Duchess of Mine (42 page)

She pushed him away. Well, she tried, but he
wouldn’t let her go.

“Stop it. Just stop it.” Another tear fell
from her perfect wide orbs. “You’re killing me.”

He kissed her again. Hard and unrelenting,
but he hoped it conveyed his passion for her. His love. Feeling wet
against her cheeks, he cupped her visage as he deepened the kiss,
wiping the tears while slowly pushing his tongue in her mouth, so
warm and so inviting.

Until she bit him.

He flinched and looked down at her angry
face.

He’d been so scared to say it:
I love
you.
Terrified that if he did, then she’d vanish. Only, now he
knew she felt it too. So why was he still so afraid?

The answer was a whisper of a memory of
loving his mother so much, telling her so, then Albert pushing him
far from her. He remembered feeling that somehow the words were a
curse and had made his mother feel too burdened, too overwhelmed.
And because of that, she’d disappeared and become a shell of the
woman he’d known as a bairn. He’d thought it had been his fault,
even though he’d been so angry at Albert. But under all the pain
and resentment, he’d always blamed himself.

Somewhere in him, a little lad had loved his
mother so fierce, and she’d tried so hard to do the right thing,
but he’d wound up alone anyway. As much as he knew he loved Fleur,
he was so scared of admitting it, finalizing the curse.

But a petal-soft breeze murmured to him to
stop believing he was the cause for so much suffering. Magic
existed, the magic of love.

He didn’t kiss Fleur. Instead, he broke his
self-imposed curse. “I love ye, Fleur. I love ye so much.”

Another tear of hers escaped and he gently
wiped it away, angry though because his rough calloused finger
caught against her soft cheek. Still, she grabbed his hand and
cuddled it against her visage.

“Tell me again.”

“I love ye, Fleur Anpoa. Ye are my heart, my
whole heart.”

“One more time.”

He chuckled. “I love ye.”

“I love you...so much.” This time she reached
up on her toes and kissed him so hard and powerfully, it nearly
knocked him over. But he held fast, wrapping his arms around her
thin waist.

The sound of sniffing finally filtered
through his senses, and he pulled away from the kiss, glancing at
his audience. The muses were both crying, and even Coyote kept
clearing his throat and blinking.

Erato beamed at him. “Good. That’s decided
then.”

“I don’t think the man’s decided one thing,”
Coyote said.

Clio took a step forward. “It’s a decision
for both of them.” She smiled and seemed almost shy. “Fleur,
Duncan, your future is your own, your choice. You may stay
here—”

“Where history is prone to remedy itself and
force Duncan into a slave camp in the Fever Islands.” Coyote folded
his arms across his chest, giving Clio a dark look. “That’s what
you’re forgetting to tell them.”

Clio rolled her eyes. “I’m not completely
cruel. I would have given them some hints.”

Coyote rolled his own eyes. “And they call
me
the trickster.”

Erato stood by her sister. “My sister and I
are governed by our laws, buddy.”

Clio nodded and smiled at her sister. They
winked at each other.

Then Erato glanced back at Duncan. “I have to
tell you, if you choose to go back to Fleur’s time, I insist you
help give your brothers
glimpses
too.”

Fleur squeezed his hand. Looking up at him,
she smiled, but then tilted her head at the muses. “So if he comes
to my time, he’ll be able to see his brothers again?”

Clio bit her lip, while Erato nodded.

“And he’ll live longer than the one year he’s
supposed to live in the Caribbean?”

This time both muses looked to the heathered
ground.

“The one rule we have is we’re not supposed
to tell mortals about their deaths,” Coyote answered seriously.
“Obviously, we’ve broken that several times over.” Then he leaned
close to Fleur’s ear. “He’ll have several grandchildren before he
goes, and it will be with you, all wrinkled at his side, when he
does.”

Duncan thought the news wasn’t just for
Fleur’s ears, because he’d heard the whisper clear as day. It
filled him with something so beautiful and warm, he didn’t know
what to do, except to grip at Fleur all the more. That was the only
thing keeping him from falling apart and crumbling into a pile of
sentiment, her hold on him. Oh, Jesus, who was he fooling? He was
already a pile of passion, poetry, and love.

“Coyote!” Clio barked reproachfully.

The man just shrugged, then slowly slanted
his face with a crooked smile. Clio couldn’t seem to help herself
but smiled back at him. Then Erato too. Lord, the man had some way
with women, er, whatever they were.

Fleur looked up at Duncan, gently touching
his face, careful around what was torn and tender. “What do you
think?”

He laughed, but her face grew serious.

“No, Duncan, you do have a choice here. I’ll
go anywhere you want to go. If you want to stay here, I’ll stay.
I’ll go wherever you go.”

“Why on earth would I want to stay here?” He
chuckled. “Granted, I’ve grown to love Durness now. But I have a
future with ye. I have a future where I can learn more about yer
science. I have a future where I can see my brothers again. But
more than any of that, did I mention I have a long future with ye?”
Suddenly, he sucked in his mirth and glanced at Erato. “Rory. Rory
MacKay needs to pay for what he’s—”

“As you’ll soon learn,” Clio said, “Rory will
be hunted by his brother. He goes to England for sanctuary but is
an outcast there too. He tries to go to his mother in France, but
lands himself on the wrong boat where he winds up in the Floridas,
indentured to a Spanish lord for the rest of his very short life of
only three months after that. He dies from typhoid.”

Duncan sighed, but then cracked a wide grin
at Clio. “Rule breaker.”

She looked up at the still twinkling early
morning stars. “Well, that’s
his
death, not yours. It’s very
complicated, the rules. You mortals wouldn’t understand.” Waving
him off, she shook her head with a chuckle. “Okay, so I break the
rules from time to time.”

“Yeah, she does.” Coyote’s voice was dark and
sultry.

Clio rolled her eyes yet again. “Anyway,
what’s it going to be, big guy?”

Duncan smiled down at Fleur. Opening his
mouth, he was suddenly cut off by a rough voice.

“I think before he makes up his mind . . .”
Greggor suddenly started to move and roll his shoulders, then shake
his head, as if he were tired of being frozen for so long. And his
accent shifted slightly to something more...Scandinavian. “We have
some talking to do, girls.”

Clio’s dark red brows knit together. Erato’s
mouth hung ajar.

Greggor loosened his muscles more and stood
close to Coyote who studied him with furrowed dark brows.

“Hey, how’s it going?” Greggor asked Coyote.
Then in a heartbeat Greggor suddenly transformed into Coyote. He
looked exactly like the other man, except Greggor still had his icy
blue eyes.

Coyote’s own eyes narrowed. “Oden, I should
have smelled it was you.”

The other Coyote laughed. “Insults? After all
I did to ensure Fleur stayed safe while she was abducted?”

Coyote narrowed his brown eyes and shifted
into a blond longhaired man with black leather brais and a long
black tunic cinched in with a belt. Complete with fur-trimmed
boots, the man looked like an ominous Viking of yore.

“Nice,” the blue-eyed Coyote nodded. “Now
you’re looking better.”

“Stop it! Just stop it!” Erato yelled,
pleading with her arms stretched out. “Not in front of the
humans.”

Both men looked at Fleur and Duncan. It was
then Duncan noticed he’d taken most if not all of Fleur’s weight in
his arms. She stood with her eyes wide and glassy and then looked
up at him.

“Did you just see what I saw?”

He nodded.

Then the bickering men shifted again, the
blue-eyed Coyote shifted into the blond man’s form and Coyote
transformed back into his own. Fleur gasped, and Duncan held her
closer.

“Anyhoo,” the blue-eyed man, supposedly Oden,
said. “Before you go about turning Duncan’s brothers’ lives for the
better with your
glimpses
, it’s time you addressed another
issue.”

“The World War I flyboy you dropped in Rome?”
Clio asked with an arched brow.

Oden winced, but then straightened and
narrowed his eyes at the muses. “I’m not the only one dropping
people in different times. You have to figure out what you’re going
to do with Dr. Meredith Peabody before you fix Duncan’s
brothers.”

Erato bit her bottom lip. “We didn’t mean to
keep her there so long.”

“It was just a joke,” Clio said.

Greggor, er, Oden shook his head. “Some joke.
She’s nearly insane, you know that? Not very nice, girls, to drop
the woman off in the Montana Territory during the wild West era,
which she knew very little about.”

Clio scoffed. “What about you? Your
doughboy’s been in Rome for years.”

Oden shrugged. “He asked for it.”

“Because you got him drunk, and he didn’t
know what he was asking for,” Coyote added.

“Like you haven’t done that before.” Oden
glared.

Coyote smiled. “I’m not judging, brother. I’m
just telling the girls how it is.”

“Shut up!”

Duncan stared down at his wee Fleur, so proud
of her for saying something. He would have, if he weren't afraid
Thor would appear next and strike him down with a lightning
bolt.

“Shut up already!” Fleur huffed. “I have had
almost a month in the Highlands where I’ve fallen madly in love. As
well as gotten kidnapped and almost killed a couple times. Now, if
you don’t mind, I want to go, wherever Duncan wants to go, and make
love for a few hours, get drunk, and try very hard to pretend you
all don’t exist.”

“But my brothers . . .” Duncan reminded
her.

She looked up and nodded, then regarded the
muses and gods again. “Yes. Okay, we would love to help you crazy
jerks with Duncan’s brothers’
glimpses
.”

“There’s my girl,” Coyote said with a
smile.

Duncan leaned closer to Fleur. “Should I
punch that man, er, god, for saying as much?”

Fleur shook her head and looked up with a
wide smile. “No, he’s more like my grandfather than anything
else.”

Oden laughed hard at that, but Clio and Erato
stepped closer to Duncan and Fleur.

“I’m so happy you found each other, you found
love,” Erato said with tears filling her eyes again.

“So what’s it going to be?” Clio asked.

Duncan looked down at Fleur. “My future is
with her, my heart, hopefully my bride soon. I belong to her time
now.”

He saw from his periphery that both Clio and
Erato lifted their hands, then they snapped. And the world went
very dark.

Chapter 36

S
oft, soft cotton sheets surrounded
Fleur. Not the prickly woolen plaids she had gotten used to. She
almost sobbed when she realized as much. But the comprehension of
where she’d woken, what time, crashed through her reflections, and
the single most important thought she had was about Duncan. Where
was he?

Opening her eyes, she was back in the little
bed and breakfast Rachel had checked her into at Tongue. Bright
pink and blues stung her eyes as the late morning sun drizzled into
the open windows. But Duncan! She needed to find Duncan.

Suddenly engulfed by two giant arms, she
sighed a breath of relief. She hugged his massive muscles for a
long moment, tears surfacing, then turned into his embrace, her
breasts meeting his wall for a chest. She softly giggled.

“You’re here. You’re really here.”

“I wouldn’t be anywhere without ye.”

They held each other for what might have been
hours.

“I was so worried that Coyote might have
tricked us and separated us.”

He whispered into the top of her head. “I
think the guy has gotten a bad rap.”

“Bad rap?” She looked up, amazed at his
jargon.

He smiled. “I learned a lot about speaking
modern English somewhere between then and now. I thought ‘twas just
a dream, being taught ‘bout current events, but there I was: in a
classroom with a chalkboard; me, wedged in a too small desk with
Erato and another sister of hers, Urania, both of them wearing
glasses, though I doubt they needed ‘em. They showed me book after
book of current events, teaching me ‘bout computers and the like,
and how to sound, well, normal. And gave me enough time to heal my
face a wee bit.”

Fleur moaned as she glided her fingers over
his red whiskered cheeks. “You do look good.”

“So do ye.” He feathered his fingertips along
her jaw. Somehow she no longer felt the sting of her bruise. It
must have healed too.

She stretched her smile wider. “And I’ll have
to thank Erato for leaving your accent alone.”

“Should I work on that? Do I sound odd?”

“If you do anything to your brogue, I really
am going to kill you. That’s one of my favorite parts about
you.”

He slowly smiled and ground his hips against
hers, where his erection pushed against her thigh. “Any other
favorite parts?”

“Oh, yes.” Chuckling, she pushed him over
onto his back and sat astride him, his length pressed right where
it ought to be. She shuddered and almost gave in to her body’s
demand, sliding him inside. But she held back for a moment to tease
him. “So many favorite parts.”

“Show me,” he said as he cupped her breasts,
making concentrating very difficult.

Frisson, light and happy, stuttered her body,
and she couldn’t help but sway against him, feel his hardness
against the so-very-aware apex of her legs. Tilting her head back,
she rocked against him again, but then opened her eyes to look down
at him.