Waking the Princess (31 page)

Love.
She almost sobbed aloud. Entering Dundrennan, with its nearly magical weaving of legends and dreams, she had somehow been waylaid by love. She could not deny that to herself.

Pausing at the stairs, her hand on the newel-post, she remembered that Aedan had kissed her in this place, late one night. That melting, glorious power rushed through her again with the very thought, and she leaned her head against her hand and sighed out.

Straightening, she covered her face and attempted to compose herself. She would keep silent about her feelings, for she did not think they would ever be returned as she hoped, as she might dream. At least when she and Aedan posed for John, she could be close to him. In that fantasy world, her dream could exist, and she could be in love with him as the princess and he her prince.

But soon the dream would end, and she would wake one morning knowing that the time had come for her to leave Dundrennan—and Aedan—forever.

Chapter 20

Through the slick of heavy silk under his palms, Aedan felt the warmth of her body. He savored the feel of her natural curves under his fingers. She looked up at him, motionless, beautiful.

"Spectacles," he reminded her.

"Oh." Christina lifted the frames from her nose and set them on a table. Aedan gathered her close again, spreading his fingers across the small of her back.

"Good," John said. "Hold that, now."

Her hands rested on his chest, and she leaned into him, so that her torso met his, with only thin fabrics sandwiched between her belly and his. Her breasts were soft and full against his chest. Stirred and awed by the freedom of touch that their posing sessions allowed, he felt his body arouse and shifted his hips to retain his dignity.

Frowning, he felt tempted to throttle John for thinking up this situation. The posing sessions night after night for over a week taxed his control immensely. Her slight weight against him, her warm, firm body, the play of textures under his hands, the soft thickness of her unbound hair, all set him afire. He ached to kiss her as thoroughly as he had done before, burned to continue what they had begun the other afternoon in that ancient storage chamber. Her half-closed eyes and soft breathing, her subtle fragrance—flowers and warm woman—made these hours of posing sweet torture for him.

How long could he pretend that she meant little to him, that he was impervious? He felt tested beyond his mettle. Christina had seeped into every part of him—blood, bone, and being.

Yet he could not finish what had started between them. He knew that intellectually, though his blood and his heart urged him to pursue it and continue it far into the future.

"They meet secretly in her bower and are about to be parted," John said as he drew on the paper leaned against the easel. "The princess knows she must marry her father's choice for her, but she cannot bear to be parted from her Druid lover. They ache for each other. I want to show that."

He ought to throttle the lad, Aedan thought.

John seemed absorbed in his drawing, his chalk dashing as sheets of paper flew off the easel, slid untidily over the table. He began one new sketch after another, hardly stopping. Aedan had glimpsed elegant studies of faces, hands, and drapery, and several of full-length couples, their bodies joined like rising fountains, passion and love translated into fluid dark lines.

"Beautiful, that standing pose," John murmured as he glanced toward his models. "The princess gazes up at him with her heart in her eyes. The prince cannot resist her charms. They are enchanted, swept up in the magic."

"Oh," Christina said in a breathy voice. Aedan felt her desire, suddenly, like a flame stoking his own.

John came toward them, reached out to adjust his sister's gown. "Christina, it would help to see more of your shoulder here... a graceful, expressive line along the shoulder and throat. It's less than you'd show in one of your dinner gowns, actually. Good." He retreated to his easel.

Aedan had seen countless feminine bosoms bursting from countless dinner dresses, but he had never seen a sweep of skin as alluring as the slender curve of Christina's shoulder emerging from that drape of cream silk. He stood silent and motionless, though every part of him demanded he take her, kiss her, taste, touch, and thrust into her luscious body.

He cleared his throat and tried to angle his pelvis away from hers. Contact would be disastrous indeed, he thought, for he wore only a simple skirted tunic of red wool.

"Tip your head toward hers, Aedan," John said. "Better. Ah, the very picture of love." He nodded to himself as he drew.

Seeing Christina's eyes close in a sort of ecstasy, Aedan wanted to kiss her so much that he trembled with it. A light sweat broke out on his brow. This modeling venture had been a colossal mistake, he told himself.

The only sounds were the whisper of chalk over paper, the sputter of a candle, the sound of breathing. He thought he would go mad. His body heated like steel in a forge, and he could only stand there like a blasted statue.

"'Struck deep to her soul, the winsome creature smiled,'" John said after a while, reciting Sir Hugh's poem while he drew.

Grateful for the distraction, Aedan listened. John had a rich voice, and he knew the poem well. He understood its meter, its meaning, and every verse was beautifully inflected.

Aedan had not heard
The Enchanted Briar
spoken aloud in a long time and had not read his father's poem in years. Now, as John's voice wove the story fresh for him, and Christina leaned in his arms, Aedan understood the poem as he never had before. He felt the characters and themes come to life in a tapestry of words, threads of destiny, passion, and poignant emotions.

"'She lay among the briars, lost to him, oh! Lost,'" John recited while his drawing hand swept over the paper. "'Fallen among the wanton blooms, the cruel thorns."

Still and silent, Aedan sensed Christina listening as intently as he did. He held her while her brother spoke the last verse, sounding like a bard.

Oh! My love, come back to me

And oh! My love, come home.

But she drifted moorless upon that distant sea

Where no soul sails, but for the last time.

Hearing a sniffle, Aedan looked down. Christina's eyes welled with tears. "That always makes me cry," she whispered, chin wobbling.

Unable to resist, he kissed her brow quickly in sympathy, inhaling the sweet womanly fragrance of her hair. She sniffled again.

John continued to sketch, then looked up. "I know you two are not the fondest of friends," he said, "but I must ask you to pretend to kiss, if you would. Aedan, draw her to you. Christina, lean back and look as if you are... well, enraptured. But remember, sir," John added good-naturedly, "she is my sister. This is only for the sake of the painting."

"Of course," Aedan murmured. His heart slammed.

John dropped his chalk, stood. "I left some sketches in the dining room, where I was working earlier—I've started to transfer some of these scenes to the walls. I'd like to look at one of them for this pose, so I'll go down and get it. You both need some rest anyway." He grabbed his cane and hastened from the room. The door swung shut and clicked into place.

The silence was heavy. Aedan straightened, fighting the burden of his control, for his body thundered, his blood pounded. As he started to release her, he found that he simply could not.

"Damn,"
he breathed, an apology of sorts, and pulled her to him to kiss her soundly and thoroughly. She opened her lips beneath his in passionate welcome, tilting her head as she fit her mouth to his. A fierce hunger overtook him. He kissed her, slaked, drew back, delved again, helpless as a drunken man.

He cupped her face, and she rested her hands at his waist, leaning back her head. Taking her with his mouth, then his tongue, he could not quench his thirst for her, no matter how much he tried. His hands trembled on her body, slipped over silk as he took her by the waist.

As she pressed against him, he could not hide how profoundly he wanted her. Pulling her forward, he arched into her and let her feel his erection and his obvious, mounting desire. She moaned into his mouth and gave a sensuous movement of her hips.

Dimly he heard the rhythm of John's footsteps outside. Again he kissed her, deeper, open, and felt the delicate, wet caress of her tongue upon his own.

Then the door handle turned, and the candle flames vanished in the draft as John entered, cloaking them in sudden darkness. Aedan felt ecstasy tear through him, goad him onward, but he ended the heartrending kiss and drew back.

While John lit the candles, Aedan resumed the pose, sensing Christina trembling. His mind was fogged, so that he could not remember their exact pose. Drawing her to him, he touched her cheek gently with his right hand, and with his left hand he captured her fingers against his chest. His heart pounded furiously under their joined hands.

John looked up. "Oh," he said. "You changed your position. I like this one even more."

* * *

"Today I started working on the dining-room wall," John told Christina later, after nearly an hour of posing, when she and Aedan had taken another break from standing together in stillness. The tension between them remained high, her body throbbing rebelliously, his hands upon her hot enough to burn.

"Yes, so you said," she answered. "I haven't seen it yet."

"I transferred several drawings with Miss Amy's help. She's an eager apprentice. Lady Balmossie watched us and even assisted. We made quite a little party of it."

Laughing, Christina looked at some drawings on sheets of brown paper, glued at the edges to form large cartoons. Using the point of a steel compass, he had punched tiny holes around each sketched figure. Once they were tacked in place on the mural, he had pounced chalk or charcoal in little bags, tracing over the punch marks to transfer the outlines onto the wall.

Christina nodded while John talked about the transfer technique that their father had taught him. She relaxed as she sat on the table. Hearing the turn of a door handle, she glanced up and saw Aedan emerge from the little sitting room.

Deep within, something turned in her, bounding in response to the mere sight of him. He had changed out of the tunic and back into the coat and kilt he had worn earlier that evening at dinner, when they had gathered in the breakfast room, now in temporary use as a dining room until John finished his murals. They had shared a simple supper of vegetable soup, roast fowl, and lemon pudding. She particularly remembered the pudding, for she had spilled some on her blouse and brown plaid skirt.

Now, as Aedan came back into the room, she rose from her seat, gathering the trailing skirt of the ivory silk gown.

"I'll change, too." She moved toward the sitting room.

"It's late," John said. "I'm sure no one would notice if you slipped back to your room in costume. Everyone is asleep but the three of us."

Christina thought of the tedium of dressing again in stays, crinoline, petticoats, the blouse, waister and skirt, just to go to her room and take it all off again. "Perhaps I could leave my things here for one of the maids to take to Effie MacDonald for cleaning. It's laundry day tomorrow. If you think it all right."

"Of course." Aedan took off his black jacket and slipped it gallantly over her shoulders.

"Thank you." She gathered his coat around her, breathing in its spicy, earthy scent, resonant with the man who wore it. Going to John, she kissed him good night.

"I have some studies I want to finish," John said. "I'll stay up here for a while, I think. Good night."

Christina nodded and went through the door that Aedan opened for her. He followed, carrying a lit candle in a brass dish. In the hall, she turned for the staircase, but he touched her arm.

"Over here is an access to the steps that lead past our rooms." He opened a narrow door to reveal the dark, curving stair. He moved ahead, holding the candle high. "Careful, now."

She lifted the trailing hemline to climb carefully while Aedan led the way, candlelight illuminating the stone walls. The turning stair was steep, the stairwell dark. She managed well enough, glad to be free of the hindrance of a crinolined skirt, as their footsteps and the shush of silk over stone made a quiet cadence.

At the darkened landing by her door, Christina paused with her hand on the iron latch and looked up at Aedan. The solitude felt powerful, and her blood still steamed with the memory of his kisses. She wanted to step into his arms, but she could not succumb again. Years ago, she had mistaken lust for love.