Chapter Eleven
Many days later, somewhere on the Old North Road…
Better said, to Lucian’s mind, it’d taken more than one hundred kisses, the gods only knew how many loud and rumbling turns of the carriage wheels over ancient Roman paving stones, more nights spent at crowded and creaky coaching inns, and countless feeding, watering, grooming, and resting stops for the horses, for him to reach an inevitable conclusion…
Under no circumstances could he endure the remaining stretch of the long and arduous journey north without pulling Melissa into his arms, stripping the clothes from her lush and delectable body, and – finally – slaking the powerful lust he felt for her.
Without satisfying as well, his deep need to open his heart to her, declaring his love.
The truth was he didn’t want to wait until they reached Lyongate to marry her.
Indeed, he wouldn’t.
With luck, they’d finally put England behind them in a scant hour or so, crossing into Scotland with the gloaming. A perfect time, its soft, glowing magic ideal if he needed a bit of help persuading her.
Somehow he suspected aid wouldn’t be necessary.
She already liked kissing him.
He’d stopped counting at one hundred. He hadn’t stopped kissing her and imagined he could do so for a thousand years and not weary of her. She truly was the reason he’d journeyed to London. He hadn’t known it at the time, but he did now.
And he was grateful, more so than ever before in his life.
Just now, she leaned against him, her head pressed to his shoulder as she slept. Her ability to do so hinted at her Scottish half’s hardiness, for along with the thinning of towns, villages, and even farmsteads and cottages, the road was also wilder. The smooth Roman paving stones, ancient but still structurally sound, were but a memory, the ‘goat track’ he’d veered off on, was a different matter. Recent rains meant mud and water-filled ruts, along with the usual rocks that made the journey a bumpy one.
Even so, the great hills rising before them gleamed in the late afternoon light, and the boggy, rolling moorland they were now riding through made his pulse quicken. Each glimpse of black-glistening peat or stretch of heather set his heart to soaring.
Even the deer grass and rocky outcrops drove home that his beloved Scotland was near.
So close that he almost called to his coachman to halt so that he could fling open the carriage door, leap out, and run the remaining miles until he once again stood on Scottish soil.
Of course, he didn’t want to disturb Melissa’s rest, so he settled for simply easing up the window panel a bit more to enjoy a better view.
Unfortunately, the carriage hit a dip in the road at the same time, and the vehicle jostled, swayed, and bumped several times until the uneven track leveled out again.
“Mercy!” Melissa gasped, her eyes popping open. “I thought the earth was cracking open.”
“Just a dip in the road, sweeting.” Lucian slid his arm around her shoulders, steadying her.
She was already clutching his knee for balance, but her gaze was on the darkening moorland out the window, the ever-higher hills looming so near. Rugged, almost black in the fast-fading light, they were the northernmost Cheviots, the vast range of hills that marked where England ended and Scotland began. Or the other way around, depending on one’s journey.
“I see a star!” She leaned closer to the window, peering up to where the first one twinkled in the violet-shaded heavens. “O-o-oh, do you see it?”
“Aye,” he answered, dropping a kiss to the top of her head. “That wee star is winking down on Scotland, lass.”
“Scotland?”She whipped about to face him, her excitement doing terrible things to his Highland heart. “Are we there already?”
“No’ quite, but almost,” he told her, his gaze going past her to a distant croft house far across the moor.
Crouched low against the southern flank of huge, round-shouldered hills, the house’s whitewashed walls stood out like luminous pearl in the deepening twilight. Yellow pinpricks gleamed there, proving that someone within had lit candles for the night, and surely a peat fire as well.
Lucian didn’t know the croft’s owners, but he did know the house from passing this way.
It was the last house on English soil – or the first on Scottish, again depending on view.
Seeing it now made his heart swell.
He glanced at Melissa, her shining eyes almost making him wish he wasn’t Scottish so that he could experience such joy at seeing Scotland for the first time.
