Stealing Midnight

by Tracy MacNish

  The thought was enough to have her gripping her hands together again, holding them in place with her fingernails dug into her raw flesh. Perhaps pain would drown out what her willpower would not.

  “You fall silent at the mention of honesty. What are you not saying?”

  If he only knew, she thought. Olwyn recognized enough of Aidan’s desire for her; if she dared tell him the direction of her mind, she would not leave his rooms with her virginity intact.

  The thought was enough to weaken her knees and educe a jittery flutter in her belly.

  What, she dared to wonder, was a maidenhead good for anyway?

  Fear ran in tandem to her lust, as did hopefulness that it might somehow work out, making for a muddied mix of emotions. She dared to desire him, and yet she felt the fearful presence of her father. But above all, she held onto the thinnest thread of hope, her only lifeline in the turbulent sea of sensations assaulting her senses.

  “More silence,” he observed. “Should I be concerned?”

  Nervous, edgy laughter slipped from her lips, and her legs nearly lost the last of their strength. Olwyn could only change the subject, and with it, she hoped desperately, the direction of her thoughts. “You speak with such assurance, my lord, and question me with such authority. It doesn’t escape my notice that you include me in your future in the same breath as you ask me to honor you with the truest parts of myself. You are a man bound to another woman. Have you forgotten your betrothed so easily?”

  “I spoke with Mira this evening, and we’ve agreed to dissolve our engagement.”

  “So you’ve unfettered yourself,” she said softly, and hoped he could not hear the tremble that shook her voice. “What now?”

  Aidan shifted his position in his bed, and as he did the sheet that covered him slid down, revealing the lower portion of his flat belly. His movement exposed more of his body to the roaming, flickering firelight, and Olwyn saw that he was still erect. The part of him that he’d pressed hard and hot against her belly remained thick and long and full.

  Her mouth grew dry, her womanhood wet.

  Aidan must have noticed the line of her vision, for he pulled his covers up and shifted again so that his hips were once again in the shadows.

  “We have a new ending to discover,” he said in answer to her question, but his voice had changed in a way that sent more dark longings coursing through her blood. “Or should we call it a new beginning?”

  Dawn came on swift wings. Olwyn would leave the manse in only a few hours. To think of never seeing him again when he spoke of new beginnings nearly drove her to the end of her resolve.

  Her skin ached for the want of his touch.

  Her mind whispered seditious suggestions—lie down with him and abandon the plan of slipping away in morning’s light; let Aidan deal with the danger that her father presented. Aidan was a man, after all, her selfishness reasoned. Shouldn’t she hide in the shelter of his presence and let him handle matters?

  “More silence,” he observed.

  “Lóchrann,” she managed to whisper. “I don’t know what to do, and your talk of the future frightens me.”

  At least that was the truth, she thought.

  “I’m sure you’re tired. Go seek out your bed, and we can continue this conversation in the morning when the wee hour isn’t making things seem more urgent than they actually are.”

  Olwyn thought of the bed and the rooms where Aidan had ensconced her, the size and luxury of which she’d never seen or experienced before. By now her fire would be burned to cinders, the sheets would have grown cold, and without her nightly ritual, the dark corners were certain to contain the worst of her fears.

  And if she decided to follow through with her plan, she would leave come morning and would have to spend the rest of her life wishing she’d spent one more night with Aidan, no matter what the cost.

  “Might I ask a favor, my lord?” she said shyly. “The chair in the other room was comfortable enough, and if you wouldn’t mind overmuch, could I curl up there and pass what remains of the night?”

  “What’s wrong, Olwyn?” His deep voice resonated in the darkness, as smooth as scotch and just as complex, such a mix of sensuality, compassion, and caring that Olwyn could feel the vibration down to her bones.

  “I don’t have my incense,” she admitted. “When I am this unsettled, the dreams are certain to plague me.” And being near him made her feel safer, but she didn’t say that.

  Being near him also made her contemplate thoughts most unbecoming of a maiden. She didn’t say that, either.

  “Take my bed,” he offered. “I’ll take the chair.”

  “Never mind. I’ll not rob you of your comfort. I’ll go.”

  “I won’t sleep anyway. And besides, ’tis the least I can do after bringing you here without what you need to pass the night with no fear. Come lie down, my love, and let me chase the rats for tonight.”

  His bed would be warm from his body and would smell of him. The temptation to do just as he suggested was as potent as his whiskey, and just as intoxicating.

  “You keep calling me that,” she breathed, and her body swayed as she stood before him, vibrating with desire and fear and fatigue.

  “You are my love,” he said softly in turn. “I wish I had a better way to describe what I’ve come to feel for you, for love is a pale word, overused by dreamers and Irishmen.”

  His words sent an earthquake through her already fragile core, tearing asunder every last bit of her composure. Tears welled up and stung her eyes, and though she blinked them back they had their way with her, spilling over to fall down her cheeks. Olwyn, unaccustomed to weeping in front of another person, turned so he could not know.

  But he did, anyway. There wasn’t much she seemed to be able to hide from him.

  She heard Aidan get out of bed and approach her, felt the warmth of his skin behind her. Was he nude there, in all his male glory, and was his manhood still erect, a bold thrust from his body? The thought had her struggling to breathe.

  “I am sorry to speak to you with such brash confidence,” he said gently. “I do realize you’ve never once said you felt similarly toward me, and yet I keep speaking of the future, of the two of us being together, and aye, I speak too freely of love. Call it what you will, but underneath it all, I suppose I’ve gone just a bit foolish over you, enough that I cannot forget that you once called me Lóchrann of your heart, and I cannot help but read into your meaning.”

  Olwyn couldn’t speak, for her throat was thick with tears. The enormity of all that Aidan had said overwhelmed her, as she believed it too good to be true. Something would spoil it all, and would turn the dream to a nightmare.

  “And once again, more silence,” he observed. “It speaks volumes, I think.”

  He turned and went back to the bed, sighed and sat down. He was quiet for a while, and when he spoke his tone was full of frustration. “I have given you my absolute truths, Olwyn. I’ve told you what’s in my heart, and I’ve opened my soul to you. In return, I get teary silence. I don’t know what else to say or do, for I’ve offered you all I have and all I am, and yet, you don’t seem to want to give me the slightest indication that you feel even a bit for me of what I feel for you. And so I’ll stop asking you for what’s in your heart, and I suppose I’ll stop telling you about what’s in mine. Go back to your rooms or sleep on my chair or in my bed, whatever pleases you. But make up your mind what you want, for I’m through with your silences for the night.”

  Olwyn wiped away her tears with a fierce swipe over her cheeks and spun around to face him. She saw that he had nothing but a drape of sheet over his hips, and that his hair hung in loose sun-streaked waves around his face. His skin was burnished by the reddish light of the fire, his expression cast in shadows.

  “I have wanted you from the very first time I saw you, naked and nearly dead in my father’s dungeon. I drew your form and I wondered about every detail of you. I saw the joy in your face, I saw the sun in y
our hair, and in my mind’s eye, I imagined your life with me in it. I thought you were my prince, and I fancied that I could kiss you awake and make you love me.”

  Her voice shook and wavered, but she pressed on. “Can you imagine what it feels like to be me? To be a poor urchin of a girl who only a few weeks ago was the slave to a madman who is also her father? To find that the dream that I dared to imagine has all come true, and to be forced to just wait and see what will destroy it all? You and your family are beyond my reality, and I fit here no better than an ugly old mule in your stables full of pedigreed beauties.”

  “You fit me better than anyone on this earth.”

  “I don’t, and your saying I do does not make it so.”

  “You fit me.”

  “I am exactly wrong for you.”

  “You woke me.”

  “No, my father’s scalpel did that.”

  “You make me feel alive, Olwyn.”

  “I’m poor,” she finally breathed, unable to keep air in her lungs.

  “I’m not exactly looking for a woman with a dowry, aye? I have money. What I don’t have is you.”

  Once again, he wasn’t listening. “I’m uncultured.”

  “You’re perfect.”

  “I’m not certain I could learn even half of what would be expected of me.”

  His voice came warm and resonant in the shadowed light. “If you change in the slightest, I’ll never forgive you.”

  “I don’t know what to say to get through to you.”

  “Tell me how you feel about me.”

  “I love you,” she managed to say, pushing the words out despite the shame they aroused in her belly. How dare she love a man like him? Did she profess or confess, she wondered. Still, she kept talking, telling him just how she truly felt. “I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you, and I laughed at myself, for even then I knew the truth. I was a pathetic girl, so lonely she could fall in love with a corpse.”

  Aidan stood, and holding the sheet swathed around his narrow hips, he came toward her. With his free hand he reached out and lifted hers, held her palm flat against his hard chest, directly over the beating of his heart.

  “I’m real and I’m alive,” he said. “But I’m not the prince you imagined, and far from it. Do you love the dream of me, or do you love the reality of the man?”

  “You,” she said softly. Beneath her hand his skin was warm, vital, like life itself. “You, Lóchrann.”

  “And if I can accept your poverty, can you accept my wealth?”

  Olwyn didn’t respond, all too aware that it seemed foolish to have difficulty accepting that she loved a man who had riches. Still, the idea didn’t sit well at all, to imagine presiding over a mansion complete with a staff of servants, and in possession of all the accoutrements of affluence.

  “Once again, you fall quiet.” He didn’t sound angry this time. Instead, he grinned. She could hear it in his voice, wicked, untamed. “Perhaps I’ll answer for you. It seems you’ll correct me easily enough, so I’ll give it a go. I take your silence to mean: Yes, Lóchrann, I can accept that you are wealthy, and I shall let you shower me with gowns and jewels as it pleases you.”

  “I don’t want gowns or jewels.”

  “See? ’Tis easy enough to say what you’re thinking, aye? So you’ll love me as you like, and we’ll keep your belongings as simple as your comfort dictates.”

  In that instant Olwyn realized that he had her thinking of the future and negotiating her place in his life. He’d somehow managed to turn the tables again. She’d come to warn him of danger before slipping away, and now they were settling the terms of their relationship.

  Olwyn also realized that any notion she’d had of leaving was now foiled by her own admission. Now that he knew she loved him, he would stop at nothing to find her. Just like the night that he’d ensconced her in the inn on their way to Beauport, she was outmatched and outmanned. No woman on foot was a match for a man with a fleet of men on horseback at his disposal.

  Surrender was her only option.

  And with Aidan standing before her, tall and broad of shoulder, with a sheet covering only the part of him that she couldn’t manage to stop thinking about, giving in to her love and desire for him didn’t seem too bad an option, as options went.

  Olwyn admitted defeat by closing the gap between them. She stood close enough that she could smell his skin, clean and warm and completely male. Reaching up, she slid her fingers into his hair, as soft as the first rays of summer sunlight. The fire behind them burned low, illuminating him in shades of red amber, and she saw how beautifully he was made, tight muscles beneath taut skin, his body large but also graceful. His breath came out in a rush, as if he’d been holding it, warm and whiskey-scented.

  She felt a shudder ripple through him, and she knew it for his restraint.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered.

  “I am yielding, Lóchrann.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “There is something you should know,” Aidan told Olwyn, his voice suddenly tight. He took her hand from his hair and held her away from him, his grip on her wrist hard. “There is a drug in me, a cantharid. It is a drug for sex, Olwyn, and because of it I’m nearly unable to control my lust. I warn you—touching me will make it impossible.”

  Olwyn frowned. This admission from him struck her as completely at odds with the man she thought she knew. “Why did you take this drug?”

  He sighed, and again she smelled whiskey on his breath. It made her long to kiss him and taste his tongue, to mingle her essence with his, to be one with him.

  “Mira mixed a powder into my food to attempt to secure my…affection for her.”

  “A drug can do that?”

  “Aye, and ’tis not uncommon. There are many who use cantharides as an”—he cleared his throat, as if resigned to the explanation—“enhancement for their sensual escapades.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “Aye, well, ’tis true, and it is in me, blazing in my blood. The drug will spend itself in time, but for now, you’d best keep yourself at a distance.”

  “Did it work?”

  “I told you, Olwyn, that it burns in me like a fire eating its way through tinder. Aye, it worked. I can scarcely keep myself in check.” Aidan sounded angry, frustrated, and at the end of his tether.

  The rise of Olwyn’s female jealousy cared nothing for his mood. In her mind’s eye, she could only see the silhouette of his erection beneath the thin sheet and the way his hand had moved over it. No, her jealousy didn’t care how annoyed Aidan might be. It sought only the answer to one question: “I mean, did the drug secure your affection for her, my lord, and enhance your time with her?”

  He laughed, harsh and bitter and full of self-mockery. “Aye, once, and ’twas a mistake I sought to make right with wedding vows.”

  “She drugged you before.” It wasn’t a question.

  His mouth turned hard in response.

  A long pause filled the air as Aidan seemed to weigh how much to reveal. He let out another long sigh, and said, “Tonight, I remembered the feeling and the metallic taste on my tongue, and was finally able to figure out just why I’d made that mistake with her in the first place. Lord help me, I did not make it again.”

  His lips softened, and even in the dim reddish light she could see the defined line of his upper lip, and the slightly fuller bottom curve. His eyes were cast in shadow, but she knew the dark blue of them so well that she saw them in her dreams.

  “Put your suspicions to rest, my love. There is only one woman for whom I burn, and she doesn’t need to drug me to light the fire in my blood.”

  He said he burned for her.

  “She is me,” Olwyn said softly, unable to keep from saying such an improbable and yet audaciously wonderful truth. “You burn for me.”

  “I do,” he said softly. “Only you.”

  “And you love me,” she added shyly.

  “I do,” he repeate
d. He smiled, his eyes on hers. “Only you.”

  “Oh my,” she whispered. The enormity of it all came upon her at once.

  He wasn’t letting her go, and she didn’t want to leave.

  Her knees grew weak and she took a few steps back, stumbling into the darkness. A memory flashed through her mind, stunning in its clarity, of the time she’d tried to escape her father and had been attacked by the dogs. Their teeth had torn her skin, their foaming saliva mixing with her blood, their barking growls mingling with her crying screams.

  “What’s wrong, Olwyn? Every time we talk about how we feel about one another, you grow pale and quiet.”

  “My father will stop at nothing to get me back. I had come tonight to warn you of the danger, and afterward I planned to run away, to never come back, and to never see you again, because I hoped to keep you and your family safe from the danger.” She saw him open his mouth to speak, and she quickly said, “I know, Lóchrann. I know, I know. You keep telling me, and I hear you. You will keep me safe, you will protect me, you want me here with you, and if I would have left you would have found me.”

  “All of that is true.”

  “But you are the one who is not listening. My father is coming, and when he arrives you may find I am not worth the trouble.”

  “Let me be concerned about that, Olwyn. For now, tell me this—will you stay? Of your own volition, will you stay with me?”

  It was her turn to sigh, her final surrender. “I will.”

  “Your word.”

  “I give you my word. I am now your problem, my lord, as will my father be. I hope you don’t regret it.”

  “Let me worry about me, Olwyn. And let me worry about you, too, aye? If you’ll let me look after you, I think you might find I’m rather good at it.”

  She closed her eyes, unable to keep looking at him. He clouded her mind, broke her rhythm, invaded her soul, and then consumed it, piece by piece until she belonged to him rather than to herself.