These were the moments Isolde liked best, she decided—cuddled against Tristan’s chest, talking themselves hoarse before the glowing fire.
“If I had kissed you that day in Montacute’s garden, would your lips have been as knowing as they are now?” he asked, his thumb pressed to her bottom lip, as if helpless against the urge to touch her.
“Wouldye have kissed me?” Isolde sat back, astonished.
He began systematically to remove the pins from her hair.
“Tristan,” she laughed, “ye be distracting me.”
“I adore your hair,” he murmured, continuing to remove her hairpins. “And I want to see it all. It was the first thing I noticed.”
“It is theonlything people notice. Poor Mamma. She was devastated when I inherited her coloring. She had hoped I would appear a perfect English rose. Instead, I emerged screaming and decidedly Scottish.”
“You were an angel in that garden. I could scarcely speak, your beauty stunned me so.”
“Scarcely speak?! Youflirtedwith me.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Iattemptedto flirt with you. But you flirted most expertly in return. You clearly had more experience with the opposite sex than myself.”
“Aye, perhaps. I had kissed a boy or two by that point—the primary word in that sentence beingboy; they were hardlymen.I was a scientist even then and had to assuage my curiosity on the subject.”
“And your conclusions?” He removed the last pin, sending her hair tumbling over her shoulder. He wound a lock around his fingers, studying it in the light.
“The act of kissing was pleasurable enough but not anything I intended to actively seek out.”
“Is that so?” He laced his fingers through the mass of her curls, massaging her scalp.
Isolde moaned, arching into the sensation.
“And do you still feel that way, Wife, now that you have experienced my kisses?”
She laughed. “Ye ken well that I adore your kisses. Have I not demonstrated the fact sufficiently over the past two days?”
“I feel the data on my own end are inconclusive,” he replied, voice deadpan, hand cupping her jaw. “It will likely require more research.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. In fact, we should begin conducting the experiment right now.”
“Tristan,” she giggled as he lifted her mouth to his.
Isolde meant to ask him about his father . . . about Rafe.
But then Tristan kissed her, and every other thought vanished in the delight of her husband’s lips touching hers.
The next evening,Tristan held Isolde before the fire once more.
He adored this, his wife snugged against his chest, her hair unbound and draping over them.
Somehow his life had shifted from a living Hell to the purest Heaven.
Their day had passed much like the one before it.
No ship, though they had seen several sailing boats at a distance.
“Eventually, someone will come,” he had said, trying to reassure them both.
He could not bring himself to speak of theSS Statesman.
