“What?” Skye murmured. “But—”
“Find him. Speak with him.”
Skye backed away from the desk. They had both gone mad, but Roc was out there somewhere. She could see him and touch him. She could cling tightly to him and tell him that there would be an heir to Cameron Hall. She could love him, before they could take him.
She stared at her father and the lieutenant governor, then she whirled around and raced out of the house.
“Milady!” Peter called to her, startled that she should be running out in her night attire. She ignored him. She burst from the house and into the day and down the slope. She saw the docks before her, and the family graveyard to the right, and she kept running upon the soft green grass. Her feet were bare, and she stumbled, but she didn’t care. She had to reach him.
“Roc!” she screamed. She raced far past the graveyard, and by the mound of oaks.
She saw him then. He was clean and bathed and handsomely dressed in fawn breeches and buckled shoes and a deep red frockcoat. His dark hair was unpowdered, but neatly queued. He rested a hand against a pine tree, and he looked out to sea.
Until he heard her call. He turned about, and his eyes came alight with a silver blaze, and his lazy, slow, sensual smile curved his lips. Perhaps he would have reached out to her. She didn’t know. She tripped and went stumbling down the slope of grass there, and fell at last into his arms.
“Skye!”
Her force nearly knocked them both over. He swept her into his arms, and down then upon the ground, in a bed of pine needles. He cradled her gently and searched her eyes while her fingers fell tenderly upon his clean-shaven cheeks. She gasped for breath, then kissed him. He arched his brow and brought his palm against her thundering heart. “My love—” he murmured.
“Aye, Roc, and I do love you!” she gasped. “I’ll not let them have you!”
“Them?” he inquired.
She could smell the sweet pine needles beneath her and the cleanliness of the river air. She felt both the sun and the shade of the trees, the birch and the oaks and the pines. She felt the searing warmth and sweet fire of the man, the silver blaze within his eyes. She held tightly to him. This was indeed his Eden. It was where his parents had come. It was a garden where a man could love a woman, and a woman love a man, far from the cares of the world.
“Oh, Roc!” she whispered. “We are, I think, I’m almost sure—”
“What?” he demanded, his arms tightening around her.
“We’re—we’re going to have a child.” His arms came like steel, warm and loving, and she spoke on quickly. “I don’t know whether Lord Cameron or the Hawk has fathered the babe, but Roc, I will raise him, I swear it, come what may! Yet I swear, my love, too, that I haven’t given up on his sire as yet—”
“I should hope not!” Roc said indignantly. “Oh, my love, a babe, really?” The tenderness in his voice tore into her heart. It brought tears to her eyes.
“Really, I believe. Now, Roc—”
His kiss cut off her words. It was deep and sweeping and sensual, and it enveloped and enwrapped her in splendor and warmth. It filled her with sweet longing and desire, and left her trembling in his arms. When he rose above her, the tenderness was still with him. “My dear lady, bless you. With all of my heart, madame, I do love you. You believe that now, don’t you?”
“Yes, I believe you!” she whispered. He smiled, and reached to her gown, tugging upon the laces at the bodice. The material fell away and he lowered his head against her, taking her nipple deeply into his mouth and laving it with his teeth and tongue.
“Roc!” she cried out, tugging upon his hair. “Stop, please, we must talk.…”
He spoke huskily against her flesh. “We’ve a lifetime to talk!”
“No!” She tugged fiercely upon him, drawing him back up to face her. He was a handsome devil, she thought. Handsome, strong, seductive. She could not bear life without him now! “No, Roc, now listen to me. We must think. We must find you legal representation, the very best. And witnesses, the proper witnesses.”
He was nuzzling her breast once again. Sensations blazed into her, but she fought them all fiercely. “Roc, this is serious!”
He groaned.
“Roc, they’ll hang you!”
His eyes fell upon her, wicked and silver, and hungry like a gray wolf’s.
“If I am a condemned man, then love me, wife!”
“Roc! You mustn’t—you must listen to me. Roc—”
“Have you ever seen such a glorious place?” he murmured, and again he spoke against her flesh. He edged her gown from her shoulders, and his words and kisses fell against them, then he moved lower as he stripped her completely in the bower of pines. “It is Eden. Feel the breeze, love, upon your flesh. Like my touch, I swear it. Gentle always, soft sometimes, with heady passion at others. Feel where the air touches you where my lips have just lingered, the coolness against the heat. Hear the birds, my love? Sweet and never strident. Smell the earth, the verdancy, the flowers. Never so good as the sweet scent of you, never so provocative, yet always enticing.…”
