Inexplicably, I thought of my great-aunt and a conversation when we were on safari, a night with the restless sounds of a pride of lions beyond the compound where we stayed.
“The females hunt and the males...do what males do, and protect the pride,”Sir Ellery, our host, had explained, as we sat before our tent, the sun slowly going down in a spectacular way.
“All that roaring about,”my great-aunt replied over a glass of her whisky that she had sent on ahead of our trip there, and a look over at me.
“Not unlike the human male. They bicker and quarrel, and somehow continue on…”
I had said nothing to her about the reason for my last-minute decision to accompany her and Lily to Africa. Even so, there it was. Greater wisdom over a bit of the drink?
Itwasthe whisky, I told myself as I struggled to breathe and he whispered in Gaelic. Words I had no idea the meaning of that slipped through the haze as his mouth found mine once more. And in spite of everything, that lion roar and harsh words that had pushed me away...I wanted more.
His beard tickled my neck as he tugged my head back, and his lips followed, teeth nipping, demanding, then giving, and I was certain that the French in this regard were highly overrated.
The kiss ended and we were both breathless, and the look in that dark gaze...as he took my hand and kissed the back of my fingers, just there at the ring I still wore.
“Will ye come to bed with me?” he whispered.
I knew what that meant after what had just passed between us.
The answer was there, I suppose where it began on a beach on the Isle of Crete with the hot sun beating down, in the north of Scotland with those simple words spoken before a magistrate, and even with the anger that had driven us apart.
He pushed the towel back from my shoulders. It dropped to the floor, and for just a moment I thought of that painting in Dornay’s atelier, the woman naked, reclined back against that chaise.
He picked me up and carried me to the bed.
It was the whisky, I told myself as my toes curled.
Sometime later, he retrieved the satin brocade quilt that had somehow ended up on the floor and pulled it over us, then wrapped his arm around me and pulled me against him. His hand moved over mine, his fingers brushing the ring on my hand. And there in the darkness, the ‘lion’s roar’ was gone.
“I know that I hurt ye. It was never my intent.”
I felt the deep breath he took against my back.
“When I told ye that I didna want ye to be part of the case, after what Abberline did and knowin’ the man, what he was capable of,” his voice trailed off, but when I would have said something, his fingers gently closed around mine, stopping me.
“Let me say it,” he whispered, and then was quiet for several moments. Gathering his thoughts?
“Ye were like a gift in my life, something good and true, something a man like me...and what happened all those years before…”
I heard that sudden huskiness in his throat and knew he remembered that loss when he was no older than Rory.
“My worst fear…” he whispered, “was that I might lose ye. There are things I’ve done, things I can bear,” he added. “But never that.”
He spoke of Rory then. “I thought, too, of him. And Lily, as well, in that dark cell. The commitment the both of us made, to be a family. If something was to happen to ye and with me facing the hangman’s rope, what would happen to them?”
It was the first time we had spoken of it after that horrible argument, and something quite extraordinary in a man, particularly a Scot, who was not accustomed to such things.
I fell the brush of his beard against the back of my shoulder as he pressed a kiss there.
“Ye are the strongest, bravest person, man or woman, I’ve ever known. Ye have a strength inside ye that few men have. With what Abberline had already done, I couldna bear the thought that he might hurt ye...Or worse, and there would be nothing I could do to stop him.”
I turned and laid my hand against his cheek, my fingers stroking through the soft beard there.
“You should have trusted me.”
“Aye.”
We were both quiet for a long time, but neither of us slept as I thought of what he’d said.
