Rose sat amidst her mother’s finery, porcelain figurines, etchings, portraitures, silver ewers, gowns, and laces. She clutched a gown with silk blond lacing that resembled spun gold.
Her mother’s hair had been the color of gold.
“I remember so many of these things.” With eyes closed, she breathed in the faded lilac and knew now why she so loved springtime. “I thought I had forgotten. Everything.”
Mrs. Simpson held a small portraiture of her mother cradled in her palm. “You have her face, my dear. She loved you so.”
Rose lifted her tear-stained face. “How can you know?”
“How can any mother not love her child, lass?”
The door opened and Ruark entered. Even at this later hour, he still wore the thick leather jack and boots she had seen him wearing in the dining hall, though he had removed the fencing gloves. His hand on the doorknob came to a sudden halt.
Rose came to her feet, as did Mrs. Simpson. “I will see you in the morning,” the elder said.
After Mrs. Simpson left, Ruark walked over to her,his deep blue eyes filled with gentle concern. “You are crying. Why?”
She shook her head. “I am happy.”
The back of his finger caught a tear. “Is this happiness, love?”
“We must get the rest of what he has,” she said. “We must. If it entails him visiting here, what can be the harm if he will bring the rest to me?”
“This is the harm, Rose. To see what this is doing to you. He is not here for your happiness.”
Unable to bear the intensity of his gaze that came with the tender brush of his fingertips against her cheek, she laid her hand over his and looked down at all her mother’s beautiful things. “I know. I know.”
She did know. More than anyone, she knew her father never did anything without a reason, without intent. But what could be the harm in allowing him to see her just one more time if it meant ...
She looked up into Ruark’s face, beseeching. “He did not have to do any of this. Yet he did. Why? Why would he do this? Why now? I don’t understand. I don’t deserve this from him, Ruark. Howcanhe ...? This has something to do with your visit to him.”
He wrapped her protectively in his arms. “Rose ...”
She ignored the hard, flat tone of his voice. Stepped out of his arms and faced him with her palms on his face as she forced him to look at her. Her courage wavered. He had done something. Once again, he had brought this fight to his doorstep because of his actions. But whatever it was he had done, he must have passionately believed it was the right thing to do. She knew that much about her husband.
She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him equally as passionately.
“What happened in Mawbray?” she asked.
He stared at her. A finite second. A heartbeat no longer. “TheBlack Dragonis sitting in the shallows of the Solway Firth burned to her waterline,” he said. “I sank her rather than hand her over to Hereford.”
Rose’s jaw dropped open. She couldn’t begin to form words around her thoughts and looked away.
Sadness engulfed her. She looked around her, then back up at him.
She leaned her cheek into his palm. She felt the ring on Ruark’s finger and felt more than the warmth of his flesh, and then she remembered what Mrs. Simpson had said about the ring that long-ago day in her cottage. “What you think you want may not be what your heart wants, and nothing great is ever accomplished without sacrifice.”
She kissed him. Wrapping herself to him. He spanned her chin with his long, hard fingers. “Hereford thought that by trying to take theBlack Dragon, he was taking what meant the most to me,” Ruark said into her open mouth, walking her backward into the wall. “He was wrong. I needed him to know that.”
He bracketed her with his hands. “I needed him to know what he threw away. I needed him to know that he had no more power over you and that you were mine.”
He laid his palm against her chest. “I feel your heartbeat, Rose. Here. As if it were my own, as if something has been returned to me that I lost many years ago. I have struggled to understand. I only know I live in fear of losing it.”
Rose wound her arms around his neck. “Have I not convinced you that my heart is freely given?”
’Tis only a ring,she told herself as his mouth slanted across hers with an urgency that equaled her own, and he gave her his own brand of magic that shimmered around her and made her float.
Picking her up in his arms, he carried her into his bedchambers.
