Island of the Swans (46 page)

A log from the freshly stoked fire fell from the grate with a thud. The sound roused Jane from the depths of the most peaceful slumber she could ever remember. With her eyes still closed, she stretched her arms above her head and felt the heat from the crackling hearth warm her hands. Her shoulders felt chilled, however, outside the plaid blanket, and she realized, with a start, she wasn’t wearing her nightdress.

Jane’s eyes flew open. For a confused instant, she wondered where she was. She noted the rumpled bedcovers next to her and spotted her cambric nightdress folded neatly on a nearby chair. Thomas! It wasn’t a dream. She and Thomas had—

Even before her eyes searched the room, she knew with heart-thumping certainty that he had departed, having stoked the fire and having left her neatly folded nightdress as a teasing symbol of the passion they had shared the night before.

Shafts of morning sun slanted across the cottage floor, illuminating segments of the blue and gold Turkish carpets on which her pallet lay. By this time, she mused, Thomas would be rowing over to the derelict castle on Loch-an-Eilean, where, in their final, whispered words of love just before dawn, they had agreed to meet this day. She snuggled back under the warm covers, her mind full of sensuous reveries after so many years of longing and regret.

They had slept for several hours before Jane had been awakened by gentle but unrelenting kisses on her shoulders and along her spine. Thomas had buried his face in her hair near the nape of her neck. His lips nuzzled the back of her earlobes while he reached around to encase both her breasts in his hands. Jane blushed, remembering how he had made love to her a second time just as the purple light of dawn inched across the pine forests in the valley. Soon afterward, they had fallen asleep again, still linked by their love, driven by a thirst for closeness that had been whetted not slaked, by their joyful intimacy.

The sun rose steadily above the mountains flanking the valley. At length, the thought of Thomas lying alone at the abandoned castle nearby prompted her to rise from the warm cocoon of her makeshift bed and put on a simple blue gown. She laid out a cup for tea and sliced the bread with the knife left by Mrs. Grant. She drank the scalding liquid and consumed a bit of oatcake while searching her belongings for her writing case to pen a short note that she had gone for a long walk.

She threw a warm, thick tartan cloak around her shoulders, tucked the jug of Kinrara-brewed whiskey and several bannocks in a small sack, and struck out toward the river, searching for a shallow spot where she could ford the Spey. From her last trip to Loch-an-Eilean, she knew it was not more than a mile or so along the old logging path.

The unseasonably mild weather had held, and though the air was crisp, the sky overhead was a clear pale blue. Jane’s first glimpse of the Wolf of Badenoch’s crumbling castle, with its ragged sandstone towers standing sentinel over the lake’s smooth surface, prompted her to quicken her pace. Her heart raced at the thought that behind its forbidding walls was Thomas, waiting for her. She laughed giddily. He was probably exhausted and miserably cold, but with her whiskey and her love, she would see to his comfort, she thought with a smile.

As she reached the edge of Loch-an-Eilean, Jane commandeered one of several loggers’ bateaux that the factor always left moored on the loch until the onset of the first winter storm. She rowed across the narrow channel of water and around the steep, thick walls of the miniature fortress.

Two swans swam in agitated circles several yards from the stone dock where an arched entryway led into the castle’s court. Jane wondered if they were the same pair that had greeted her in early spring, almost eight years before. There were no cygnets trailing along behind and Jane surmised this year’s young were yet to be hatched. The nest was probably hidden in the reeds somewhere near the docks, since the large male emitted a series of throaty honks as she approached.

Reassured by the sight of a second small boat tied to an iron ring embedded in the castle’s stone dock, Jane darted through the weed-strewn forecourt. Softly, she called out Thomas’s name. He was not in the great hall or in a room Jane took to be the ancient kitchen, judging from the gigantic black cauldron tipped over on its side next to the hearth. She mounted the winding staircase that led to the rooms above the main floor. The stone stairs, as far as she could remember, led up to the tower.

She climbed the stairs with growing trepidation and peered into the first room to which she came. Suddenly, a bat flapped its wings and made a hasty retreat out the small window facing her. Startled, Jane caught her breath.

“Thomas… Thomas, where are you!” she cried uneasily.

“Here, Jenny, love… here I am,” a voice wafted toward her, “a poor excuse of a man, though I be, with sleep in my eyes…”

Trembling with relief, Jane dashed up three more steps to a small landing and peered into a tiny chamber constructed entirely of stone. Two slits in the thick walls afforded a modicum of light, which played across the barrel-vaulted ceiling. There was no furniture in the room, only a small fireplace containing a cheerful blaze. Jane stepped across the threshold and saw that Thomas was lying on a bed of pine boughs, wrapped in a length of tobacco brown Fraser tartan. He ran his fingers through his tousled hair and grinned.

“Ho there! I was quite exhausted from a recent encounter with a wicked wench up the lane… a lass from Kinrara. Perhaps you know her? Och! What a charmer! I quite lost my head over the chit, and have been sleeping it off since dawn’s light.”

“Aye… I know just the one you speak of, lad,” Jane smiled saucily, lowering her bundles of food to the floor and approaching his makeshift bed. “She’s a handful, to be sure! Are you certain you’re man enough for her, Captain?”

“There’s but one way to find out, now ’tisn’t there?” he replied, lifting the blanket in which he’d wrapped himself. “Come, darling girl…” He beckoned her with a grin. “Take pity on my frozen bones and lie here beside me.”

Jane sank to her knees, and parted her cloak so she could wrap her arms around him. Wrapped in the two long lengths of tartan, they felt as warm as they had the previous night.

“Last evening… ’twas like a dream,” she whispered between kisses. “And when I woke and you were gone…”

“I wanted to stay and greet the morning sun with you, but I feared…”

“I know…” She shushed him, unwilling at this moment of reunion to consider what the events of the previous night could mean. She nuzzled her lips against his throat. “I
am
wicked,” she whispered, inhaling the pungent freshness of the pine boughs he’d gathered for a bed. “All my feeble brain can contemplate is being near you… touching you—and you touching me.”

Thomas grasped her face between his hands and gazed somberly into her eyes.

“I can’t bear for you to come to harm because of our lovemaking, Jenny. I couldn’t get to sleep at first, for the thought of it.”

Jane’s heart filled with a boundless love for Thomas. She laid her palm along his cheek and kissed him tenderly.

“Listen well to what I tell you, Thomas Fraser of Struy. ’Twould be my heart’s joy if we created life together. ’Tis what I long for, more than I can say.”

“But Jenny—” he began, as she silenced him with another kiss.

“I’ve been thinking, too, my love,” she continued, “as I walked through the forest to Loch-an-Eilean. You leave for America in four months’ time, and who knows where this journey will end for you? If I can’t have you in my life, I’ll have your seed… I’ll have your bairn. ’Twill be a precious thing between us in this life or the next.”

“But, the duke… ’twould be of terrible consequence for you.”

“There’s no way to predict the future, Thomas,” she said cryptically. For a fleeting instant, she struggled to erase the image of the last time she and Alex had been together.
I may already be with child
, she thought soberly, staring into Thomas’s gray-green eyes. His brows drew together with concern. “You mustn’t worry,” she urged, “…or spoil the time we have together.”

“But Jenny, if you’ll forgive me for saying it—you’re a proven breeder, pet. You’ll be left to face the scandal on your own.”

“’Twill be no scandal, Thomas, I can promise you that!” she replied, “I’ve given His Grace an heir and daughters to boot; I’ve raised Bathia Largue’s child as if he were my own!” Thomas looked at her quizzically. “Alex was in love with the woman who took care of him during an illness, before we ever met. She had his child, but died when the laddie was a bairn.” Jane shrugged. “The Duke’s George is a sweet lad… Alex can’t find fault with me or with the way I’ve conducted myself these last eight years.” She gazed through the narrow window of their stone chamber. “Believe me, Thomas, there are many marriages at Court that have produced bairns born on the wrong side of the blanket! As long as there’s an heir to continue the line, there’s no great fuss, if matters are handled discreetly.”

She wondered momentarily whether Alex would be so sanguine about the thought of her bearing Thomas’s child.

“I don’t want any child of mine condemned to be a bastard!” Thomas answered hotly.

“Darling!” Jane exclaimed soothingly, holding him tightly and laying her cheek on his chest. “You must trust me. Any child of ours would forever be shielded from harm in my care.”

“I want you to know this, Miss Maxwell of Monreith,” he replied, raising her chin with his fingers so he could gaze into her eyes. “Since I’ve proven I’m a cat with nine lives, I fully intend to survive this coming skirmish against those ragtag Revolutionaries. I shall come back to Scotland to claim you and the babe, and
then
what will you do?”

“’Tis all speculation,” Jane said, shaking her head ruefully. “For me, ’tis enough for the moment that I’m in your arms, though I must say, I pray you’ll call on me at Kinrara cottage tonight, where the accommodations are more salubrious.”

Thomas kissed her nose and settled back against the pile of pine boughs he had bunched together for a pillow.

“You’re not pleased with my castle, m’lady?” he replied in mock indignation. “I’ve gone to great trouble to furnish it with the finest Caledonian pine and keep it toasty-warm—not to mention ensuring plenty of fresh air!” He gestured toward the open slits in the walls that served as windows, and laughed.

“’Tis not the
only
way to maintain one’s comfort,” she replied slyly, shifting her weight on top of him and straddling his thighs.

“Aye… that’ll do quite nicely, strumpet!” he retorted.

“Will this do as well?” she asked huskily, unbuttoning the few closings of her gown’s bodice and pulling it over her head.

“Excellently,” he breathed, his eyes devouring the fullness of her figure.

Jane was as aware as Thomas when it came to the presence of the mound of hard flesh straining against the woolen blanket covering his lap. Goosebumps began to dimple her skin.

“Lass, I shall take pity on you and invite you to remain in my warm lair,” he whispered with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, “but only if you shed your knickers!”

“I’m not wearing any, you randy rogue!” she retorted, divesting herself of skirt and petticoat. She slipped under the tartan coverlet once more. Slowly and deliberately, she began to kiss the smooth skin of Thomas’s shoulders, lingering on the jagged impression made by the deep scar on his arm. Her lips trailed down to the small aureoles nestled amid the claret-colored hair on his chest. She licked each lightly in turn, gratified at the sound of his sharp intake of breath.

Her only desire was to please him, to pleasure him as he had pleasured her. She began to move her mouth lightly across his abdomen, teasing the sensitive flesh until he cried for release.

“Aye, Thomas… I want that too… I want to give you the joy and love you deserve… that you’ve always deserved.”

Straddling his thighs while creating a kind of tent with the blanket and cloak draped around her shoulders, she positioned herself above him. Thomas looked up at her with a kind of awe. Never had he experienced a woman so demure and demanding all at once. Smiling gently, she allowed her body to envelop his.

“You’re exquisite…” he breathed, opening his eyes wider.

“I’ve always thought you quite the most beautiful of men,” she replied simply, settling her weight comfortably against his abdomen. Then she grinned. “Look how you’ve driven me to such wicked debauchery!”

“Do you have any idea what power you have over me?” he replied hoarsely, lifting his hips for emphasis, “I want you to know that, Jenny… that ’tis the same for me as ’tis for you.”

“I know, love,” she replied, unexpected tears catching in her throat.

Falling silent, she stretched herself along the length of him and gently began to rock, to and fro. Then, suddenly, the rhythm changed and she was no longer the rider and he the steed. The next instant she was on her back with Thomas’s weight full on her.

“Yes?” he cried, raising his head to gaze at her with blazing eyes.

“Yes!” She repeated the question, which was its own answer, because the wonder of it was that they were
one…
their pleasure was the same. Their cries of joy and tears mingled in the crystalline December air, their world enclosed by three-foot-thick stone walls, their love protected by the Wolf ’s lair and the lake below, guarded by wild swans. Whatever came after this moment, they both knew with a certainty born of pain, they were bonded for all time.