Island of the Swans (62 page)

J
UNE
1783

T
HE HILLS DOTTING
M
ARYLAND’S RICH BOTTOMLAND ROSE
gently from the banks of Antrim Creek. The moist earth was carved in neat furrows, and shoots of wheat were just beginning to peep above the ground. If all went well, thought Thomas, surveying the scene astride his dappled gray, the 1783 crop of wheat would be safely on its way to Jenkin’s Mill by autumn. Eighteen months of sensible management and an unofficial peace in the Colonies had made all the difference to the plus and minus columns of Arabella’s ledger books.

Thomas and Arabella saluted jauntily to the men weeding the northwest section of Antrim’s arable land, pressed their heels against their horses’ flanks, and cantered toward the stream.

“Race you to the creek,” Arabella said, her eyes sparkling and her lips pursed in what Thomas recognized was a familiar, provocative pout.

Thomas spurred his mount without giving her a gentlemanly head start, hoping to heaven he could best such a superb horsewoman. Their horses tore into the dense woods at a flat-out gallop. The oaks flying by them stretched up the hill on the left toward the small octagonally shaped summerhouse. The couple arrived at Antrim Creek in a dead heat and nearly overran the small, free-running stream that cut across the plantation. Both their mounts were well lathered, thanks to the warm June sunshine and their breakneck pace.

They had halted in a secluded glen where the creek flowed gently along a stretch of soft, mossy bank. Arabella jumped down from her mare and flung herself on her back, panting, her arms stretched out like a cross on a field of apple green velvet. Gasping for breath, Thomas slid off his horse and flopped down beside her.

“God, lassie!” he exploded. “No Scottish fox could ever keep ahead of the likes of you!”

Arabella laughed her throaty laugh and heaved a happy sigh. “Do you realize, Thomas, that if we manage to harvest what we’ve just planted, we’re going to be
rich
!”

“I think ‘rich’ is overstating the facts just a wee mite,” Thomas chuckled, chewing on a long blade of grass. “You could call Antrim Hall prosperous, mayhap… if we have a good crop again this year. But rich? No, lass, ’twould be stretching the truth too far.”

“But we’ve made the switch to wheat, when others strive for more tobacco, which only depletes the soil. This year, don’t you think, there’s bound to be a decent profit? What do you plan to do with your share?” she asked suddenly.

Her manner was bantering, but the strangely diffident look in her eye told Thomas she was asking more than a friendly question.

“I don’t really know,” he answered, rolling onto his knees and stripping off his jacket. “Depends on how long I remain your ’prisoner of war.’”

“Ah… I see,” she said, closing her eyes against a shaft of sunshine slicing through the leafy bower overhead. “I’ve heard nothing from Washington’s people, so… I guess you’ll just have to stay.”

“Cannot be forever, dearheart,” he said gently. “’Tis only a matter of time before the peace treaty’s signed.”

“So, you’re
serious
about returning to Scotland when the peace is official, are you, Thomas?” she said, opening her eyes.

Moodily, she flicked her horse’s reins along the soft grass beside the bank, avoiding his glance. In all the time he’d shared her home at Antrim Hall, she had made no reference to the future. Arabella was not a woman to be turned down twice when she asked a man to marry her. But her latest question led them into uncomfortable terrain.

“To a man, the Fraser Highlanders took an oath in ’75 that we’d disband at Perth when all this was over, and not before,” he said, dunking his head into the stream and trying to cool off. “And to that promise I must be true. And besides, Arabella, as a woman of property, you must surely understand that I must see to certain affairs, now that my godfather has died.”

A confusion of emotions invaded his chest whenever he thought of the short letter he’d received last May from Archibald Fraser. Simon’s half-brother had written to tell him of Simon Fraser’s death in February 1782, from some sort of disease affecting the heart. Thomas felt a strange combination of anger and grief when he recalled the man who had saved him from starvation as a child in the Highlands, who had scraped together the shillings to buy him his first army Commission, and who had so ruthlessly intervened against his desire to make Jane Maxwell his bride. There were so many unanswered questions regarding Thomas’s inheritance. Archibald had neglected to relate how—or even whether—Simon had provided for him in his will. Thomas
had
to return to the Highlands to see Struy House and Beauly again. And Louisa. And Jane…?

He pulled himself up short and splashed his face again with icy water. His gray hunter, its sides still heaving, sucked noisily from the steady flow that ran beside him. Suddenly, Thomas felt a pair of reins brushing lightly between his shoulder blades. Still scooping water with his cupped hands, he twitched, as something tickled his neck.

“You’ve soaked clean through your linen, Thomas,” Arabella said quietly, substituting her long, tapered fingers for her bridle. He shivered slightly with pleasure as she sketched seductive circles on his back. “I’m hot, too,” she complained.

Thomas brushed his face with his sleeve to clear the water out of his eyes. When he opened them, the snug jacket of Arabella’s riding habit was lying on the moss and she was unbuttoning the last closure of her cotton bodice. Her corset stopped short of her breasts, which strained against her shift’s sheer material. Involuntarily, Thomas felt his breath catch in his throat.

Sinking to her knees beside him, Arabella calmly dipped both hands into the stream and splashed water over her chest. Soon the shift was plastered to her bosom, her erect nipples clearly outlined through the cloth. For a long moment, the kneeling couple stared at each other in silence.

“Would you be of a mind to kindly remove your remaining garments?” he inquired with mock politeness, knowing full well such commands excited her. “And I assure you… I shall do the same in good time, dearheart.”

As Arabella shed the rest of her attire, Thomas gazed boldly at the full curves of her exquisite form. As she resumed kneeling in the grass, her smoldering dark blue eyes had their usual effect upon him. He felt a stirring between his legs and the familiar pounding in his chest. With lightning grace, she reached out and drew a line with her forefinger from the hollow of his throat, down alongside the fastenings of his damp shirt, never hesitating until her hand arrived beneath his waistline.

“Why, Captain Fraser,” she drawled with a wink, “I do believe your temperature’s rising.” The two knelt before one another, motionless except for Arabella’s hand slowly stroking his groin. “What a pity you’re not wearing your kilt, Thomas,” she added mischievously, narrowing her eyes to his waist and below. “’Twould make things so much simpler.”

Her hands strayed to his thigh and back again, continuing its agonizing, circular motion. Unaccountably, he found himself comparing her bold strokes with the sweetness of Jane’s shy touch that afternoon so many years ago when they had lain below deck on his hard bunk aboard the
Providence.
An even sharper image of Jane sprang into Thomas’s memo-ry—that of her kneeling in the moonlight in Kinrara cottage, crying out for him to make love to her.

He cursed inwardly and seized Arabella by the shoulders, smothering those pouting lips with his own mouth.

Will I never be free of this longing?
a silent voice asked as he commanded the vision of Jane to disappear.

Tremors coursed through his body, tremors reminiscent of erotic dreams, vaguely recalled. He drowned himself in Arabella’s cobalt eyes, willing their glowing intensity to pull him toward her and surrendering gratefully to the magnetism inexorably drawing their two bodies closer.

As soon as he had shed his clothes, Arabella pulled him down on the sweet-smelling grass beside the creek. He smothered her form with his, and found her damp breasts cool against his perspiring chest. Her lips opened like a flower in the sun as soon as he pressed them once more to his own. The soft scent of jasmine filled his nostrils, while unseen insects droned in tune with the stream gurgling over the amber-colored rocks.

Memories of other languid hours of lovemaking in this emerald wood drifted through his mind. Their particular magic had them in its grip, he thought with some relief. Arabella’s low, husky murmurs and the parting of her thighs signaled more strongly than words how much she wanted him inside her. Moving quickly, he entered her, a strange jubilation taking hold of him that he should have the power to bring her to such a state of rampant desire.

“Please, Thomas… oh,
please…
” he heard her cry.

He felt himself consumed by the heat of her incandescent passion. For his part, he knew it wasn’t love. At least, he had accepted the truth that Arabella would never have the hold on his soul he had granted to Jane. But her friendship and generosity this last year and a half, her frank appreciation for the sexual compatibility they shared, and yes, the love he knew she bore him were powerful aphrodisiacs, and their sorcery cast a kind of bewitchment on him. This time, all thoughts were, at length, banished from his mind, allowing pure, physical sensation to invade every fiber of his body.

Finally, there was only the sound of the clear spring runoff rushing over the stones in the creek that coursed past them. His own vital force flowed from him in an affirmation of life, challenging the shadows of death that had for so long been stalking him.

Some time later, Thomas and Arabella walked hand in hand toward the stable yard to the left of the house, with their horses plodding along behind them, secured by their reins.

“What do you suppose you’ll find when you return to the Highlands?” Arabella asked quietly.

“Poverty,” he replied, “but let us pray, not starvation.”

“I meant, what do
you
think you’ll find,” she said. “Do you think Simon has made you a bequest?”

“’Tis hard to fathom,” Thomas answered, handing the reins of Arabella’s mare and his stallion to a black stable boy. “If he knew he was dying, he might have left me some money… that is, providing he hadn’t spent it all buying his own lands back from the Crown. But if death came suddenly, ’tis anybody’s guess what I’ll find.”

“If the worst comes to pass, Thomas,” Arabella said carefully as they approached the path to the rose garden, “you’ll always be welcome at Antrim Hall.”

He stopped and turned to face her.

“Arabella,” he said, taking her chin gently between his fingers. “I can’t be making any predictions about the future… but one thing I
do
know… you’re a dear, dear lass to me, and you’ve seen me through two of the worst times in my life. I love you for that and I’ll never forget you.”

She looked at him strangely and then gazed off in the direction of a rose bed, riotous with pink and white blooms.

“You plan to live in Scotland, then,” she said finally.

“I don’t know the answer to that,” he replied slowly. “There’s always the chance I might return to live among you rebels.”

“Hmmm. As you’ve said, there’s no predicting the future.”

Thomas took her hand and kissed it.

“One thing you must promise me,” he said soberly. “If you discover after I’m gone that we’ve made a baby…
swear
you’ll tell me, Arabella.”

“Yes, of course I will. Though I think if that were still a possibility, ’twould have happened ’ere now. But yes, Thomas, I promise.”

Before he could reply, she walked on ahead. Then, abruptly, she turned to face him.

“Whatever happens, you can always come back,” she said suddenly. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had and I’d never shut you out of my life.”

He strode to her side and folded her in his arms, kissing her fully on the mouth.

“Oh, Arabella…” he murmured into her hair, still fragrant with the faint smell of jasmine. “I wish I was clear in my mind what our future together could be, but I have to go back.”