Her heart thumped. “I had the impression that you and Miss Stewart might wed.”
“My cousin and my aunt like to think so. Amy thinks she can end what she calls Dundrennan’s silly curse. I could marry her. She is young, but a pleasant lass, and we would not be unhappy. But I do not love her in the deeper sense. She is a silly weething, and will not change. I am fond of her, and that is enough. Otherwise, I keep a distant heart.”
“Amy would always know that. It is sad.”
“It is,” he agreed. She sensed something raw, something lost, under the response. “Well, you have seen the Remembrance in moonlight, as you wanted.” He stepped back.
“Are you not curious to go inside?”
“Aye, but I will not cross through there if caution can protect someone.”
“It protects you as well, from the sting of Cupid’s arrow.” She said it lightly.
“I am impervious to that.” His words were not light.
She tilted her head. “Are you sure of that?”
He paused. “Oh, Mrs. Blackburn,” he murmured, and drew her to him.
His lips touched hers softly, and what plunged through her felt tender and quickly fierce as he kissed her. She gripped his arm for support, and he cupped her cheek with one hand, his mouth on hers in a slow, deepening kiss. She faltered, sank, held on to him.
As the kiss abated, she renewed it, hungry, craving more, not wanting him to step away. He groaned low and pulled her closer, so that she tilted her head back and drank in the kiss, his strength, his mystery. She felt with exquisite clarity that she wanted this, needed this desperately from him, only him, yet she did not know why. Her craving intensified, shivered down through her body. Had he urged more beyond kisses in the moonlight, she would have surrendered willingly, given him all, her very soul. The urge, powerful and real, felt astonishing.
Then he drew away. Cool night air woke her, dissolving the kiss as if it were a spell, as if she emerged from a dream. She felt breathless.
“Madam,” he said, his voice hoarse, “I took the advantage, testing my limits here. That was not chivalrous. I promised it would not happen again. I apologize.”
“It is not necessary.” She straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin. Why did she yield so easily to his touch? She had only met him recently, yet she felt as if she had always known and understood him. “The moonlight—can bring on a sort of madness, perhaps.”
Perhaps I am simply lonely,she thought.Perhaps he is too.
“Moonlight could be part of it. Let me take you back, Mrs. Blackburn.”
“Christina,” she whispered.
He repeated her name softly, warmly, and took her arm to guide her to the garden path. Once there, he removed his hand and moved slightly ahead. There was something protective in it.
Reaching the back of the house, he guided her through a side door, and they walked in silence to the shadowy foyer. Moonlight streamed through stained glass windows, bathing the space in magic. She drew a breath, paused.
“May I ask you something?”
“Of course.” He waited.
“You tested your limits out there. What did you learn?”
He leaned close. She caught the faint scent of spicy soap, felt the warm caress of his breath. Brushing his fingers over her brow, he tucked a loose strand gently back in place. She watched him, enthralled.
“I learned that if I ever fell in love”—he tipped up her chin—“it would be with you.”
“Oh, I see,” she breathed.
“Do you?” He kissed her again, so exquisitely that she felt like a rose blowing open in sunlight. Too soon, he let her go and stepped back. Inclining his head, he walked away down the dim hallway. The library door opened, closed.
She stood in the foyer, a hand flattened on her breastbone, a buttery trembling in her limbs. Turning to go up the grand staircase, she sank to a lower step in the dark satiny pool of her skirts.
She understood his fear of love. She feared it too, for a different reason. Love had not been kind to her, and she had never wanted to venture along its thorny path again.
But now she was falling in love with the accursed laird of Dundrennan.
