She felt rather than heard his chuckle. “Must I grovel at your feet to convince you of it? Such a drastic step would exacerbate my male pride far more than tender words do. Besides, you should have more confidence in your own value, my love, and you need to develop some faith in me, as well. As I have in you,” he whispered huskily in her ear. “I never doubted your words of love, never thought that you voiced them hastily or without truth and I still don’t. Believe that this was meant to be. Destiny, if you will.”
“Destiny?” Hero pulled away to look up at him. “I’ve read Plato’s thoughts on the matter. That humankind were once androgynous creatures split in half to create man and woman and that we move through time with something missing in ourselves, seeking what will make us whole. That ‘destiny’ will draw you or lead you to your other half. Your soul mate. Are you speaking of that sort of destiny, or something more benign? Because, given what you have told me of your life, it isn’t a philosophy that I had thought you would embrace.”
“In truth, I never did. The idea grated against my very masculinity.” He shrugged. “I was always a far more avid advocate of Plato’s lesser known philosophy that ‘love is a serious mental disease.’”
“Truly a more acceptable ideology for a bachelor.”
He laughed, the warm affection in the sound and the embrace that accompanied it somehow as profound as his words of love. “Aye. But I won’t be a bachelor for much longer, will I? I will be a husband in love with his wife. Firm in my belief that fate brought me to Cuilean for you and assured that Plato was far more clever than I ever gave him credit for.”
She sighed happily, reaching up to caress his cheek. “You once asked me why I wanted to come back to Cuilean, and there was much more to my answer than anticipation alone. I always felt from the moment I saw this place whatever awaited me in life I would find here. The anticipation was in waiting for whatever that was. I was waiting for you.”
Turning his head to kiss her palm, Ian drew her close and bent his head to kiss her gently. The words emerged easily this time, “I love you, Hero.”
“And I love you.”
“Now that we have gotten that all straight, I think we should …”
A pained bellow broke the silence around them and Hero felt a bolt of fear seize her. She looked around her, seeing nothing but peaceful nature. Suddenly frantic, she tore away, spinning from side to side. “Papa? Ian! Where is my father?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Papa!”
“Harry!”
Hero could hear Ian shouting in the distance as she hurried up the stairs of the pagoda, searching each floor anxiously while he circled the area on foot.
Where could her father have gone? Oh, she should never have let him out of her sight. How long had they been talking while he wandered away? How far could he have gotten? That yell hadn’t sounded too far off.
She reached the top floor of the pagoda to find it empty but the small room had windows on all six walls, and she rushed to them, searching for some clue from this higher vantage point. Rushing to the northern views, she could easily see through the trees to the northwest where the parklands melted into the great lawns around Cuilean and to the gardens. To the east, she could see Ian striding quickly through the sparse trees where the park merged into the thickening forest of the woodlands. His shouts for her father muffled through the glass as he looked behind trees and up into them, thinking that her father might have climbed or fallen. To the south, the trees would give way to the orchards but she could see nothing more than a hundred feet away.
Directly west, past the tree line, more than a quarter mile away there was nothing but open land to the firth, and with a horrified cry, she saw her father hanging precariously from the side of one of their horses as it raced toward the cliffs.
Dashing down the stairs, she screamed Ian’s name and he turned, running back to her. Breathless, she pointed to the west, her panting gasps inaudible over the pounding of her riding boots on the wooden bridge as she crossed the creek. “He’s on horseback but it looks like he’s collapsed. Please, Ian. Hurry!”
But he was already gone, running past her in long strides to where they had left their mounts tied. He was astride and kicking the horse into motion before she was even halfway there. She tried to watch what was happening as she ran to her horse but her viewpoint wasn’t nearly as good as it’d been in the pagoda. She could only pray that Ian made it to her father before the horse reached the cliffs.
Gasping for breath, she finally made it to her horse, but without a mounting block or groom, she was nearly helpless in the long, trailing skirts of her riding habit. With tears of worry and frustration blurring her vision, she looked around her but found no fallen trees, no stumps to make it easier. Gathering her skirts high around her thighs, she shoved her left foot into the stirrup before dropping them so that she could grab the curved pommel on the saddle in both hands. Bouncing for momentum, she swung her leg up and over the saddle with a sob of relief that she made it.
Kicking Colleen into a gallop, she raced westward. As she broke through the tree line she saw them. Ian bent low over his horse at a full gallop in pursuit, his arm extended and reaching for the reins of the other horse. To her relief, he caught them and both horses began to slow. But then her father slid to the opposite side and started to fall. Ian reached for him, but the distance was too far.
Hero cried out as her father hit the ground. Ian pulled up and leapt from his horse before it had even stopped. By the time she reached them, Ian was bent over her father, who was lying prone on the ground.
Pulling her prancing horse to a halt, she slid off the indignant creature and ran to her father. She dropped to her knees by his side. His eyes were closed and blood leaked from a gash on his forehead. “Is he…? Papa?”
“I fell,” Beaumont whispered crossly, opening his eyes. “Can you even fathom it?”
Hero blinked at that, taking his hand between hers. “But are you all right, Papa?”
“Fell from a horse,” he shouted, as if that single point precluded his ability to be well.
“I think he’ll be fine,” Ian assured her as he wiped his handkerchief across a cut on the duke’s brow. “Just a few cuts. I could find no broken bones, though he may have sprained his wrist when he landed.”
“Thank God.” She dropped her head weakly against Ian’s shoulder. “I was so frightened. I thought for certain he was going to go straight over the cliff.”
“He could have.”
“Ifellfrom a horse!” Beaumont repeated, his body bowed so taut that his feet rose from the ground from the effort.
