A Rose in Splendor (21 page)

He did not answer, merely smiled at her in a way that fed the fragile blossom inside her. When he pulled her down beside him, she did not resist. When he released her, she instantly missed the warmth and strength of his touch.

To her surprise, the grass was slick with dew, its texture unusually luxuriant beneath her hands as she spread her skirts to cover her ankles. It was springy and supple, the rich deep green of springtime.

“Why do you frown,
acushla
?”

Deirdre raised her eyes to his face, struck once more by the beauty of his eyes. They were clear and vivid blue against the golden skin stretched tightly over his cheekbones. He smiled at her, and because the smile would not be denied, she smiled back. “Do you always wear black?”

It was a forward question, one too personal for a lady to ask a gentleman, but he seemed not to mind. “’Tis a noble color.”

“’Tis no color at all,” she answered. A portion of her mind recoiled at her breach of manners, but another part, the part that was in control, urged her on. “Black is the absence of all color.”

“A philosopher,
acushla
?
If black is not a color, then what color is a moonless night? What color is your deepest
fear? What color is the soul of a man who has lost all he loves best?”

“You are in mourning?”

“Aye.”

She looked for any sign of sorrow or sadness in his face but she could not see past the quiet intensity of his gaze. “Did you lose someone very dear to you, your wife, perhaps?”

“That question is unworthy of you,
acushla
,” he answered.

She looked away, faintly annoyed by the amusement in his tone. In the distance, on the river, mist now obscured all. Even as she watched, the tops of the trees on the opposite bank disappeared and mist rose to form ragged peaks like those of the tumbled granite mountains of west Munster. The drumming inside her head which had abated when MacShane touched her returned.

A shudder passed through her and she looked quickly away. “Black is the symbol of bitterness, emptiness, coldness,” she challenged.

“As a child had you no liking for licorice? Does not blackness fill every unlit place? Is not the warmth of burning coals stronger than that of the flame?”

He had bested her with her own words and she knew it. “You have the better of me, sir. I stand corrected.”

His laughter startled her. She never expected so rich or powerful a voice of mirth from this man. The years fell away from his face, and the lines of tiredness and bitterness and sadness disappeared. When he looked at her again, there was nowhere to look but straight into the cerulean fire of his disarming gaze.

“I thought you were a dream, all these years a dream,” she confided shyly.

“I was,” he said, rising from his elbow to sit. His words were low and deep, the lilting brogue recalling another time and place. When he reached out a hand to touch her, she knew she should draw back; but there was no place to go, no other place she wished to be but here, with him. He gathered a windblown curl into his palm and crushed it, smiling as it sprang back and jumped from his hand.

He was so close that she could see the pulse beating at his temple and the few silky black hairs that rose above the open collar of his shirt. His hands moved to her shoulders and his palms were warm, the only warmth in a day gone suddenly gray and damp. Behind his black head the sky was pewter. A faint drizzle had begun. Droplets trembled in his hair and clung to the long curve of his ebony lashes.

“It’s raining,” she whispered in surprise.

“Nae, lass, ’tis only a soft kiss of the old sod,” he answered. His gaze lowered at last from hers and fastened on her mouth.

“I have dreamed of you,” Deirdre heard herself say and wondered if the words were true.

“I, too, have dreamed,” he answered. “I dreamed of a winsome lass with unruly golden curls and sea-green eyes. She was a wise and brave and strong woman who saved my life.”

Deirdre shook her head. “I am not the lady of your dream.”

Disappointment flickered in his eyes. “Are you not, lass?”

The drumming in her head doubled in intensity and Deirdre sighed in pain. “I do not know,” she said, shaking her head from side to side. “I cannot remember.” Yet, she did know, not why or how, but that she had been there in his dream.

“Shh,
acushla
,
do not weep,” he said softly, drawing her closer until his cheek rested against hers. “I did not mean to make you cry.”

Deirdre drew back from him. “Why, why have you come here?”

He grew very still and suddenly she was frightened. She had asked a question to which she did not want the answer. She looked down. “No, do not tell me.”

He lifted her chin until she was forced to look once again into his eyes and read the answer that she both feared and desired.

She knew that he would kiss her. She drew a quick breath, tried to make her mouth less tremulous than it was…and failed.

She failed, too, to prepare herself for the feel of his mouth on hers, the warm hunger and sweet fire of a kiss unlike any she had ever known.

The kiss deepened and the drum of pain within her was replaced by the thunderous pounding of her heart. He tasted of green grass, and she shivered deep inside to the languorous stroke of his heat-drenched tongue across her lips.

When at last he lifted his head, she could not draw breath and kept her eyes closed against the devastating effect of his kiss.

“What’s this,
acushla
,
have you never been kissed before?”

Deirdre opened her eyes to his gentle laughter and thought of Cousin Claude and the half dozen other young men who had dared press their mouths briefly to hers.

“No, I do not think I have,” she answered with wisdom of her new knowledge of a kiss.

“Good,” he answered and pulled her to him again.

They lay in the grass a long time, his mouth on hers, his hands on her shoulders, one long black-clad leg thrown across hers as though he feared she would flee. But Deirdre had no desire to move an inch, unless it brought her closer to him.

Finally, he rose away from her and lay back on the grass beside her and they both stared at the misty day about them.

“I did not know that kissing could be like this,” Deirdre admitted after a few moments, too timid to turn and look at him.

“Like what,
acushla
?”

“Like fear and joy, Christmas Day and its anticipation all rolled together.”

“Aye, ’tis like that,
acushla
.”

She smiled to herself. “Why do you call me ‘darling’?”

From the corner of her eye she saw him roll onto his side to face her. “What could you have me call you?
Madilse
?”

My love
.
Deirdre trembled inside. “Kiss me again.”

“No, lass.”

Confused, she turned to him and met his serious look. “You’d nae like it if I kissed you again.”

“Why?” she whispered, already suspecting what his answer would be.

“There comes a price with joy, and though I do not think you’d be sorry now, later you might come to regret the price you’d pay.”

Deirdre closed her eyes against the stark beauty of his face. It was a dangerous moment.

“Aye, dangerous currents tug at your skirts,
madilse
,”
he said quietly, as though she had spoken her thoughts. “Only the bravest venture into the strongest currents. Ladies do not set sail upon strange seas.”

Deirdre opened her eyes and once again met his gaze. She had heard of lands to the south where the sea was a deeper blue than the sky, where green and sapphire currents ran together in a warm flood of beauty. She felt the tug of those currents as she gazed into his eyes and she wanted nothing more than to launch herself upon that sea tide in his gaze and go where he would take her.

“You think me a coward,” she whispered.

He touched a finger to her cheek and then traced the sensitive bow of her upper lip. “Nae, I do not think you a coward. The lass of my dreams would dare anything if her heart ruled that it be so.”

She understood at last what he meant. This was her choice, and her responsibility. Greatly daring, she reached up and touched his face. “Kiss me again, Killian. Please.”

He did not kiss her at once. He continued to trace her mouth with a callused finger, and the strange, spellbinding motion sensitized her skin until the sweet abrasion became a torment. “Please,” she whispered raggedly and hoped that he would not laugh at her.

He did not. His face was unsmiling as she opened her eyes. There was a new tenseness in him; it carved caverns beneath his cheekbones and intensified his eyes, which were shaded by a heavy fringe of black lashes. He was as expectant and perhaps as wary as she of the moment that yawned before them.

And then they were past it, leaping the precipice as his mouth found hers.

Deirdre felt the burden lifted from her and joyously flung her arms about his neck. His hair was amazingly soft beneath the caress of her hands. The warm sweetness of his tongue slipped between her lips and she wondered if any woman had ever experienced this low, sweet flame that began burning within her.

Kiss followed kiss, meeting and melting until she no longer knew when one replaced another, until they left her dizzy and shaken. His hands framed her shoulders as he lifted and rolled her over, carrying her with him until she lay over him, chest to chest, belly to belly, and thigh to thigh.

With gentle insistence, he tugged off the jacket of her riding habit and then found the lacing at her back. The cool river breeze stroked her back as he parted her gown. She kept her eyes on his, drawing courage from his intense gaze.

He smiled at her, but there was no amusement, no glibness at her expense. He lifted her off and onto her knees beside him and sat up himself. Then he was pulling the gown from her shoulders and she found that she could no longer look at him. She leaned forward and embraced him, hugging her body so close to his that the gown could fall no further.

“Now,
acushla
?” he questioned softly. Then he sucked in a quick gasp and his fingers tightened on her right shoulder. “The rose!” he whispered, and bent to place his lips against the red mark.

The flame leaped within her as the fiery heat of his mouth touched her cool skin. His lips moved from her shoulder to her neck as his hands slipped her gown lower, leaving their scalding impression. And then he lowered his head and took a nipple gently between his lips.

Deirdre shut her eyes, making a soft murmuring sound deep in her throat as his tongue coaxed unnameable sensations of pleasure from her flesh. Tears rose to her eyes with the strangeness of the feeling he stirred deep inside her. He
was a wizard, a magician who brought her a joy too profound to give speech.

The world dropped away, day becoming twilight, summer rolling back to spring. As he laid her back in the dewy grass, she breathed deeply of the air about them and knew she would remember always the smell of grass and mist and the scent of his body.

He moved more swiftly now, pulling the gown from her hips and then stretching out to cover her with his own naked length.

His skin was smooth; and as she rubbed her hands over his chest and shoulders, she wondered why she had expected a man’s skin to be hard and callused like his hands.

Yet, one part of him was hard, and hot, and pulsating with the urgency of the life within him. When he touched her with that life, slipping it inside her, it took her breath away; and she thought she would die well quit of the world in that instant.

But he was not yet done. The strangely gentle yet hard urging of his body on hers demanded a response she did not believe she possessed. Despairing, she twisted her head from side to side.

He caught her face in his hands and, bending, placed his lips on hers. “Open to me,
acushla
,”
he said against her mouth. “Feel my joy within you. Take from it. Make it your own.”

And she did. Wave after wave of pleasure broke over her, flooding her from breast to belly with sensuous joy. MacShane’s strong body rode hers with superb skill, urging her again and again to the unutterable ecstasy of fulfillment.

Afterward, he rolled over and pulled her tight against him, hugging her head to his shoulder. He did not speak again and she was too content and too awed to do so. After a moment, the finger tracing the lobe of her ear stilled and his breath deepened, and she knew that he slept.

All about them it was cool and dark, and yet inside herself she was warm and content. She did not think she had ever been so alive, so awake within her skin.

It came as a distinct shock when an insect tickled her
nose and a sneeze sent her bolting upright and she realized that she had been asleep.

The sun was beating down on the riverbank, the grass hummed with insects, the river’s smooth surface reflected all the bright light and color of the summer day…and MacShane was gone.

Deirdre jumped to her feet, stunned to find herself alone. She was dressed just as she had been when she left home, the lacing of her gown as tight as Brigid had made it. Her anxious gaze ranged across the open field until she saw the silhouette of her horse still grazing under the tree where she had left him. The mist was gone, the clouds, the rain. The crisp tough grass crunched beneath the tread of her feet.