Written in the Stars (19 page)

Too bad the crescent couldn’t have saved Will for Elizabeth.

When she left the bathroom, her mother was awake. “I want to get out of here. Now.”

“You have to wait a little while longer until you’re cleared, Cordelia. A nurse just
poked her head in the door and said the doctor was making his rounds. He’ll be here
in a few minutes. Sit.”

Cordelia was too nervous to sit. She walked to the window and looked out into a garden
area. “I want to know what is going on. I can’t believe Morgan didn’t come.”

“He called to check on you after you fell asleep.”

“Did he leave a message?”

“Yes, he asked me to call him back once you were medically cleared and that he would
meet us at the marina.”

Nothing more personal?

Deflated, Cordelia sank into silence as she waited for the doctor to arrive. Those
few minutes turned into more than an hour. Then she had to wait for paperwork. And
had to be transported out in a wheelchair to a waiting taxi.

Once in the cab, her mother said, “Morgan asked me to call to let him know when we
were on our way. Would you rather call him yourself?”

Not knowing what she was about to face, Cordelia found her internal strength. “Let’s
surprise him.”

It was midmorning by the time they arrived at the marina.

No surprise to find Morgan the center of a growing crowd and a television news team.

Cordelia couldn’t breathe for a moment—couldn’t step out of the vehicle—when she expected
Morgan had already claimed the mother lode and had edged her out of the find. Certainly
a reason for the media being there.

She looked to Morgan, who didn’t move, simply stood silently, eyes hidden behind sunglasses,
hands shoved into his pockets, shoulders hunched, hair whipping around his beard-stubbled
face.

Even with the car protecting her, she wasn’t free of his influence. A live wire seemed
to connect them, to pulse through her, from her ring to him to her heart. He wasn’t
responding to her in any visible way, but his emotions filled her.

Morgan wouldn’t betray her any more than Will would have betrayed Elizabeth.

She took a deep breath and gave him her trust.

As she exited the taxi, the cameras turned on her.

“Ms. Ward,” a reporter said, “I understand you found the Celestine’s mother lode.”

Her pulse fluttering with a happiness she could hardly contain, Cordelia looked to
Morgan, who didn’t say a word. Obviously he’d told them she was responsible. And as
tempting as it might be to take the credit as he apparently intended, she wasn’t about
to. She might have been the one to find the wreck, but he had found Elizabeth’s girdle.

“You understand wrong,” she told the reporter. “Mr. Murphy is the one who found the
mother lode.”

“Murphy, tell us about it,” a woman said.

Morgan gave the pretty reporter his best media smile. “Ms. Ward is being too generous.
The person really responsible for the recovery of the Celestine and its mother lode
is her father, the late Dr. Clive Ward. His years of careful research and his meticulous
mapping pointed the way.” He aimed his smile straight at Cordelia. “He deserves every
bit of credit. We merely carried out his legacy.”

Cordelia’s heart soared and her ring sent out tingles that made her certain…

…the wait was over.

“So you’re partners in this?” another reporter asked.

Morgan gave Cordelia a look that seared her down to her toes and said, “I can’t think
of anyone I would rather partner with.”

“Nor I.” Cordelia moved to his side.

“What will the two of you do with all that treasure?”

Morgan put his arm around her waist and Cordelia leaned into his warmth and strength
and thought she could stay there forever.

He said, “The treasure belongs in a fine museum.”

She added, “With my mother, Dr. Madelyn Ward, as curator.”

Still standing at the taxi that had brought them here, Mom gave her a radiant smile,
and Cordelia knew she’d been right—the promise of challenging work was exactly what
her mother needed.

Finally, Morgan took her in his arms. Her birthmark thrummed and her ring sent a sweet
longing up her arm and down to her center. And when Morgan’s mouth covered hers, Cordelia
knew their love had been destined.

Epilogue

Dressed in a long-sleeved, ankle-length, diaphanous white gown that showed off her
cleavage and nearly every inch of her long legs, Cordelia picked up Elizabeth’s celestial
girdle. Morgan had recovered it from where it had returned to its sandy grave. Searchers
had found no sign of Innis or of the shark attack. If she didn’t have the crescent
scar to assure her, she might think they’d imagined it all.

The girdle gave off a sense of wonderment and hope, traits that she’d admired in Elizabeth,
and because of her strong connection with her ancestress, her idea that she and Elizabeth
were somehow one, Cordelia secured the girdle around her waist.

She stared at her image in the full-length mirror.

Who would Morgan see?

He’d given her a half hour to ready herself—said he could only be apart from her for
so long—and only half that had passed. She sat at the dressing table and pulled her
long, blond hair up in a twist and secured it with a clip set with a sapphire-studded
star and ruby crescent moon.

And then she opened the top of the treasure box and lovingly touched the journal of
the woman who had first worn the Posey ring. Elizabeth had been a woman bound to duty
with few choices in her life. Cordelia’s life had been filled with choices. She’d
been able to be anyone, do anything she wanted. Getting to this privileged life had
been a painful process that had taken centuries.

Cordelia understood Elizabeth’s charge now. Elizabeth had used her journal to speak
directly to her. Cordelia had been privy to her mind and magic.

To the journal she would store in the box, Cordelia would add the chain and crescent
that connected her back to Elizabeth.

But not just yet.

For now, the chain remained around her neck, and the crescent dangled between her
breasts. She hadn’t removed it since Morgan had used it to save her life.

Opening Elizabeth’s journal to the first blank page, she began to write.

Murphy’s Point, Moonspinner Key, 2013

I am in Morgan’s home now and never have been happier.

I owe it to you, Elizabeth, for your never-ending love story captivated me from the
first page.

I feel one with you and I wonder if you somehow feel it, too. Did you help to save
our lives when Innis would see us dead, or did I hear your whispers simply to appease
my own heart?

Together, Morgan and I have at last conquered that which has shadowed our lives. I
am confident the evil is banished, for, together, Morgan and I ended the curse on
the rings that connect us forever to you and Will.

I have recovered fully and in the moon that has passed, have found joy working side
by side with Morgan to raise the Celestine’s mother lode, an auspicious beginning
to our life together.

Tonight will take us a step closer. We chose to start over, to get to know each other
as only two people whose souls are joined can do. But tonight, we will join our bodies
as you did with Will.

Following your example, I plan to record Morgan’s and my journey together from this
day forward, so that my daughter and the women who follow her may know us and the
paths we take.

I hear the clock strike ten.

It is time.

My new husband awaits.

Filled with anticipation, Cordelia closed the journal, rose and turned to find Morgan
waiting for her in the open patio doorway. He was dressed in tight, knee-length black
pants and an open, full-sleeved white shirt that billowed in the breeze, revealing
a body chiseled by the gods. His dark hair whipped around his rugged face to reveal
the emerald in his right ear. As he had the first time they’d met, he looked every
bit the dangerous pirate.

Her lips quivered, and she couldn’t hold back her grin.

A smile that equaled hers softened his fierce expression, and he held out his hand
for her to join him. Together, they set out into the near dark, crossing the patio
to the sandy path leading to the water’s edge.

As always, she was drawn to the night sky so like the one a month ago when their magical
adventure began.

There was something special about this sky.

About this moon.

These stars.

This night.

“The same moon under which I discovered the Posey ring,” he said.

“And I Elizabeth’s journal.”

With the water lapping over their bare feet, Morgan swept her into his arms and kissed
her breathless. She was ready for him, had been ready for what felt like four centuries.

He wrapped his hands around the girdle and pulled her against him, and she could feel
the strength of his desire through her filmy gown. Her pulse raced and her heart thundered
when he lowered his head to her breasts. Her eyes fluttered closed as his lips found
the valley between them.

Light, sensual kisses traveled downward, valley to belly, belly to juncture. He spread
her gown. She spread her thighs. Already wet for him, she threw back her head and
gasped with pleasure when he drank her in.

She’d been waiting her whole life for this.

She wanted to be one with him through this and every lifetime.

The pressure in her quickly mounted and spread, and she tore at his hair to that he
would stop before she came.

“Together,” she whispered.

“Always.”

He stripped out of the knee pants and tossed them on the sand. The waning moon loved
his turgid flesh. He was hard and beautiful and he was hers.

He kissed her again and swayed, bringing her with him, so they fell together in the
shallows. The tide coming in washed over them. She in her gown and Elizabeth’s girdle,
he in his full-sleeved shirt, they rolled and laughed and got soaking wet, and when
they finally stopped, she landed on top.

Heart pounding, she stared at his face as she mounted him, so wet that he slid inside,
sleek and deep. He ran his hands up her thighs, one thumb lingering at her heart,
the other hand cupping a breast and thumbing a nipple through the material. Never
taking her gaze from his beloved face, she spread her hands over his naked chest and
began the rhythm that would lift them to the stars.

As they pleasured each other, her mind filled with the love story that had sealed
her fate with this man. Words tumbled through her head, their magic pulling her back
in time.

The part of me which never dies will find Will at last. If I combed the earth and
searched through the stars, there is no being I would want but this one. Again passion
shall beat between us like a living force.

I long for this with every breath I draw.

“Will…?” Cordelia whispered.

“…is it truly you?” Elizabeth finished.

His fingertips brushed her throat and her skin heated under his touch.

“I have returned to you. How can I take away any doubt, love?”

The growing pressure within her body made her voice husky. “Perhaps memories…”

He stroked her hair, lifting it in a mass to his face. “I can still smell its lavender
scent when we walked to the pond behind my grandfather’s cottage. I followed you to
paradise there, love. The water gave life to our daughter.”

Her senses battered by hope and fear, she mused, “Is that why we both love the sea
so much now?”

With a murmured agreement, his mouth rocked gently over her parted lips.

She abandoned herself to his touch, his hands caressing her breasts, her thighs, all
of her.

“Oh, Will.” She murmured his name over and over as her burning desire heightened.

“Remember, love, our last day in the glade?”

Soul-deep sadness ravaged her body and she buried her face in his shoulder. “No! No,
never that memory.”

He cupped her face and she gazed into his beloved blue eyes. They were rich with luster
and lit by flames of life brighter than she had ever seen.

“No one knows what happened there except us. Remember what you said to me, Elizabeth?
You must.”

Shudders rocked her body. “I promised I would overcome Carlyle’s curse. That this
was not the end for us. I knew I carried your child, and I promised Stephen would
be granted his birthright.” Tears blinded her, making Will’s face shimmer with an
unearthly beauty. “Our Serena ruled beside Stephen. They were great and just. As you
would have been.”

His smile urged her on.

“Then I said, for us heaven can wait. If it takes a thousand lifetimes, we will be
together again.”

He curved their bodies closer, his face hovering above hers. “And I said, I believe
you, Elizabeth.” Slowly, he brushed her lips again and again. “Love, you have kept
all your promises,” he whispered thickly. “Now it is time for me to keep my promise
given to you in my old bedroom at my grandfather’s cottage.”

Their gazes melted together, a slow unlocking of all they had been and the hope of
what would be.

He murmured, “I promise we shall have nights like this through eternity. This time,
I am yours forever.”

At last under his adoring hands and gazing into his eyes, she reached the heaven he
offered her. Her heart couldn’t be fuller.

“I believe you, Will.”

She rolled, taking him with her so that he was now on top.

“I’m yours forever, Cordy.”

“I believe you, Morgan, and I’m yours.”

Their love had been written in the stars.

Though they’d had to wait four centuries to find heaven together, their time was now.

Acknowledgments

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