Mercifully, the mad pulse at his groin dulled to a distant ache, and James fell, finally, into a fitful sleep.
They began as flashes in the gray half-light of dreams, fragmented images, and his subconscious snatched hungrily at them. His body began to hum, as his fantasies slowly bloomed with color, and texture, and taste.
Magda walking toward him, inexplicably illuminated under a black sky. Her sheer shift rippled close against her breasts as she walked, nipples tight in the night breeze, and her arms opened to him, face open and serene.
Then Magda was in his arms, facing away from him, cradling his hands at her belly. There was a bright sun overhead, warming his shoulders and infusing him with a sense of equanimity, pleasant and right. The smell of her rose to him, a rich musk, and he became a hard ridge at her back. A knowing laugh was quiet and low in her throat as Magda turned to face him.
James stood, now in Montrose, looking out the windows of his room, watching the sun glint off the sea. He felt the distant rumble of the surf on sand reverberate through the core of him, and was content. He knew Magda lay on his bed at his back, heard her naked skin slip against the sheets. He turned to face her, a presence lingering bright just out of his line of vision.
Now she straddled James, finally naked above him, grass rustling at his sides, tickling the backs of his knees, the fresh smell of it filling his senses. Magda laughed, musical and joyous, and he reached up to cup her breasts. Her body was out of focus, but the feel of her was soft and full in his rough, callused hands.
It was dark now, and her image was robbed from him. But his other senses were amplified, and the sounds of their breath, heavy and close, filled his head. The scent of their mingled bodies and the velvety expanses of thigh and stomach sliding under him raised him to a fever pitch. Her wetness enveloped him, and it was like succumbing to some primal force, hot and magnificent, drawing him in to drown. James pinned her hands beneath his and leaned forward to taste her, and the remembrance of her was a visceral thing, her breath in his lungs, the rough and smooth of her tongue. A hard bolt of desire impaled him as he drove into her, ravenous and fierce with want.
And James was freed, finally, with glorious release.
He slept hard until dawn, when he was taken again by restlessness, images of Magda once again colorless fragments haunting his sleep. She had disappeared from him, and James was riding hard to find her. The Scottish Highlands stretched cold and desolate along the horizon as the crest of every hill, and the sunlight at the end of each stand of trees, brought glimpses of yet more emptiness.
And James rode on, hard, until he bolted upright from his nightmare. Awake, confused, body drenched and heart pounding, he asked, “What have I done?” as the emptiness echoed in his soul.
Chapter 17
Magda fingered the button, hard and cold in her palm. Curves of navy blue enamel formed a simple decorative pattern, thick and smooth atop the gold background.
“I don’t understand.” For the first time in her life, she’d been captivated by a man. Magda had found someone she admired, who was also capable of sending delicious shivers through her body. She felt connected to James. She’d found an easy intimacy with him that led her to believe that she could, for once, shed her armor to let a little life in. And he’d gone away, leaving her a button. What was she supposed to do with that? He was off, his death likely on the horizon, leaving her to navigate the seventeenth century with a button?
“Nor do I, lass,” Napier conceded. “Though I was fairly hoping you might be able to enlighten me.”
He took the button from her hand and held it to the window, and the late-afternoon sunlight shimmered along its surface.
“Our James, when he gets an idea in his head . . .” Napier shrugged. “We shall return to Montrose forthwith.”
She studied James’s brother-in-law. How his tight, upturned moustache exaggerated the sharpness of his features. His eyes, measured and earnest. It was a face that, she’d noticed, softened only at the mention of his wife.
“You’re anxious to get back to Margaret, aren’t you?”
“Aye,” Napier admitted. “I am that.”
“That’s nice.” She choked up, and turned as if to stare out the window. Magda had thought she had found someone too, but she had apparently been fooling herself. Maybe she’d imagined their shared connection. James had gone off, endangering himself once again for his cause. If he didn’t face his death on this foray, it was sure to come eventually. The thought made her tears spill hot on her cheeks.
Napier rushed to her side, and placing his arm gently at her back, he steered her to a chair by the fire. “Poor girl. I’m told you have a story for me. I’d hear it as we return to Montrose. I vow you’ll have my every effort to return you home, safely and soundly.”
“But.” Her voice wavered, uncertain. “I’m no longer sure I can go home,” she said, thinking how they’d been unable to track down Brother Lonan. Then she realized, even more so, she couldn’t go home because she had to know what would become of James. It had been slowly dawning on her that she needed to witness his fate for herself.
“Well . . .” Napier was flummoxed, and his generally impeccably genteel demeanor was no longer doing much to mask it. “We’ll get you back to my Margaret,” he announced, suddenly sure. “She will help us sort this to rights.”
Magda merely stared at her hands clenched in her lap.
“You’ll not fret, dear girl.” Napier spoke softly and surely. “James shall return to you, a king’s army at his back.”
She stood, chafing her arms by the hearth, greedy for the last of the fire’s dying heat. Magda knew she should rest—they were to leave for Montrose at dawn— but she wasn’t ready to lie down for the night.
James had said she should go home, but she knew now that she couldn’t leave him. He thought she was the one in danger, but Magda knew it was he who faced the greatest risk. She’d fooled herself, thinking it was merely the historian in her who needed to see it through, who wanted to witness history happen in real time. But now Magda knew the need ran even deeper. She had to stay for herself. And for James.
She had considered what it would be to turn from his fate. She could simply go home, choosing to read his end in the pages of history.
The thought sat like ice in her belly.
She imagined it, how she’d return to her time only to search hungrily for any painting, or book, or artifact that would tell his story, delivering him to her side. But reading history wouldn’t truly bring James back. The answers she’d find would leave her hollow, the pages at her fingertips, her might-have-been.
