Miss Antiqua's Adventure (25 page)

He gave her a quick kiss, then took her hand and for a time they continued on in companionable silence, each thinking of the other, of the joys and sorrows to be shared. At length, they crossed an arched stone bridge that spanned a looking-glass lake. Jack sat and then pulled her down beside him on a grassy knoll which crested the mirrored water. Leaning back against a tree, he laid his arm across her shoulder and idly wrapped a lock of her hair about his finger as they watched swans glide by, shattering the lake’s crystalline surface.

“Do you know, Antiqua dearest, I have all my life loved and resented this place?” He let her hair slip from his finger as she turned to face him. “It’s felt like home, yet I knew it could never truly be mine.”

Her heart ached for him once again, for the little boy who must have so often felt shut out, and for the man who had shut himself away from others.

“But now,” he murmured, “now I have discovered the one place that is truly mine, the one place I can never do without.”

“Where is that?” she asked, distracted by the sudden drop in his voice, the smile that heated his eyes.

Taking hold of her shoulders, Jack pressed her gently down into the grass. “By your side, my Brown-eyes.” He brushed a stray lock of hair from her cheek, touched his lips there and began kissing his way toward her mouth. “Only by your side.”

Antiqua knew then her adventure would never end.

Copyright © 2012 by Fran Baker

Originally published by Delphi Books

Electronically published in 2012 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.