“But they’re each special in their own way. Eve is clever and confident in her abilities, and she’s the most even-tempered of all of us. She keeps the peace. It’s hard to truly rile her.”
“And the other?”
“Allie is clever too. Fiercely loyal. Almost dangerously inquisitive.”
“Is a curious lady a dangerous thing?”
“Not in my opinion, but she took some risks last year while Eve and I were here that I wish she had not.”
“Was she injured?”
He tipped a look her way and smiled. “No, thank goodness. It turned out well. In the end, she got a husband and wrote a book.”
Tess smiled, then pointed toward the tree in the distance. “There it is.”
The yew stood next to the ruins of what had once been a monastery, and perhaps, long before that, a site of pagan worship and ritual. Its long, gnarled limbs stretched wide, heavy with evergreen leaves.
“Good God, that trunk could fit a small cottage,” Dominic said, awestruck.
She could sense his excitement. The same she always experienced when approaching this tree that felt sacred in its ancient steadiness.
“Some say it’s stood here two thousand years.”
As they approached, Tess noted that the air felt cooler near the tree and oddly hushed. One couldn’t help but feel the need to show respect for such an elder, the keeper of so many secrets.
“This is the most extraordinary part,” she said, lowering her voice to show the aged sentinel reverence. She knelt at the base of the tree.
“A hollow,” Dominic murmured, as he knelt down beside her, his thigh touching hers.
“They say it’s a wishing hollow,” Tess told him, then gestured toward the interior. “See there. Those markings have always looked as if they might be runes to me.”
Dom bent to look inside. Even with the bright summer moonlight, the hollow was obscured in darkness. He ran his fingers over the spot she indicated then glanced back at her. “If they are, this yew has stood watch here for many centuries.” A smile curved his lips. “An extraordinary thing.”
“I knew you’d appreciate it,” Tess said with an answering smile. “But the tree has done more than merely stand watch. It’s listened too. They say if you press your hand inside the hollow on the full moon and whisper a wish, it will come true.”
“Have you ever told it one of your wishes?” he asked softly.
“Yes, a few times.”
For a moment, Dominic watched her so intently that she felt herself listing toward him, just as she had in the Walcotts’ library.
He leaned nearer too. She could feel the warmth of his breath against her skin. It was coming fast. Just like hers.
“What did you wish for, Tess?”
If she angled an inch closer, she could kiss him as she’d thought of doing back at Foxdene. As she’d thought of so many times since that first kiss.
The breeze blew a loose strand of hair across her face, and he reached up to sweep it back, tucking it gently behind her ear.
“You can’t tell your wish to anyone. If you do, it won’t come true.” Tess looked toward the tree, watching the sway of its heavy limbs, trying to steady the racing thud of her heartbeat. His nearness made her chest tight, not out of fear, but as if all the yearning inside her was too much to contain.
Yes, she’d told her silly, youthful wishes to the tree. Always some version of the same one: a wish to find love. A wish she now kept at bay with rational thoughts and work and the meticulous cataloging of old things.
The last time she’d given her heart, it had cost her that youthful hopefulness.
Yet this man, so appealing he made her mouth water, touched her with such gentleness that it undid her as surely as that one delicious kiss had.
“Shall I make a wish?” he whispered.
