The cowl from his cloak lay around his shoulders. “Madam,” he said. “Are you ready to go home?”
Christel turned to her sister. “Good night,” she said, pressing her mouth into her sister’s hair and whispering, “Talk to Leighton.”
Christel stepped away and lifted her arms toward Camden as he was leaning down. He deftly plucked her off the ground and set her across his lap. His arm tightened around her waist as his other hand gripped the reins.
“I am ready to go, my lord.”
Then they were galloping the gelding past the cemetery and down the backside of the kirk yard. She could feel the tenseness in his muscles and knew he exercised restraint as he drew her into the curve of his arm and covered her with his cloak.
This morning, standing in front of Seastone’s charred skeletal remains, helpless and in pain, she had panicked. Less restless now, her reasons for leaving Blackthorn today no longer drove her to want to run away.
“Are you and Leighton friends again?” she asked after she adjusted her bottom to fit more comfortably in his lap.
“We will never be friends,” he said flatly, but there was something unfinished about the statement. “But neither do I have the urge to do him great physical harm.”
She pulled in breath and drew on her newfound respect for Tianna. “Sometimes we think of people as being a certain way . . . and ’tis not the way of it at all.”
Christel allowed a measure of happiness to invade her heart, as though she could gauge Camden’s. He had come after her. “Did you think I had gone to Leighton? Is that why you went to Dunure tonight?”
“He knows the people here. I thought you might go to him for answers, the same reason I wanted to. I would have tried to talk to him had I not been bloody concerned about you.”
She laid her head against the warmth of his shoulder. “I have not asked for your concern, my lord.”
“Nay, you have asked me for nothing except that I give you nothing. And now, the one thing that is yours is gone. You have yet to talk about Seastone Cottage with me,” he said. “I do not want to awaken tomorrow and find you gone from Scotland.”
“You have an image of my character firmly planted in your mind, then?” she demanded because he had guessed her nature with such ease. When life got tough or frightening, she had a tendency to either rebel or run away as far as she could go, as if by escaping she could flee the pain.
He reined in the horse. They sat atop a knoll. The mist had faded, though there was the usual dampness, mixed with heather and pine resin and a faint scent of kelp from the distant shoreline. Familiar smells that should have been comforting. A full moon broke through the scudding clouds, backlighting him and shining on her face.
“Do you know what I want?” He kissed her, then all pretense of gentleness was gone. “I want to find that elusive flame inside you, the one that burns in passion. The one you are afraid to show because it hurts like bloody hell. The one you are afraid others will douse before it has a chance to catch and burn bright and hot in your heart. And aye, it hurts like hell in the beginning, but there is nothing that feels better than to know you are alive.”
She wanted to understand herself when she was around him, or perhaps she understood herself only too well as he lowered his head and kissed her. Their breaths mingled, and he pulled back, leaving her wanting more. “I think . . . I do not like you anymore, Englishman.”
He chuckled softly. “Aye, you more than like me. Admit it.”
Her arms raised to encircle his neck. “You are conceited, my lord.”
“Tell me you were not thinking of leaving Blackthorn Castle.”
“I cannot leave. I am in debt to you. You paid off the mortgage and taxes on Seastone Cottage. But I still have the land. I can rebuild. Can I not?”
“Then I will help,” he said. “If that is what you want.”
“Do not offer to purchase me anything. I am more worthy of your respect than that . . . and you are more worthy of my heart than to insult me by asking. Besides . . .” She cupped his check. “When I have bored of your boorish company and want payment for abiding you in my bed, I will help you find a bride and take the rest of the thousand pounds your grandmother offered me to keep you in Scotland.”
He smoothed his hand over her hair. “I appreciate your candor on the matter. Do you have a bride in mind?”
Jealousy was a strong rival to love. “Someone with no teeth and a penchant for eating garlic and onions will do.”
He laughed. “I, too, am a possessive man, love.” He traced the curve of her spine with his fingertip. “I am trying to tell you that you can trust me,” he declared softly. “You do not have to be afraid to be vulnerable. Let me love you, Christel.” What he was proposing frightened her, and he seemed to know that. “Let me help you. I will not allow anything to hurt you.”
“Unless of course a rabbit bolts and throws us from this horse.”
He captured her laugh against his mouth, then pulled away slowly, lingering. “Indeed. My ardor is such that it makes it dangerous to be on this horse.”
His lips touched hers, feather light, undemanding, yet filled with promise. Then, with desire a living thing between them, he turned the horse to go home, cooled only barely by the crisp night chill.
For a long time, as Christel sat spooned against his chest, with his arm around her waist and his words returning fresh in her mind, she realized that not only was he asking her to trust him but the very request was a sign of good faith and proof that he trusted her. But then she had already known that, or he would never have allowed her near his daughter. He knew her better than anyone did, and still he trusted her.
She also knew a little something about him. Camden St. Giles possessed a deep sense of responsibility for what he considered the sins of his past, his part in the failure of his marriage and the part he believed he’d played in Saundra’s death. Nothing would ever make up for what he’d lost at the hands of those he’d trusted, but she would try.
The steel-gray sky had not yet colored with the sunrise as Camden opened his curtains and looked outside into the mist of a new day. He leaned a shoulder against the window and raised a cup of coffee to his lips as he observed Christel in his bed. He’d not shaved. He wore a silk robe tied at the waist. He’d been unable to sleep. He’d spent too many years of his life possessing no heart not to realize that something elemental had shifted inside him. She made him feel things he’d thought gone forever, and now he found that he wanted to protect her.
“You look like a pirate prince, m’lord.” The sleepy voice came from the bed and arrested his hand as he started to take another sip of coffee. “Lord of the manse, ruler of the world.”
He sat on the mattress beside her. “I am ruler of the world, at least the one visible out this window.”
She sat up and took his coffee to her lips. “Am I your concubine then, and is this room your seraglio, m’lord and master?”
He smoothed the tangled hair off her face. He wanted her as more than a concubine, as more than a lover or a mistress. “I could not manage a harem. You are enough concubine for me.”
She blew on the coffee. “That is good”—she sipped, her eyes smiling—“because I will not share you either.” Her gaze touched the window. “I need to return to my room.”
“I will take you.” Although the kiss he gave her mitigated his words. He wanted to keep her in this bed. But soon his staff would be stirring, and she did not want people to find her in his bed.
He rose, found her clothes and helped her dress. Then he kissed her, inhaled her softly into his senses and let her go.
The next few weeks progressed without incident. The investigation into the fire went nowhere. Camden knew that in Christel’s mind, the cottage was gone and it would do her no good to mourn its loss. He also knew it was a lie; though she never let him see her tears again, he sometimes heard her weeping silently in her pillow.
She spent her afternoons in the classroom with Anna, and
as the days warmed, she took Anna’s lessons outside.
To Camden’s surprise, Tianna came often to see Anna and Christel. They spent time together in the woods, and Tia taught Anna how to collect herbs and other medicines for Doctor White. Christel absorbed it all like a dry sponge in need of water. On occasion she followed Tia and Reverend Nunn when they went to visit some of the tenants on Blackthorn land.
Sometimes when Camden returned late, he would go to Christel’s room and hear Tia and Christel talking into the early morning hours before falling asleep. He knew that Tia had stayed over and he would not be able to see Christel until morning. Christel had told him that she and her sister had made a pact not to talk about Saundra or Leighton or him, but that still left a lifetime between them. She told Camden everything.
Tia hadn’t ever married because she’d wanted to be a doctor and help those who needed help, though she would have married Leighton had he ever asked.
Christel told Tia about her own marriage and a little about the war. They talked about their father and the fact that, in his way, he had abandoned them both. Camden sensed the sisterly bond forming and welcomed it for Christel, and only hoped he was not making a mistake in trusting Tia not to hurt her. He didn’t know Tia well enough to know her character. She had always been the plain brown mouse in the room when Saundra had been present, doing little to make her presence known. But if she was a friend to Christel, then he welcomed her in Christel’s life.
By the end of May, the fields were plowed and planted, and the business of being a landowner occupied his time. He began to receive a slew of invitations, from teas to balls hosted at neighboring estates, debuting young daughters coming of age. The mamas were out in droves, and those who had not gone to London for the Season stayed to pursue him.
On the days when Camden was not in Prestwick on business or tending to some judicial matter with one of his tenants, Christel would find him in his library, bent over paperwork or accounting books or merely reading about animal husbandry, which was very different from tactical naval warfare.
They managed to carry on their relationship outside Blackthorn Castle at night, sometimes in the day, finding ways to be alone on the beach, the pagoda, the stable, anywhere no one else was. Occasionally it was too much for them to wait, and, impatient, they made love on the desk in his library or the Persian rug in his small, secluded salon, where he oft went for solitude. More and more, he found his mind drifting to her when he should have been working. Found his thoughts pulled by the primal realization that he wanted her to belong to him.
She had told him it no longer mattered to her that people suspected they were lovers, but she would not flaunt the relationship, certainly not while she was Anna’s governess.
But like him, she was restless. She found him once on the lower terrace, smoking a cheroot and holding a glass of whiskey, standing in almost the exact place she had come across him the night of the ball nine years ago.
Only this time, rather than kiss her, he backed her up against the ivy-encrusted embankment and made love to her.
“Are you happy with our life the way it is?” he asked with a restrained violence he did not recognize in himself.
“Aye,” she said, holding him to her trembling body. He was still shimmering from an organism that had left him weak-boned and feeling more alive than he had ever felt. “I am happy.”
He wanted to disagree, but then she kissed him in that perfect way she kissed, her lips warm and shaped to his, inviting him to dance with her. And raising her arms around his neck, she led with uncurbed pleasure. Her back against the cool stone, surrounded by pungent juniper, she led him all the way to the stars.
He was in love with her.
He had known it for some time. The feelings were so strong, so overwhelming, that they were like a vise tightening around his chest.
At times, when his grandmother entertained guests or when he visited neighboring estates, he would find himself standing apart, listening to the chatter that inevitably came with such visits. He would imagine what it had once been like for Christel when she was younger and living at Rosecliffe, when she would watch such functions, hidden on the staircase, believing, as she had told him, in fairy tales, wondering what it would be like to walk among them as equals.
Then he would listen to the gossip and look at society all bound up by their silly rules and stringent etiquette, and realize why Christel once chose to live in breeches and climb trees rather than take part in the lives of the fashionable set.
For all of his desires to make her part of his life, she was still who she was, part American, part Scottish, neither rich nor exceedingly worldly, the bastard daughter of an illicit union. And though his own heart would no longer be confined, more than his whimsy shaped her future. He knew that when a year was up and Christel had repaid him, she planned to find a way to support herself, independent of her life with him.
He didn’t know at what point in the last few months he had decided that he would take Christel as his wife, but he suspected the idea had always been there in the back of his mind.
He also knew that with her sense of societal mores and need for independence, she would reject the idea forthright. But he was patient, perusing her slowly, chipping away at the glass walls she’d erected, which skewed her view of the world. She might not have intended to live at Blackstone Castle forever, even if he was determined that she should.
Chapter 18
It was a warm sunny day in June that brought Christel and Anna to the Fountain Court. The court took its name from a pleasant marble fountain complete with white horse statues and continuous running water. It opened into an area fronting the terrace on one side and an ornamental outer portal on the other, with full view of the sea. Their day started with a watercolor session and lunch and ended when Anna found a baby bird hopping through the grass.
A pile of white and gray feathers scattered nearby gave evidence that a hawk had most likely eaten its mother. Anna became upset and began to cry. “But what will it do without its mother, Miss Christel? ’Tis not fair that a baby has no mother. She will die.”
Christel removed the contents in the wicker basket and placed the baby bird inside. “I do not think its wing is broken. I think all we have to do is put it someplace where it can grow just a bit more.”
“What will it eat without its momma to feed her?”
Mrs. Gables came outside to see what the commotion was. As the baby bird continued to hop in agitation, the consensus found that Christel should find Doctor White for a prognosis.
Christel took the basket. Dog leaped up from his place in the sun and followed closely on her heels, interested in the squeak coming from inside. After much searching, Christel finally found Stephen on his knees, doctoring a pony’s cracked hoof. He was quite a distance from Blackthorn, in the older, unused area of the estate that used to house the stable near Ghost Rock, so named for the howling sound heard when the gale wind whistled over the cliffs. She had not been in this area since her return to Scotland.
“What are you doing out here?” Christel asked.
He peered up at her from beneath the rim of his tricorn. “I was on my way to Dunure to see a patient. Not anymore, ’twould seem.”
Christel knelt beside him and shouldered Dog away from the basket. “I have another patient for you.”
He examined the bird by delicately poking his finger at the wings. “Barely a week old. I do no’ feel any broken bones.”
Christel looked toward the nearby tower, its walls glowing gold in the warm sunlight. Stephen tented a hand over his eyes. “ ’Tis been out of service for a decade.”
“That is the old lighthouse.”
“Aye, it once served to keep incoming ships away from the shoreline during rough weather. The new one south of here was built to replace this one. Even before . . . Saundra . . . even before she took her life here.”
This was the tower from which Saundra had leapt to her death. There were two on each co
rner of the estate that overlooked the sea. “I always thought it was the other one,” Christel said quietly.
Stephen shook his head. “Nay. She came here that night. ’Tis dangerous enough with much of the cliff having fallen away years ago. I suppose if a person wanted to end her life, this would be the place to come.”
Christel covered the basket with the baby bird inside. Leaving it beside the horse, she walked to the old structure.
A tall stone archway opened to an enclosed courtyard. The open space connected the old stables on one end with the coach house, where the drivers and coachmen used to live, on the other. A locked iron gate blocked access. Christel gripped the rusted bars and peered inside. Weeds and thorny vines grew in the stone courtyard.
“This is part of the original castle,” she said. “Built in the time of William Wallace.”
Stephen stood next to her. “Aye.”
It was a lonely, silent place in contrast to what it once must have been. She stood back and let her eyes travel upward to the lighthouse tower belfry. Even the slitted windows had been plastered over.
“How do I get up there?” Christel asked.
“You cannot. He closed off this place forever after the accident. No one comes here.”
“Accident?” Christel asked, turning her head to peer at him. “Why do you say that?”
He shrugged lightly. “I would prefer to think of Lady Carrick’s death in that way.”
“You cared for her.”
He nodded. “She was always kind to me growin’ up. We were friends.”
Christel faced him.
“When she spent time at Rosecliffe, she spoke often aboot ye,” he said. “Months after she died, I found a letter in my belongings with a note that I mail this to ye after she was gone. She wanted you to raise Anna.”
This Perfect Kiss Page 27