She had thought that she could feel no more—not that night. He had touched her inside and out, and surely she could feel no more. But her breath caught as he slid his hands along her thighs, finding her garters, stripping down her stockings. “Leaves,” he told her solemnly. His fingers feathered over her naked flesh.
She could feel. Beyond a doubt, she could feel. Silvery tremors snaked along her spine, and warmth was reborn within her.
The breeze stirred as she met his eyes. They were silent and still, and then she rose, and found the hook to her skirt and undid it, and the velvet riding garment fell to the earth. She tossed aside her bodice and chemise and stays and then stepped demurely from her disarrayed pantalettes.
The wind struck her naked body. She leaned her head back and felt it. Felt the moon kiss her and the whispers of the air as they plucked at her hair and played it around her.
He watched her, naked and straight, and proud against the night and the wind. And he thought that she was a match, indeed.
For himself.
For Creeghan.
She moved beside him and came to her knees at the brook, scooping up the cool water and delighting in the feel as she let it fall on her, creating succulent, shimmering pearl drops upon her breasts in the moonlight. She turned around and smiled at him. “There’s little I can still claim to be,” she said softly, “and yet it amazes me that we have … done what we have done, and done so almost fully clad. Milord …”
She looked back to the water, and yet…
The invitation was there. Not to be denied. He rose and cast off his shirt and his boots in a flurry, and stripped down his breeches and discarded his hose in seconds.
When she looked back, he was naked and magnificent in the moonlight. And as her eyes fell from his to his dark furred chest and below, she felt her heart begin to thump again. Aye, it was possible to arouse anew. Even after what they had just shared.
He strode to her, confident, a great forest beast with his glittering fire eyes and hard-muscled form. He pulled her up, naked, in his arms, and where their flesh met, it burned. “What we have done,” he murmured, “is make love. And what we’re going to do,” he added softly, “is make love again.”
He started to wrap his arms around her, and yet she eluded him, slipping beneath his hold and coming around to his back. There was so much she longed to do. And only now, tonight, in this green darkness, did she dare. She slipped her arms around his waist and moved her lips over his shoulders, and as she did so, the peaks of her breasts moved over his bare flesh.
He was still, allowing her to explore. She slipped lower against him, stroking her fingertips upward against the hardness of his buttocks while the seduction of her kiss traveled down the length of his spine. She heard his jagged breath, and then he cried out, catching her arms, pulling her around before him again and into the heady demand of his kiss. Yet even then, when their lips broke, she would have her way. Her eyes met his.
Dear God, she knew exactly what she was doing, what she wanted to do. She could be so wanton …
She met his eyes, and she moved slowly downward against him, brushing his flesh with her hair, with her breasts, with the softest caress of her lips and teeth. Downward, downward, until she was on her knees. She longed to take that pulsing shaft of life into her mouth.
And she did. Savoring it, savoring the wicked shudder and spasms and hoarse cries that claimed him. And she relished the sweet victory of her own power, and loved him uninhibitedly, stroking, touching, tasting.
He wrenched her up and into his arms, and his eyes were wildly ablaze. She cried out as he nearly dragged her to the ground and thrust into her, hard, careless, magnificent, and wild. And he moved with the wind again, bringing her to a startling precipice that brought tears to her eyes.
Then he withdrew, and she was lost and confused and aching. She opened her eyes seeking him, but gasped when she felt his hands upon her knees, drawing her to him, lifting her, and making love again with the searing wet heat of his tongue. He teased and licked her until the stars shattered above her head, and she passed out once again.
She awoke in his arms, awoke to the thunder of his fierce lovemaking. Awoke to his kiss, awoke to climb and soar and reach across the heavens again. And when he exploded within her, it brought about her second shattering peak, and even as she drifted down from the ecstasy of it, she felt the racking waves of his body, tight against her own.
This time, she could not look at him, dared not acknowledge all the intimacy that lay between them. She turned to her side, facing the brook. But he was not a man to let her be, not a man to allow denial.
He drew her back around to face him, and in those curious moments, there might have been no Castle Creeghan, no mystery, no death—no world, in fact, other than that which lay between them this night.
“Martise!”
He lifted her chin to his. At last she opened her eyes. And he smiled.
“You must not be ashamed,” he told her.
“I’m not!” she lied.
“Most men wait an entire lifetime, and never know a beauty such as you have shown.”
“I—let me go, please. I cannot talk about it!” she cried in dismay.
His eyes were intense, golden. “Nay, if you choose it so, I’ll not talk. But I beg this of you, Martise, don’t let the night slip away. Don’t hide from the magic. We’ve discovered it here. In shadow, in darkness. I’ll not let you take it from me.”
She shivered violently and moistened her lips to speak. “My dear Laird Creeghan, I am lying naked on your cloak in the woods, so there is little I can deny.”
“But, alas, I cannot keep you naked in the woods,” he said, and grinned. “It’s quite cold, and when the fires of our bodies have diminished, you are going to want your clothing.”
She flushed. “I am cold now.”
“I will warm you—”
“You have warmed me well and enough!” she vowed, and he laughed when she rolled to escape him. She hurried to the water, shivering with greater violence when she tried to rinse herself with it. She didn’t hear his footsteps, but he was quickly at her side, comfortable with his nakedness. He hunched down beside her and touched her chin. “Martise, I cannot be washed away,” he told her gently.
“I know. I did not mean to. I mean—” She broke off, and he laughed, and splashed his face with the water, seemingly oblivious to the cold. It grew with the night. With the shriek of the wind.
He stood and left her, and she splashed her breasts and her arms. When she turned, he was already clad in his hose and breeches and boots again, and awaited with her chemise, ready to slip it over her damp breasts. He did so without saying a word, then turned aside for his shirt as she found her stays and stockings, her pantalettes, skirt, and bodice. When she had gotten that far, she realized that he stood waiting with her riding boots, and he knelt down to slip them upon her feet, tying the laces for her. He stood and swept his cloak from the ground and shook it free of leaves, and then wrapped it around her shoulders.
“You have nothing now,” she told him.
“Ah, but I am still afire, Martise St. James,” he told her. “And I fear that I will burn for all eternity. Come, let’s find Lucian. He’d best not have headed back without us!”
The animal waited behind the trees where Bryan had left him. He munched grass and stared soulfully at Bryan, then ambled in his direction.
“There’s a lad for you now,” he said, proud of the horse. “Come, I’ll boost you up, Martise.”
He mounted behind her, and she realized that she was warm again, and very glad to rest against him. Bryan led the horse into no brisk pace, but allowed him to walk along sedately, by the light of the moon and the stars.
“Bryan, I swear that I saw what I saw,” she told him then. The memory of the night was still with her. It would always be with her.
But so would the memory of the day.
“I believe you, Martise,” he said after a moment. Then
he reined in and asked her, “You believe that I was not among them?”
She nodded. He nudged the horse and they moved forward again. “Bryan, once before you told me that you had never murdered.”
“Aye,” he said.
She twisted around, meeting his eyes. “But you have killed,” she said softly.
“In the war, Martise. That is what happens in war—men kill one another.”
The sound of his voice was bitter. “Why did you fight?” she asked him. “It was not your battle.”
She felt his shrug. “I fought because I was there, and because I was among friends, because a man cannot run when the battle comes to the door of a friend and you are staying within that door. And I stayed when it was lost because … because it was necessary to see it through to the end.”
She hesitated. “Bryan, if you have come home, where is Elaina’s fiancé?”
“I don’t know,” he told her. “I just don’t know. Niall was taken prisoner at Gettysburg. I have friends searching for him, but no one has heard from him since.”
“Oh, my God,” Martise said. “Then he is dead. Surely, he is dead. The prison camps—”
“I survived a summer in a Georgia camp,” he told her roughly. “Niall might well be alive. Don’t bury him on Elaina until it must be done.”
“But she must know—”
“Nay, you must know. She loved him. Elaina loves fiercely, and completely, with all of her heart. She will wait forever, if need be.”
“But she should not!” Martise said. “By God, can no one in your house be happy?” she demanded, twisting around to see his face.
“We all have moments,” he told her. “Moments. Such as tonight.” His eyes were glittering, and not upon her, but staring straight at the trail ahead. She felt a blinding of tears dampen her lashes and she swung back around.
Moments …
They were leaving the green magic behind them, the shadows of the night. And the moment was over.
She blinked back the tears. “I shall have more than moments!” she announced coldly. “I pity Elaina, for she has lost one brother, a fiancé, and must live beneath your thumb!”
“You will live beneath my thumb, too, my love. Are you forgetting our forthcoming nuptials?”
“Indeed, I am, for they shall be entirely forgettable. They will not be real, milord—”
“But they will. By law. For the moment.”
“Then I’ll not—” she began, but he had suddenly reined in Lucian and gone tense. Fear—gone so long from her now!—invaded her system once again. “What is it?” she asked tensely.
“The cove—this must be the cove. Stay here,” he told her. He leapt down from the horse.
“Bryan! Bryan, no!” she cried. But he was gone. In the moonlight she could see him hurrying through the trees. She saw only the darkness of his form as he paused and kicked aside the remnants of a fire. He stood very still for several moments.
She started to breathe again, realizing she had held her breath from the second he had left her.
He strode back for the horse and leapt up behind her. “Aye, there was something there. A group of some kind.” He nudged the stallion into a smooth, slow canter. The gait brought them quickly to the main road, and once they were upon it, he slowed again. They were nearly to the castle.
“Why do you deny witchcraft?” she asked softly. “Your people are superstitious. I think that they do still believe in ancient gods and prophesies and—”
“Martise, would you turn the whole of a good and God-fearing people into a clan of murderous lunatics? Aye, they have their quirks, and we have our games, and we tell tales by the full moon. But none is practicing witchcraft. Not sacrificing maidens and the like, and all. And besides, if they needed a maiden, you’d not fit the bill a single bit.”
She wanted to hit him. “’Tis only recent,” she murmured, and added indignantly, “I came as a widow—”
“Aye, ’twas your mistake. Had I believed in your purity, you might still maintain it.”
“Really?” she demanded, tossing back her head. “Would anything have stopped the laird of the castle from his desires?”
“We’ll never know, will we?” he cross-queried, and she felt the warmth of his gaze, and the laughter within his words.
“You should be slapped.”
“You’ve tried oft enough,” he reminded her.
“Take care. One day I shall succeed.”
“Indeed, perhaps you will. And yet, I wonder, here I am offering a perfect solution. I wish to wed you for reasons of my own; perhaps you should wish to wed me as well. After all, mistress, you have been seduced, debauched, some might say. And marriage is the customary remedy for such a thing.”
She stiffened. The walls of the castle tower rose before her. Lucian walked them ever closer.
She lifted up on the pommel, turning to him. “Your reasons, and my own, milord, are not the right ones!”
“They’re not?” he demanded.
“You wish a wife for bait to catch a killer—”
“I wish your safety, I swear that!” he said heatedly, eyes narrowing.
“Aye, you intend to keep your bait safe!” she snapped back.
“I would think you’d want to catch the killer,” he said.
“I do! But it is not a reason for marriage.”
“But what of the destruction of your innocence?” he queried politely. There was a hard edge to his voice.
“Oh, I should learn to live with it, milord. It is not the right reason for marriage!”
“And what is?” he demanded.
“Love,” she returned, her eyes on his. Then she jumped down from the horse.
He could have stopped her then. It seemed that he chose not to.
“Good night, Laird Creeghan,” she told him.
“Good night? Is that all?”
“Indeed.”
“Ah, well, perhaps I can be more eloquent. Good night—and thank you. Mistress, I have never known such a lover,” he said gallantly … and mockingly.
Martise turned on her heel, her hair and his cloak flying out around her. She entered the great hall and found that Elaina had been there, all this time, waiting for her.
“Martise! Oh, we were all so distressed. My brother was beside himself, thinking that you were missing. But he found you!”
She accepted Elaina’s hug. “Oh, yes, he found me,” she said.
“You’re shivering. I’ll tell Holly you’re home. There’ll be a warm bath in minutes. Brandy, I must get you some brandy. Hogarth! Martise has come home. Bring something quickly, please!”
And Hogarth did bring something quickly, his warmed wine with cinnamon, and a huge lamb chop with mint jelly and potatoes and greens, and to her surprise, Martise found she was famished. She thanked Hogarth and told Elaina only that she had wandered in the woods, and yes, the laird of Creeghan was home, too, but she did not know why he had not come in.
“Probably seeing to that stallion of his himself,” Elaina told her, and poured her more wine. “Oh, I was so very worried! You mustn’t frighten us like that again, Martise. Please!”
“I didn’t mean to frighten anyone, truly,” she said. “I just needed to go riding.”
“Well, Robert said he warned you to stay to the main roads, but he knew you intended to take the trails.”
“He did, did he?”
“Aye, he told Bruce that he could see it in your eyes, and Bruce rather angrily agreed that you liked to defy people.”
Martise flushed. “That’s not true.” She stared down at her plate. Robert! Robert McCloud with his evil, knowing grin! Had he known that she was in the woods … because he had been in them himself?
She shivered and Elaina leapt up. “Come on, I’m sure your bath is ready by now. I’ll walk you up.”
Holly was in the room, adding the last of the water. She welcomed Martise back warmly, with tears in her eyes. Martise hugged her maid and promised that she would be very car
eful in the future.
Both women would have stayed; Martise shooed them out, wanting, needing, to be alone.
She stripped away her clothing and sank into the bath. The steam whirled around her, and she luxuriated in the sweet-smelling rose soap that Holly always remembered to bring her.
You cannot wash me away …
He had told her that. And she knew that she could not.
Nor did she want to. No matter what came in the future, she did not want to forget. She knew herself that what they had shared was extraordinary.
Was it because she was in love with him? Or was there something else that ruled such things? Was passion her own mistress?
It did not matter. Just as she had been famished, she was exhausted. She leaned against the bath and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she nearly screamed. He was back in the room, leaning against the mantel, watching her. His eyes were fire, his hair was still tousled, and he was very nonchalant and entirely too comfortable and casual in his stance. “Shh!” he warned.
“I should scream!” she hissed angrily. “How dare you dance in and out of a guest’s room—”
“I didn’t ‘dance.’ I came by the secret passage.”
“Damn your secret passages!”
“I merely wish that I knew them all!” he returned.
She groped for her towel and drew it to her breast as she stood.
There was no reason to hold a towel against him. None at all. They both knew it; his mocking gaze conveyed it. But he made no comment about it, merely stepping toward her. And when she would have cried in protest, thinking he meant to snatch it away, he merely pulled it up higher upon her shoulders.
She jerked away and almost toppled over the tub. “What are you doing in here?” she demanded breathlessly as he righted her.
An ebony brow shot up. “I warned you that I would be your shadow.”
She trembled. She needed to be away from him so badly, and he was back here with her. And when she stood naked and wet, the memories were almost more than she could bear.
She shook her head strenuously. “I don’t want you in here. Not tonight. Maybe not any night. I’m not denying anything that has happened, I’m just not ready for it to happen again. You have to go. Please. I—I will not make love with you again!”
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