Glancing up at the vision spread out before him, Lachlan was gripped by a surge of pure emotion. Possession. And love. She was his, his and only his. His name on her lips was a plea he could not resist. He held her hips steady and enveloped her with his mouth, his tongue flicking over the swollen, swelling centre of her, his lips supping and tugging around it, and he felt her buck beneath him, felt her about to come, felt his erection pulse and thicken in response.
An inexorable current, a swelling, like the deep of the sea, then the feeling of swimming desperately against the tide, a swooping, irresistible desire to succumb, as she imagined drowning would be. There was tightness everywhere, her breasts, her stomach, a throbbing between her legs, then a jolt like the biggest wave, casting her up into the air and tossing her onto the shore, and she lay gasping, clutching, struggling for breath, heart pounding and pounding. Lachlan’s mouth was still on her heat, holding, coaxing out more, and then more, until she had nothing left. Then he kissed her thighs and her stomach, pulling her up against him to nestle into his chest. His hand stroked her hair, he crooned endearments into her ear, soothing her.
She had no doubt now that he had shown her what he felt. She glowed with it. Wanting to show him, too, she kissed him. “You don’t have to,” Lachlan murmured.
“But I want to,” Morven replied. “I want to show you what I feel.”
She pushed him onto the ground and settled herself over him, relishing the hardness of him pushing into her through his trousers. “I want to,” she said, unbuttoning his shirt, unwrapping him and kissing him as he had her. “I want to,” she said again as she unbuckled his trousers, removed his boots, kissing her way down his thighs as she pulled off the remainder of his clothing. “I want to,” she said yet again, her voice husky with desire as she licked her way up his shaft. As she put her lips around him and drew him gently into her mouth, she heard him groan.
Months passed. Their love blossomed and bloomed with their child. Though she was inordinately nervous at first, Morven submitted to Lachlan’s demands to swim with her. To her astonishment, it was liberating, a deeply sensual, deeply satisfying experience. No disaster ensued, and her bad dreams stopped. She was happy. Though he never put his feelings for her into words, she felt loved. When he asked her, as he did, at regular intervals, if she had remembered anything, she could reply in all honesty that she had not. Not anything more.
Lachlan finished the boat he was building for her. He named it Morna, meaning beloved. Beloved. Morven. The most beautiful creature he had ever met. And the most desirable. Like a fairy tale. Too much like a fairy tale.
When Lachlan finally remembered how the story from his childhood ended, the fey wife confirmed his fears and entrusted the evidence into his care. Afterward, though it nigh on broke his heart, he kept his own council. He had no other means to protect her.
Winter came. Then, on New Year’s Eve, it happened. It came to her in a dream that was more like a vision. She knew now what it was she had been searching for. Knew, too, finally, the questions she must ask, though she already knew the answers.
“Yes,” Ishbel confirmed. “We call them Selkies. Fallen angels, whose immortal spirit takes the form of a seal.”
Morven gazed tragically at the fey wife. “Have you met one of us before?”
“As a lass. A long time ago. It was your eyes that reminded me. That, and the look of you. You’re a beautiful creature, so, too, was she, though she was less fortunate in her choice of man. He was fierce jealous, and she made the mistake of telling him the truth. He did not want her to go back, so he hid her fur, knowing she could not leave without it. ’Twas a cruel thing to do. She was frantic. And of course, in the end, she found it. She left, with the child.”
“Do they–do we always go back?”
Ishbel nodded. “If you did not, you would become mortal. You must prepare yourself for the inevitable, child. When the time comes, you will find it is what you want.”
“What I want is to stay with Lachlan. I can’t leave him. I can’t imagine leaving him. I love him.”
Ishbel’s hand, which had been stroking her favourite grey cat, stilled. “You don’t know what it means. Selkies can’t love as humans do. Just as they can’t cry.”
“But I do love him,” Morven repeated miserably. “I do.”
“I’m sorry for you, but it will pass.”
“Please, don’t tell him. Let me have what time is left to me. Please.”
Ishbel bowed her head, remembering the anguish on Lachlan’s face when he visited her weeks ago. “It is near your time. You will have an easy birth,” she said, the only comfort she could think to offer.
But as she made her lonely way back along the cliff top to the house that was Lachlan’s, Morven was beyond comfort. Hearing his voice call her from the garden, she felt the now familiar burning at the back of her eyes. She stifled a sob. A few more weeks at most, and immortality awaited both her and her daughter. She felt as if she would rather die.
She tried to hide her sorrow from him, but could not. Though Lachlan asked her many times to tell him what ailed her, she would not, blaming it on the child. She retired into herself, biting back the words of love that ached to pour from her, unable to bear the thought of the hurt she must inflict upon him. She told herself that he would get over her loss more easily this way, but the pain was killing her. Her hair was dull. Her skin lacked lustre. She could not sleep. The burning at the back of her eyes was an almost constant pain.
Sorcha, meaning radiant, was born in early March, the month of omens and changelings, when the spring tides were at their highest. As Ishbel had promised, it was an easy birth. She was a beautiful child, with Lachlan’s dark good looks and, unusually for a new born, Morven’s dark brown eyes.
Only a day after the birth, they came for her. Her sisters. Perched on the rocks at low tide, bobbing in the sea when the rocks were covered, every time she looked out of the cottage window she saw them. At night, she heard their calling.
Morven would not go down to the beach. She would not leave the cottage. She grew thin and pale, staring tragically at Lachlan for hours on end, unable to find the words to express what she was feeling, unable to bear hearing what he was thinking. She forced herself to repulse his tender caresses, but she could not force herself to deny him the child, whom he adored.
A week later, when the highest tide of all came and the storm clouds gathered, she knew it was time. Her heart felt as if it were shattering within her breast as she rose from their bed, kissing Lachlan for the last time, a kiss so gentle it would not have woken a child. But it awoke Lachlan. Or he had not slept.
“So it is time,” he said, and his tone made her heart stop. If ever she had questioned the depth of his feelings for her, now there could be no doubt. The rawness of his love was writ plainly on the hard-etched lines of his face. His eyes were dark with the pain of it.
“You knew.”
“For some time. For longer than you. A childhood tale told to me by an old sea captain. Or I thought it was a tale.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“What was there to say, Morven? I love you. I wanted every moment to be precious. Why spoil it with something that could not be changed?” He went to the chest where the clothes from his old life were kept, and took out what looked like a large piece of cloth. “This is yours. Ishbel found it on the beach the morning you arrived. Without it, you cannot go back.”
It was a fur. Dark brown, the same colour as her hair. Soft. Large enough to cloak her entire body. She knew it was hers. She knew it was this she had been searching for. “You could have kept it from me,” she cried, her voice shrill with anguish. “Why did you not keep it from me. I would stay then, I would have to stay. They warned me, my sisters, that that is what men do. Why could you not do as other men?”
Lachlan draped the fur around her shoulders. “I don’t care what other men do, I would not have you stay against your will. You would end up hating me for it. It is
in your nature to leave, you know that. And I love you. Enough to let you go, for I love you as you are, for what you are. I would not change you, Morven, even if I could.”
“You love me.”
“You know I do. Have I not shown you how much, every day?”
“Lachlan, I can’t bear it. I love you so much. I can’t.” She threw herself into his arms, pressing frantic kisses onto his face. “I love you, Lachlan, no matter what Ishbel Macfarlane says, I know I love you. Say you believe me, please say you believe me.”
“I do,” he said gently, putting her from him. “And I don’t regret it for a second. Having you with me for even this short space of time, it is better by far than never having you at all. You’ll take care of Sorcha, won’t you?” He got to his feet, tenderly lifting his sleeping daughter from her cradle. “Come.”
As in a dream Morven took his hand and followed him down to the beach. The sea roared. The surf rushed and tumbled, white and seething, onto the sand. A full moon hung low, glowing gloomily through the thin veil of cloud. The air was tangy with salt. With every step she took toward the water, Morven felt as if the gloom were enveloping her.
She could see them waiting. Her heart pounded as she raised her face for a farewell kiss. “Beloved,” she said, pressing herself close and closer into the familiar contours of his body.
Then it happened. The burning in her eyes became hot trails down her cheeks. Salt water. Tears. She was crying. And then she knew, of a sudden, that Ishbel was wrong. There was a choice, if only there was enough love. And she had love enough for anything.
She took the child from him. She waded into the shallows and held Sorcha in front of her for her sisters to see. They came closer into the surf to welcome her. She turned to find Lachlan watching her, such sorrow on his face as she wished never to see again. The tears poured from her eyes as if they would never stop. She ran back ashore and handed Sorcha to Lachlan. Then she ran into the surf, deeper now, so that it whipped at her knees, washing up to her thighs. She bundled up the fur and threw it as hard as she could, out to where her sisters were waiting.
For an endless moment the world seemed to stop. Sea, clouds, surf, her heart, all froze in time. Behind her she could hear Lachlan calling her name. In front of her, her sisters were doing the same. Then she turned, ran to the shore, and into the arms of the man she loved.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said to her, “you won’t be able to go back.”
“Why would I want to go back, when my heart is here? It’s only a lifetime, it will never be enough, but however long it is, I want to spend it with you.”
“Morven. Oh, God, Morven, you won’t ever regret this. I love you so much.” Lachlan wrapped her in his arms. His kiss was worth all eternities.
They left the beach huddled close together, with Sorcha snuggled safe on Lachlan’s shoulder. Had they looked back, they would have seen the three Selkie sisters swimming with the fur out to sea. But they did not look back. They never looked back.
Epilogue
Morven and Lachlan were married in the spring, and in the same ceremony, Sorcha was baptised. She was indeed a beautiful child, the only one of their children to inherit her mother’s eyes. And like her mother, she was drawn to the sea. Often, too often, Morven would find her daughter sitting on the beach, staring out at the rocks at low tide where a seal basked, returning her gaze.
Morven and Lachlan lived happily ever after. An unusual ending for a Selkie tale, for Selkies are elusive and rare creatures, blessed and cursed by their immortality. Irresistible, in human form, but unfortunately for the mortals who are so easily beguiled by them, most Selkies are incapable of remaining true, or of staying in one place.
This is especially true of the male of the species, for whom many a ruined maid has wept seven tears at high tide in the vain hope of bringing about her seducer’s return. But that’s another story.
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Born and educated in Scotland, Marguerite Kaye originally qualified as a lawyer but chose not to practise – a decision which was a relief both to her and the Scottish legal establishment. While carving out a successful career in IT, she occupied herself with her twin passions of studying history and reading, picking up a first-class honors and a Masters degree along the way.
The course of her life changed dramatically when she found her soul mate. After an idyllic year out, spent traveling round the Mediterranean, Marguerite decided to take the plunge and pursue her life-long ambition to write for a living – a dream she had cherished ever since winning a national poetry competition at the age of nine.
Just like one of her fictional heroines, Marguerite’s fantasy has become reality. She has published history and travel articles, as well as short stories, but romances are her passion. Marguerite describes Georgette Heyer and Doris Day as her biggest early influences, and her partner as her inspiration.
Though she continues to write regular pieces for a number of Scottish magazines and also publishes short stories in women’s weeklies, romances are her passion. When she is not writing, Marguerite enjoys cooking and hill walking. A confirmed Europhile who spends much of the year in sunny climes, she returns regularly to the beautiful Highland scenery of her native Argyll, the place she still calls home.
Marguerite would love to hear from you. You can contact her on: [email protected]
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5276-3
The Highlander and the Sea Siren
Copyright © 2010 by Marguerite Kaye
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