Island of the Swans (45 page)

Finally, she reflected, she would have time to
think.
Finally, there’d be time to sift through the jumble of emotions that had tormented her in the last few days. She tried to push from her mind Thomas’s vow to see her once more. So many events could intervene to prevent his coming to Kinrara. The sensible side of her nature told her she had problems enough, and she prayed he would never appear.

Jane measured out the tea and poured several cupfuls of scalding water into a small stoneware pot from the cauldron that Flora had provided on the hearth. She delighted in serving herself and reveled in the first privacy—devoid of both family and servants—that she had enjoyed in years, perhaps in her entire life, she reflected.

Jane sipped her tea and stared into the fire. Its warmth and darting flames compelled her to do nothing but gaze into its incandescent embers for well over half an hour. When she had finished her tea and had nibbled on an oatcake and a slice of the grouse, she undressed leisurely in front of the fire. After some initial difficulties escaping from her stays without Nancy’s help, she slipped into her soft cambric nightdress and dragged the linen mattress across the floor, plumping up its straw a safe distance from the glowing grate.

Wrapping herself in one of the many thick woolen plaids left by the Grants, Jane felt the tension continue to drain from her body. The patches of sky visible through the two small windows grew dark, and a moon the size of a dinner platter rose over the soft hills that encircled the shieling.

Jane snuggled down in her makeshift bed. She would wrestle with the dilemma of Alex tomorrow, she thought sleepily. Tonight, all she wanted was what surrounded her at this moment: the peace of her second home, Kinrara.

She awoke several hours later with a start, her heart racing. As she lifted her head off the mattress, the metallic sound of the door latch snapping open pierced the silence. A tall figure stood framed by the threshold, moonlight pouring over his shoulder. From her line of vision lying on her linen pallet on the floor, it looked like a giant, come to stalk the earth.

“Jenny… Jenny, ’tis me… Thomas… don’t be frightened…” a voice said softly.

Jane could see by the way Thomas glanced anxiously around the room that the brightness of the moon bathing the Spey Valley made it impossible for him to see clearly inside the darkened cottage.

“I’m here, Thomas,” she answered softly, “in front of the hearth.”

Thomas turned toward the sound of her voice and quietly closed the door behind him, cutting off the path of moonlight that had led from the threshold to where Jane lay before the fire. With three quick strides he was kneeling in front of her, pulling her to her knees and enfolding her in his arms. He began to kiss her hair, her forehead, her cheeks, drawing away from her briefly to cup her face between his two hands. He stared at her as if she were an apparition about to dissolve before his eyes. Then he threw his arms around her once more, clasping her to him and burying his hand in the chestnut hair tumbling down around her shoulders.

“You said you’d be at Loch-an-Eilean,” she whispered. “I spent all day telling myself I wouldn’t come to you… that I mustn’t come to you, or I’d be lost…”

“I was your shadow all the way from Culloden House,” he said into her hair. He raised his head and the two looked into each other’s eyes. “I watched the factor and his wife take leave of you and gave thanks to St. Ninian when your daughter skipped down the lane with your maid. I was going to go to Loch-an-Eilean and wait there, but I couldna, Jenny. I’ve waited for you so long—I couldn’t wait any longer.”

He had withdrawn his hands from her and only their knees were touching. Then, slowly, he raised his right hand and ran his fingers lightly down the side of one cheek, gently skimming past her neck, until he grazed the roundness of her breast beneath her thin nightdress. She felt her flesh stiffen. Suddenly, the ugly memory of Alex’s assault clashed with her instinctive response to Thomas’s tender caress. She shrank back, feeling her heart thudding painfully.

“Jenny…?” Thomas asked, immediately sensing the shift in the emotional currents flowing between them. “What is it, love?”

Her eyes searched his. She was touched beyond words by his look of concern. She felt the love they’d shared as children well up within her, blending with an undercurrent of passion she’d kept in check for years.

“Oh… my dear, sweet love,” she said softly, reaching up to run her fingers through his hair where the soft night winds of Kinrara had ruffled it. “There’s to be no more waiting this night, Thomas… no more longing for what we cannot have…” And no fear, she reminded herself, that Thomas would ever use physical dominance to wound her as Alex had done at Culloden House.

And, with a woman’s full knowledge of the consequences of her actions, Jane drew him to her, pressing her body along his, tilting her pelvis to revel in the fullness of desire she had aroused in him. She fumbled for the brass buttons on his scarlet uniform. Unmindful of her ministrations, he bent his head forward, smothering her lips, her eyes, her throat with kisses. Frantically, she peeled off his jacket and set to work on the line of buttons on his waistcoat. Thomas quickly dispensed with his other clothing. All her mind would admit to was a burning compulsion to feel his skin against hers, to cover his chest with kisses of her own.

The taper in the candlestick she had set on the stone hearth before drifting off to sleep gave a hiss, sputtered, and then gutted out, leaving only the tangerine glow of the low-burning fire to illuminate their litany of love.

Thomas’s naked body cast a giant’s shadow on the white-washed wall of the cottage as he tugged gently on the silk bow that closed the neckline of her nightdress. Jane’s eyes drifted back from the silhouette on the wall to Thomas himself. His fingers trembled slightly as he sought to release the fastenings on the front of her bodice. His knuckles pressed lightly against the fabric covering her breasts. Jane felt as if a warm, golden liquid were being poured through her veins.

She reached out to grasp his forearm in order to steady herself. Her gaze traveled down to his chest, which was sprinkled with auburn hair. Her fingers traced a line along the thick, knotted scar slicing into his left biceps. She leaned forward slightly and brushed her lips against it. Her hand strayed lower, encountering the ridges of hardened muscle on his abdomen. His waist tapered to slim hips, and her eyes drifted inexorably down toward his powerful thighs and the object of her consuming desire.

Thomas’s restless fingers had reached the last of the nightdress’s fastenings and he playfully captured her wandering hand with his own.

“Ah… minx… you’ll not be teasing me quite so much or you’ll miss the bounty I’ve been savin’ for you.” He gathered her other hand and, for a moment, gazed at her missing right forefinger, injured when they were both mere children. She felt a sharp intake of breath as he placed the stub on the jagged scar disfiguring his arm. “Our hurts are as one, now, Jenny,” he said, his bantering mood evaporating suddenly as he looked at her gravely. “Let our love heal these wounds.”

Slowly and with deliberation, he drew her nightdress over her head, tossing it aside. He sank back on his heels, his eyes devouring the sight of her naked form, which cast soft shadows opposite his silhouette painted on the far wall, bathed in amber firelight.

“Oh, God, Jenny… when I thought I was dying in that Pennsylvania wood, ’twas the thought of you that kept me alive. But when I came back and found you lost to me… I
wanted
to die! I cursed you for being my safe beacon home, only to lose you again at Loch-an-Eilean.”

“And do you curse me now, Thomas, for having been with Alex first?” she asked, her voice raw with the heartache they’d all suffered during those terrible months following her wedding to the duke. “Can you take me tonight and not punish me for it tomorrow?”

“There’s been far too much punishment to wish for any more,” he said soberly. He kissed each eyelid in turn. “You were right, you know,” he whispered, “about what you said to me on Swan Isle. There’s naught to blame… ’tis been hellish for us all, but ’twas no one’s fault.” He reached for her hand and pressed his lips against her palm. “You were just a lass when I left you… now you’re a woman. A knowing, loving woman. I suppose I must thank Alex for some of that.”

Jane sighed inwardly. Until so recently, what Thomas said had been true. Alex had taught her to welcome the physical side of love and had made her aware of what it was to be a woman. The rage he’d expressed upon the silk-strewn bed at Culloden House had been a perversion of everything her husband had shown her lovemaking could be.

Gazing on Thomas’s beautiful form kneeling on the straw-filled pallet, his skin golden in the firelight, she felt oddly humbled by the enduring love this roan-haired man had always held for her. She knew that she could put the memory of Alex’s angry actions at Culloden House to rest. No matter how harsh the blows of fate had been, Thomas would never punish her for the hurt he had endured. To do that would be to harm himself. She could never fear Thomas, and that knowledge was a healing balm for her soul.

Suddenly, she felt an overwhelming physical need for him that went beyond anything she had ever known.

“Thomas… please love me! Love me now!”

Slowly, as though he’d thought about this moment all his life, Thomas bent down and seized her lips with his, searing them with a deep, prolonged kiss. Before she could pull him to her on the pallet, he lowered his head to her breasts, brushing one with light feathery kisses as if to extract her very essence.

Jane was frantic to feel his weight upon her, but the pleasurable sensations called forth by his lips suspended her own desires and melded them with his. She buried her hands in his hair, threading her fingers through its garnet strands, and pulling his head even closer.

As if reading her mind, Thomas shifted one hand to encircle her waist, lowering her gently onto her back. Jane stretched her arms up over her head and stared at him boldly as he languidly surveyed her form. Gently, he separated her legs and knelt between them. He bent forward, hesitating for an agonizing instant at her navel, and then darted the tip of his tongue deeply into its recess.

Jane moaned softly and thrust her hands into his hair once again, pressing him close to her in a vain attempt to fuse their flesh.

“Jenny… you’re so beautiful… I—”

His words were lost as he moved his head lower… lower, nibbling and licking her flesh until she thought she would go mad. He called her to him in a way she’d never known and she felt no shyness nor shame nor shadow of another man—only the reality of the pleasure coursing through her. She was on the brink of an abyss. One more second of pleasure and she’d drown in the voluptuousness that was fast overtaking her.

“Please…
please
, Thomas… I want you—I want us…
please
!” she implored, tugging fiercely to raise his head.

In one fluid movement, he slid up the length of her body, hovering over her briefly, his shadow filling the opposite wall. In an instant he had entered her and Jane reveled in the feel of his flesh inside her, in the weight of him. Her arms wound tightly around his back.

“No matter what happens, we’ll have this moment always, Thomas,” she whispered brokenly, staring into his eyes, their lashes nearly touching. “The others in our lives who came before… we must bless them…”

“I do… I do bless them.” Thomas replied huskily. “But now, ’tis just us, darling girl… and what a wonder it all is.” He smiled, kissing the lid of each eye in turn while moving his body, gently at first, against hers. Jane responded in kind in a movement calculated to send shudders through them both.

“Ah… yes… two can play such wicked games, saucebox…” Thomas said gruffly, staring down at her with a rakish gleam in his eye.

“Yes… oh, dear God…
yes
!” Jane heard herself cry as Thomas buried his lips in the hollow at the base of her neck, calling to her as they hurtled, unafraid, toward a longed-for oblivion.

As if the winds off the moors were sighing in the trees, Jane heard Thomas whispering his love for her over and over in a kind of sacred chant until they both cried out for the pleasure and joy of the song they sang together.

The embers on the hearth crumbled to bare flickerings. No shadows danced on the walls, and a peaceful silence enveloped Kinrara cottage.

Thomas lay on his side, with Jane tucked, spoon fashion, into the contours of his body. He had wrapped them both in the thick, bark brown plaid, careful that no December drafts should chill them. Through the small windows facing the river, the first light of dawn painted a brush stroke of amethyst across the morning sky.

The distant call of a swan to its mate nesting in the reeds surrounding the crumbling castle on Loch-an-Eilean wafted faintly through the stand of Caledonian pines that marched up the glen beside the Spey.

“
Koh-hoh… koh-hoh…
”

Thomas winced slightly at the mournful sound and tightened his embrace around Jane, who slept in his arms like a contented child.