Choosing the Highlander (22 page)

Last night had been so dark she hadn’t been able to see where her horse was going. Tonight, the moon illuminated their path, no less brilliant for its waning. And the stars—goodness, the stars! She couldn’t stop gazing at them. They looked so fat and bright, and there were so many of them they made the sky look like an inverted colander. The night sky back home didn’t hold a candle to this beauty, not even at her parents’ estate well outside the city.

“Lovely, aye?” Wilhelm had slowed Justice until she and Honesty came up alongside. She’d ridden his warhorse for most of the afternoon, but after they’d stopped for a meal and to rest the horses, she’d gotten back on Honesty, whom Wilhelm had declared calm enough for her to ride. He lifted his chin to look up at the bright canopy.

“It’s amazing,” she said. “Are we stopping for the night?”

“Soon.” They were in an open area of rolling hills matted with brown grass and scrubby growth. Here and there were copses of trees that might offer them some protection from the wind.

“I don’t suppose there are any share lodges out here.” She peered into night and searched for any regular structures that might be manmade. She saw nothing that looked remotely like it might offer shelter for anything larger than a rabbit or fox.

“Not that I ken.”

“So, we’re just going to sleep out in the open?”

The moonlight made his skin look like marble. When he grinned, creases formed in his cheeks, framing his mouth and reminding her how wonderful it felt to kiss him.

“Think you I would let my lady freeze in the night?”

“I’m yours now, am I?” She worked to fill the words with sarcasm, but it was an effort. They came out breathier than she’d intended.

He looked at her with lowered eyelids. “You are my lady inasmuch as I am your man.”

She wanted to find his possessiveness objectionable, but the reciprocity made that impossible.
I want you to be mine,
he was saying,
and in exchange, I will give you myself.
 

“Come.” He clucked to Justice and led the way between some hills. “I’ll find a dell worthy of a queen.”

She snorted and followed. His gentle humor helped ease her anxiety over Inverness.

Instead of worrying about finding her way home, she found herself more concerned for Wilhelm. Before, when he would talk about finding a magistrate to clear his name, he made giving testimony sound like a formality. She’d thought once a magistrate heard the truth about Ruthven, he would wave his lordly scepter and declare Wilhelm justified in his somewhat violent rescuing of her and Aifric. But today, Wilhem admitted he couldn’t predict the outcome so neatly.  There was risk involved that he hadn’t made her aware of before.

Wilhelm didn’t act overly concerned, but she had a feeling that was for her benefit. Things could go badly for him in Inverness. He hadn’t gone into detail, but Connie suspected he faced possible imprisonment…or worse. But he was choosing to go anyway because it was the right thing to do. Which of course only made her admire him more.

Just what I need. More reasons to be attracted to him.
 

Wilhelm simply couldn’t be found guilty of the crimes he was accused of. Scotland needed him. He was quite obviously a rising political star who could potentially bring necessary reform not only to his country but Europe as a whole.

If she had never come here, he would still be on track with his political goals. She had derailed them and possibly cost him his freedom or life.

Unacceptable.

“Oh, Con.”
Leslie’s voice piped up in her mind. Her twin’s imagined tone conveyed her utter disappointment that Connie was missing the bigger picture.
“Scotland needs him? Is that the real reason you can’t bear the thought of him being punished?”
 

She’d told Wilhelm she would not lie to him, but here she was lying to herself.

Leaving Wilhelm to return to the present day would tear her heart out, but doing so would be her choice. She could live with any choice
she
made as long as the motivation was good and the logic was sound. But the thought of him being forcibly taken from her flipped some switch in her heart. A light came on and shone directly on a truth that had been building every minute she spent with him.

I love him.
 

Scotland does need him. But I need him too.
 

That is why she couldn’t tolerate the thought of him losing his freedom or his life. That is why she would fight for him. If necessary, she would beg, cheat, and steal for him.

But would she stay in the past for him?

“Here,” Wilhelm said, halting Justice near a copse of trees with thickets of whitish wildflowers growing all around. He dismounted and strode to her with unmistakable heat in his eyes. “We will lie down here, and we will lie together for warmth.” He offered his hands to help her down.

She wanted this man with a need so potent it choked her. She dismounted into his arms, letting her body slide against his. Where she would spend her future was a problem for another day.

Chapter 19

Was this really only Connie’s second night with Wilhelm on the road? How was it she already took comfort in a routine they’d only established the night before? She didn’t miss her nightly news date with Dan Rather or curling up with a romance novel before lights-out. Something about undertaking tasks to ensure one’s basic survival satisfied her like no amount of passive enjoyment ever had.

Words weren’t needed as she and Wilhelm cared for the horses and prepared their camp. Wilhelm placed a brick of peat on a rocky patch of ground and built a cone of kindling around it. She fed the horses with grain from their saddle bags and prepared the parritch mixture that would soak up heated water and provide them a nutritious, if not exactly delicious, dinner. They did not communicate with words as they worked, but the glances they shared spoke volumes.

Wilhelm would look her way every so often with his moon-bright eyes that he did not believe were magical in any way.

She would catch herself smiling in return and biting her lower lip like a silly romance heroine.

Wilhelm would turn his attention back to his task, a satisfied grin on his face.

Her heart would swell with affection. Her body would soften with arousal.

This went on until Wilhelm broke the silence with, “Pass me your lighter, if you please, lass.”

She was in the middle of stowing their saddle bags under a fragrant bush with tiny white flowers, wondering at what kind of shrub this was to bloom in winter. Wilhelm’s words jerked her attention away from the plant. “What did you say?”

“’Tis what you call it, no’? A lighter? The fire stick in your traveling sack.”

Her heart pounded as the arousal in her veins turned to anxiety. How did Wilhelm know the modern word for one of her belongings? How could she have settled so deeply into routine with him that she forgot about the multitude of secrets she must keep from him?

He left the cone of tinder and rushed to her. Worry furrowed his brow, but his voice was gentle when he said, “You referred to it by that name at Ruthven’s.”

His hands found her shoulders, soothing her with their calming weight.

“He accused you of using magic to bring fire to life in the palm of your hand.” He smiled crookedly. “You called him an idiot—a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree—and you denied creating fire with magic. You said it was merely a lighter with a spark wheel and fluid inside.

“When Terran showed me your sack, I remembered your description and couldna help myself. I tried it.” He tilted his head as he grinned, an admission that he’d been snooping. “I’d recognized the truth in your words, that night, but ’twas with no small amount of relief I used the lighter and saw for myself ’twas naught magical about it. ’Tis simply an ingenious device made of materials not common here in Scotia. To think your people have access to instant fire using somat a tenth the size of a tinder box.”

His gaze was soft on her. He didn’t have a single confrontational molecule in his body at the moment. He told her with everything he was that he hadn’t intended to spook her, he didn’t want to interrogate her.

It should feel like a violation, him going through her things so thoroughly. But she understood why he’d done it. She would have done the same in his place. In fact, the idea of a fifteenth-century Scot playing with her Bic lighter brought a smile to her lips.

I guess I didn’t need to keep the first aid kit hidden from him.
 

“If you like it, it’s yours,” she said, fetching it from her bag. “But use it sparingly. Once the fluid runs out, it won’t work anymore.”

She placed it in his hand, relieved he didn’t seem to think she was a witch or that the things in her bag were magical. He went about things logically. He wasn’t one to sensationalize circumstances or to misinterpret facts based on suspicions.

Scotland needed more men like him. And fewer like Ruthven.

He wrapped both his hands around hers and the lighter. “My thanks, lass.”

To her, the lighter was a small thing—it had cost her less than fifty cents—but the intensity of his gaze showed that he was deeply touched.

“What shall I give you in return, I wonder?” Curling one arm around her, he insinuated his large body against hers.

She’d never before applied the word
delicious
to a man, but that was the word that came to mind as a low rumble came from his throat and he dropped his gaze to her lips.

“You already gave me a horse. And you saved my life today. Those things are much more valuable than a lighter.”

“Mmmm.” He purred. Purred!

For the second time that day, she mentally cursed his armor and pourpoint because they kept her from feeling the vibration in her own chest.

“What you’re saying, then, is that
you
owe
me
, aye?”

One-handed, he lifted the swath of his great kilt over his head and draped it around her like a sash, using it to cinch her hips tight to his.

Last night in the share lodge, she’d watched Wilhelm take off his great kilt. She’d been surprised to see it was one long piece of tightly-woven fabric. He’d wrap himself in it three times for warmth before lying down for the night and had enough left over to bunch up for a pillow. Today, he’d used the wool as a cloak and hood to keep him dry and warm. At the moment, he used it to capture her against him so firmly her breasts mashed up against his armor.

“It would seem so.” Her voice went breathy.

Wilhelm wouldn’t doubt her receptiveness to whatever naughty plans he might have for her tonight. They would have to be his plans, though, because she didn’t want to challenge his physical boundaries. She wasn’t his wife, after all. Sex was probably out of the question. But he clearly had something pleasurable in mind. Maybe more of his kisses. Maybe falling asleep in each other’s arms.

Dizzy with the possibilities, she walked her fingers up his chest, once again wishing his armor gone. “How would you like me to repay you, good sir?”

Goodness. Had she actually just said that? Flirting was a skill she had never possessed or cared to possess.
You have more of Leslie in you than you thought, Connie girl.
 

“Let me think on it,” he said. There was no mistaking the suggestive notes in his voice.

He grinned, then backed away from her, dragging the wool across her bottom as he went. When the fabric fell away, a shiver passed over every inch of her skin, and it wasn’t from the cold.

Wilhelm tucked the loose length of wool into his belt and stooped to light the fire with her gift. What a sight he made! An impeccably groomed Highland warrior using a Bic to start a campfire.

She chuckled to herself and felt happier and more carefree than she had since she was a teenager. Odd since they faced so much uncertainty in just a few days’ time.

Wilhelm set the pot of water she’d collected amidst the growing flames. When he glanced up at her, orange light made wicked angles of his face. With his eyelids lowered, he looked her up and down, leaving no question he was “thinking on it” and “it” would likely involve something that made them both happy.

As she joined him near the fire to help prepare their dinner, she suspected that whatever he asked of her tonight, she would do without question or hesitation. What a very long way she was from 1981.

#

Wilhelm could count on one hand the number of times he’d spilled his seed. The first time had been in his sleep after a dream about a milk maid at his family’s dairy. He’d been fourteen and newly interested in the fairer sex. Three times had resulted from lapses in the discipline he prided himself in and had all been by his own hand without desire for any specific woman. The fifth had occurred only days ago.

He’d lain alone in his room at the abbey after bathing Constance and given in to his lust for her. After the blissful moments of self-indulgence, he’d heard the bell summoning the monks to their morning prayers. He’d knelt by his cot to join them in spirit, but he’d had difficulty summoning words of contrition.

While the fire faded, Wilhelm removed his armor and pourpoint for sleeping. Constance watched him with hunger in her eyes. This pleased him.
Och, she
pleased him.

All his life, Wilhelm had striven to abide by the Scriptures. He’d read every page of the holy writings his father had collected with Anselm’s help, but his favorite passages were those that spoke of God’s justice. From an early age, he’d felt deep in his bones that he would be an agent of God’s justice on Earth. He’d accepted this as his calling.

With the same certainty, he understood that Constance was a gift from God. He was called to be her husband.

Furthermore, when he thought about Inverness, a sense of foreboding stole over him. In matters of importance, he always trusted his instincts. This day, his instincts were telling him he must make Constance his before arriving at their destination. ’Twas a truth in golden script emblazoned on his very heart.

In days of old, a man called to battle would take a bride in the hours before he must leave with his fellows. He would bed his beloved, surrounded by flowers, and speak vows to her with the solemn promise to repeat those vows upon his return from the skirmish. A man who returned from battle and did not keep his promise would be exiled. The practice was called “wedding by bedding.”