Julia London 4 Book Bundle (116 page)

Her hair fell like a curtain around them; she smiled seductively as she braced herself with her hands against his chest. “You’ve unleashed a beast in me, Arthur Christian,” she whispered, and began to move.
Ah God
, did she move. Arthur grasped her hips, pushed her down and tried to reach the heart of her. As his strokes began to quicken, she collapsed onto his chest, clinging to him, her breath hot and panting in his ear. “Reach for it, Kerry,” he muttered as he reached for his own.

The pressure in his groin suddenly burst into a thousand shards that poured into the warm pool of her body. In the fog of that shattering climax he heard her cry from somewhere above and felt her body convulse tightly around him, drawing the life from him. With a final, powerful thrust, a guttural moan erupted from his throat as he released the last of the life into her.

Gasping for breath, Arthur slid his arms around her body, holding her close. Neither of them spoke; it seemed to him that they were both quite simply stunned by the sweet sensation, the flame ignited between them. He stroked her hair, the silken skin of her back. It was several moments before he realized that the dampness of his shoulder was not perspiration, but her tears.

He turned his head toward her, but Kerry slid off him, burying her face in the crook of his arm.

He silently gathered her into his arms and pulled her back into his chest, wrapped his legs around her.

She said nothing, but her hand covered his that anchored her to him. They lay there for what seemed like hours to Arthur, each lost in their own thoughts, staring at the moonbeam streaming in through the window. When at last she spoke, he had to strain to hear her. “You must know that I love you.”

The admission hit him square in the gut. “No,” he said. “It’s just that it’s been a terribly long time since you—”

She stopped him by chuckling softly. “Arthur, a blind man could see how much I love you.” She paused; the
chuckle died in her throat. “Doona say anything. Just promise me that you’ll go before the sunrise, will you? And … and doona wake me. I canna bear to see you walk away.”

No more than he could bear to walk away.
He tenderly kissed the top of her head. “I promise.”

“And once you’ve gone home again, you’ll send word, promise that too.”

“I promise that, too.”

She sighed, a softly tortured sound that made his heart ache.

“Kerry … this has been an extraordinary fortnight. I shall never forget my experience here.”

“Then perhaps you will think of me from time to time.”

“Aye, lass, I’ll think of you; every day I’ll think of you,” he murmured into her hair.

She turned in his arms then, seeking his mouth. They made love again, slowly and surely, taking their time to feel one another completely, prolong the experience. She whispered her love again just as they reached a glorious fulfillment together. Only then did they drift off to sleep, entwined in one another’s arms.

Arthur woke well before the sun had risen, unable to sleep soundly. Thankful that she was such a heavy sleeper, he carefully extracted himself from her limbs and quietly donned his clothes—although he struggled with the restrictive waistcoat. When he was at last dressed, he picked up his boots and turned to gaze one more time at Kerry McKinnon. He stroked her long black hair, tried to brand the image of her in his mind’s eye, the same lovely visage he had first seen on a bed of pine needles in the Scottish forest, and one that he would carry with him all his life.

He longed to kiss her one last time, to hold her, to
hear her whisper that she loved him once more, but true to his promise, he walked out of the room without waking her.

He tiptoed to the kitchen, only to have the wits startled from him by Thomas’s presence—the ornery Scot looked half-dead. His head hung over a bowl of coffee he gripped tightly in his hands. He frowned when Arthur sat on the bench to don his boots. “Ye be leaving,” he said flatly.

“That I be, old chap.”

“Why, then? Ye seem to like it here well enough.”

Arthur smiled at Thomas as he worked his second boot on his leg. “McKinnon, I suspected you to be a sentimental goat all along. I like it here quite well indeed, but it is time I was about my business. I’ve an appointment in Dundee that must be kept, and my family will be expecting me in London shortly.”

Thomas snorted and slurped at his coffee. “Ye’ll not find such heaven on this earth as Glenbaden, mark me.”

“I know that,” he agreed solemnly and stood, helped himself to several biscuits piled high on a plate in the middle of the table, which he stuffed into a woven sack May had given him. He turned and walked to the door and paused to glance over his shoulder one last time. “You should try your hand at a little wandering yourself, Thomas. There are many treasures to behold on this earth that you will not find in Glenbaden. Mark me,” he said, and with a wave, walked out the door and into the cool early morning air.

And he kept walking, cutting through what was left of the barley field, his stride brisk and strong. He kept walking, kept forcing one foot in front of the other.

Not once did he look back, lest he crumble right there in the middle of this heaven on earth they called Glenbaden.

I
N HINDSIGHT, THE
journey to Dundee reminded Arthur of one of the bawdy burlesques that often played in Covent Garden, beginning with the stage right entrance of a little man possessing a manner highly reminiscent of the ubiquitous Richey Brothers. The troll had extracted a grand fortune from Arthur’s pocket for the dubious pleasure of floating down Loch Eigg on little more than a piece of wood.

From the southern edge of Loch Eigg, Arthur walked to Perth, where he was once again subjected to an outrageous price for a less-than-desirable piece of horseflesh, which required the last few crowns Arthur had in his purse. He would have to survive on berries and tree bark, he supposed, until he could reach Dundee and the Bank of Scotland where he had, fortunately, put away a goodly sum. How the Scots normally procured their horses baffled Arthur—in the two instances he had been forced to buy, the seller had reacted as if he were quite mad to want to
purchase
a horse. Which really should not have surprised him, seeing as how he had yet to see a horse he would deem a suitable mount. This particular one had a bowed back, clopped along at an excruciating pace, dipping and heaving, and responded so testily
when Arthur pushed her forward that he had named the old nag Thomas.

The journey to Dundee seemed to take weeks instead of days. For every hill Thomas managed to climb, there was another one just behind it, rising higher than the first. Worse, the mild summer weather suddenly turned foul. Thick gray clouds hung low and a cold, steady rain seemed to have no end. His disposition was hardly improved when he asked a farmer for directions to Blairgowrie. The man stroked his red beard very slowly, pondering the request for what Arthur swore was at least a quarter of an hour, then slowly extended a bony hand and an even bonier finger to the right.

And then he proceeded to explain his pointing with an accent so heavy and so quickly spoken that Arthur had no idea what he said. Instead of asking the farmer to repeat himself, he had simply followed the bony finger … in the wrong direction. A fact, naturally, he did not realize until he entered the same hamlet he had left just that morning—from the opposite end.

In the daylight hours—when he was in fact able to distinguish them from the night—he encountered a passel of odd people that convinced him he had ridden straight into the middle of a fairy tale. There was the young man he encountered digging a hole next to the road. He paused so that Thomas might have one of her seven daily meals and watched the young man. He in turn ignored Arthur completely, never broke his rhythm in digging and attended it so fervently that Arthur finally asked, “What, are you digging through to the Orient?” And he chuckled at his own jest.

The man hardly paused in his work. “No.”

“A well, then?” he asked, more seriously.

The man flicked his gaze over Arthur, but kept digging. “No,” he answered again.

The couple Arthur encountered near Lundie eclipsed that young man’s odd behavior, however. He had stopped to water Thomas, naturally—the old hag could
not walk more than forty feet without needing some sort of sustenance—and asked if he might let his horse drink of their stream. Upon hearing his accent, the woman clapped her hands and the man flashed a toothless grin at Arthur. They eagerly invited him to let his mount drink her fill, and just as eagerly urged him to come into their little cottage for a bit of stew while she did. At last, Arthur thought, a pair of Scots who actually
liked
the English. They had seemed perfectly normal, and he had gladly climbed down from Thomas, had walked into the cottage, expecting to find something as neat and cheery as May’s cozy rooms, but stopped dead in his tracks. The main room of the cottage was filled with the presence of an enormous cow, steadily chewing from a pile of hay.

With the exception of that batty pair, who seemed to think nothing unusual about having a cow in their cottage, everyone he encountered greeted him with a thinly veiled disdain every time he opened his mouth. A Sassenach was not welcome in these parts, that was made sufficiently clear to him. The more miles he traveled, the more he came to understand that the universal contempt of the English had less to do with history and more to do with the perception that the English were behind the wholesale push of the Highlanders from their glens in favor of sheep. The Highlanders that could, eked out a living selling kelp from grossly overharvested seas. But when the coasts became too crowded to support them all, many were forced to sell everything for passage to America.

Arthur had no idea if it were truly only English investors behind the sweeping agrarian change, but by the time he reached Dundee, he was beginning to dislike the English, too.

However, in Dundee, any sympathetic feelings he might have had for the Scots rapidly evaporated.

First and foremost, Mr. Jamie Regis, Esquire, had not deigned to keep his appointment, which irritated Arthur to no end. If there was one thing he could not
abide, it was for a man to give his word and renege. Jamie Regis had done exactly that in Arthur’s opinion, and
twice
if he were to count his negligence in performing the eviction.

He did not, however, count the eviction.

Secondly, he could not find suitable lodging in the town. There was no grand hotel, no coaching inn where people of the
Quality
might reside for a time. The Wallace Arms, the best Dundee apparently had to offer, was a dilapidated old building in which he would not have housed even his mount. In the days he spent waiting for the stout little solicitor, he moved from public house to public house—Dundee seemed to have an ample supply of them—in search of a room where he might sleep without having to listen to boisterous laughter and song all through the night.

Fortunately, he was able to ascertain from the only solicitor offices in town that Mr. Regis was expected within a matter of days. He sorely wished he might have known that earlier, as he had not been able to shake the thoughts of Kerry that had plagued him from the moment he had walked into the mist of the half-shorn barley field and left her behind. It was worse now—there was nothing to occupy him; he seemed to dwell on the image of Kerry lying naked in bed the morning he had left. To know that he might have stayed on … watched her sleep …

Lord God, but she was often on his mind during the lonely, uncomfortable hours he spent on the swayed back of the contrary mare, and his memory fared no better in Dundee.

At first, he tried to ease his mind by writing to friends and family. He wrote what seemed to be dozens of letters, each one detailing his experience thus far in Scotland a little better than the last. When he had exhausted his mental roster of everyone he would even remotely consider sending a letter, he took to wandering the narrow streets of Dundee. But the pungent scent of
jute and flax from the textile factories mixed with the heavy odor of fish drove him back to the public inn du jour, where he grew increasingly restless and increasingly obsessed with the fair memory of Kerry.

He dreamed of her. Night after night it seemed, her image slowly and steadily overtaking Phillip’s in the nocturnal visage of his mind. Kerry laughing, Kerry walking, Kerry just
being
there—and always,
always
out of his reach.

Just like Phillip.

After a few days of that, Arthur determined he must absolutely have a diversion while he waited or else he might literally lose his feeble mind to those dreams.

So he took up golf.

He had seen the strange game played a time or two in England, but in Dundee, he noticed entire troops of people marching out to the country, the hardwood sticks they used to knock the ball about stuffed securely under their arm. One day, he saw three young boys, each carrying three such sticks. Having nothing better to do, Arthur followed them.

They led him to the top of a grassy hill, where he could see some sort of course, which he learned the Scots called
links
, had been laid out among the sand barriers and hills overlooking the Firth of Tay One boy withdrew a small leather bag and placed it on the ground directly in front of him. Selecting one of three wooden clubs, he braced his skinny legs apart, put his head down, and swung the club at the ball. All three boys stood in silent, rapt attention as the leather bag arched high into the sun before landing in the middle of a water hole. That earned a cry of disgust from the boy who had swung the club and a round of laughter from the other two.

When a second boy took the place of the first, they noticed Arthur standing a few yards behind them.

By the time the sun had set that afternoon, Arthur had swung the club one hundred and fourteen times.

The next morning, he paced impatiently, waiting for the lads to appear, hoping that the black-headed one had remembered to bring along the stick with the hickory shaft and applewood head that Arthur had determined he preferred, along with the leather ball they called a
featherie.