inside, her husband grabbed her and planted a kiss on her willing mouth. "I love you, Ariah Noon."
"And I love you, Bartholomew."
♥ ♥ ♥
In spite of the changes wrought by the years, gulls continued to wheel and soar over the sea as Ariah and Bartholomew raced each other to the path through the woods. Whales and seals, puffins and sea lions came and went. Storms battered the buildings and the indomitable bluff on which the lighthouse station sat. Summer followed spring, and the sun set in glorious color on the Western horizon.
In the glade hidden in the forest where three limbless totems reached for a sky as blue as Ariah's unforgettable eyes, the scents and sounds of the towering Sitka spruces, the flowers and the sea filled their senses as they renewed the love that never once wavered, but grew deeper each year, as it had been fated to do. As it always would, beyond life into eternity.
Forever Mine Page 39