CHAPTER ELEVEN
Mr. Hopewell, captain of the merchantman Mary Constant, always traveled with his wife. Younger than Caitlin and childless, the lady warbled like a lark at daybreak as she bustled around the stateroom.
“We’ll surprise everyone for certain, oh my, yes. Here, the bath’s ready and I’ll just find something for you to wear.”
Caitlin stood in her shift in the hip bath. The fresh, scented water felt heavenly, and she wished the bath were big enough to immerse her entire body.
“Here’s a silk velvet.” Mrs. Hopewell pulled a garment from a chest. “It will look stunning on you, oh my, yes. See?” The orange confection, bubbling with lace and bows, resembled a floral arrangement rather than a dress.
“I’ll be after wearing my own clothes, thank you.” Caitlin bent to dip her hair in the water.
“Oh, but you mustn’t. Your—er, what is this thing called?”
“Kirtle.”
“Your kirtle is simply in tatters.” She drew out another dress, this one yellow and black. The Mary Constant carried a seemingly endless supply of clothing and furnishings, some seized from the Irish and others confiscated from the English settlers who had embraced the cause of Irish independence. “You can’t go to your own wedding looking like a beggar woman.”
Caitlin scowled. It would serve Hawkins right if she did. “Mrs. Hopewell,” she said, her voice cool but polite. “Those are English fashions. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but I’m proud to dress as an Irishwoman.”
“Like it or not, Miss MacBride, you are an English subject about to become an Englishman’s wife.”
Scrubbing furiously at her hair, Caitlin winced. “Other conquered people submit to the ways of their aggressors,” she said. “That’s not true of the Irish. The English who came here under Elizabeth adopted our ways, our culture, our mode of dress. Now they’re as Irish as a singing harp. Many of them are fighting Cromwell alongside their Celtic hosts.” She scooped water over her hair. “I’ll go to this marriage dressed as my mother went to hers, as her mother before her did.”
But I will not have willingness in my heart as they did, she thought bleakly.
Under her breath, the little woman muttered, “Stubborn as Mr. Hopewell on the Sabbath day. Perhaps there’s something…” She opened another chest. “These come from Castle Kellargh.”
“Spoils of war.” The words stung with the bile of distaste.
“I’m afraid so. But the Irish put up a fierce resistance. The army had no choice but to devastate the area. They poisoned the wells, burned fields and houses.”
Caitlin fixed her hostess with a piercing stare. “And did it ever occur to you that the army left women and children homeless and starving?” She indicated the chest. “And naked?”
Mrs. Hopewell held her ground. “War is an ugliness. Innocent victims suffer. I pray that one day your countrymen will capitulate and adopt English ways.”
“And why should we let our self-rule be taken away, our very faith outlawed? You’re bound to be disappointed, Mrs. Hopewell. For as fervently as you pray for capitulation, we Irish plot to drive you from our shores.”
Mrs. Hopewell’s hand fluttered to her brow. “This discussion makes my head ache. I’ll never understand you Irish. Never. Just wear whatever you like, then.”
Wrapping herself in a towel, Caitlin stepped from the tub. With her heart in her throat, she inspected the plunder. To wear garments seized from blameless Irishwomen gave her pause. But wouldn’t the owners of the clothes prefer to see their lovely things adorning the MacBride rather than a London lady?
Certain of the answer, she picked up a garment so uncompromisingly Irish that it could only have belonged to a noble countrywoman. “This will do,” she said.
* * *
Wesley stood amidships on the Mary Constant, awaiting his bride.
A sharp wind howled in from the northwest, filled the canvas, and sang in the rigging. The ship cut a wake through muscled waves the color of smelted iron.
The wind snatched at his broad-brimmed hat. He jammed it down firmly on his head. In Galway he had bought the fine, plumed cavalier’s chapeau along with a suit of clothes an exiled courtier would envy: cuffed boots, blousy fawn breeches cinched at the waist by his broad belt, a padded doublet and a buff coat of tough leather with shoulders so wide he could hardly fit through the portals of the ship. Freshly washed with soap scented by ambergris, his hair flowed like a gleaming russet cloak down his back.
He stood with his unlikely ally, Father Tully, his uneasy host, Captain Hopewell, and his unwelcome chaperon, MacKenzie.
“Fine day for a wedding,” Father Tully said, clapping his chapped hand.
“Lovely,” muttered Wesley. God! What was he thinking of? In order to marry Caitlin, he had blackmailed Titus Hammersmith and threatened Caitlin herself. What madness to gamble their lives and Laura’s, too.
But the alternative was executing Caitlin and taking her head in a bag to Cromwell. The very idea nearly sent Wesley stumbling to the rail to spill his guts into the Celtic Sea.
The marriage would mean exile for him and Laura at Clonmuir. Wesley could not think of a place in the world he would rather live.
A nasal screech seared his ears.
Hammersmith’s man, MacKenzie, gave a seraphic smile. Under his arm he held the bloated bladder of a bagpipe. “Wouldna be a weddin’ without a tune or twa,” he said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. It was a great prow of a nose, painted purple and red by the broken veins of an inveterate tippler.
Hopewell’s brows pinched together. “With that?”
“Oh, aye. Nothin’ like the fine skirl of the auld pipes, eh, Father?”
Father Tully gave a noncommittal cough.
Wesley eyed the man with interest. Stout, bowlegged, and thick-headed, MacKenzie was as Scottish as Charles Stuart.
“’Tis said the pipes were actually invented by the Irish,” MacKenzie explained. “D’ye ken the legend, Father?”
“Aye, the Irish invented the contraption as a joke, and gave it to the Scots. But the dour Scots never caught on.”
Neither, apparently, did MacKenzie. With a flatulent blast, he launched into an earsplitting melody.
In the midst of the cacophony, and in a swirl of salt smoke from a breaking wave, Wesley’s bride emerged from a portal.
The men fell silent. The pipes whined to a halt. And John Wesley Hawkins whispered, “Help me, Jesus.”
Caitlin paced slowly toward him. She wore the most extraordinary costume he had ever beheld. A tunic, white as a summer cloud, cloaked her from throat to ankle. Open-worked sleeves hugged her slim arms. Polished stones and iron studs adorned the belt that cinched her tiny waist. The large oversleeves, scalloped at the cuffs, brushed the planks as she walked. A circlet of silver crowned her head while her unbound hair flowed out like a banner of gold behind her.
She might have stepped from the pages of a legend, so strange, so ethereal, and so lethally Irish was she. She was a part of some savage druidic rite. She was a warrior, a goddess. On bare feet she mounted the steps. Her face was a study of solemn melancholy as if she were a virgin making her way to a sacrificial altar. Sadness haunted the amber wells of her eyes. Vulnerability softened the corners of her mouth. She looked as if becoming his wife were eternal damnation.
He wanted to fall to his knees and beg forgiveness for forcing her. He wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her for making him feel like a scoundrel. He wanted to crush her in a fierce embrace and vow to bring her joy.
Half expecting her to drift away on a wisp of wind, he took her hand. Together they knelt. Her fingers were icy and rough, her hand small, trembling inside his. It was a hand that wielded a sword against England, that soothed Tom Gandy’s fevered brow, that passed out food to the hungry. It was the hand of Ireland.
Father Tully cleared his throat and stood before them, his feet planted wide for balance against the surging motion of the deck.
He made the sign of the cross. “In nomine patris et filii…” And then, as the wind shoved them toward England, as cormorants flew screaming through the clouds, and as the hard planks of an English frigate pressed into their knees, John Wesley Hawkins and Caitlin MacBride became husband and wife.
* * *
“You might as well talk to me, Cait,” Wesley said that night. “We’ll be sharing these close quarters until we reach London.”
She presented her narrow, rigid back to him. Her wavy hair swung, thick and lustrous, to her waist. He imagined burying his face and hands in the silken mantle, feeling it drift across his naked chest and inhaling its wonderful fragrance. He imagined lifting it away from the nape of her neck and pressing his lips to the tender flesh hidden there.
Tortured by yearning, he tossed back a swallow of sack and clapped his pewter goblet on the table. From above decks came the incessant yowl of MacKenzie’s pipes, bleating and farting and gasping for breath. The sailors, glad for any excuse to drink away the tedium of the voyage, had stopped protesting the noise hours ago and now joined in the discord.
As an agent of Cromwell, Wesley had been granted special privileges. The quarters were comfortable, low ceilinged but broad, and furnished with an alcove bunk and a bolted-down table. Sighing, Wesley moved behind her. He touched her tense shoulders, his hands patiently kneading her tightened muscles.
“We will make this marriage work,” he whispered. “It can mean a new start for us and for Clonmuir. In our children will mix the blood of Briton and Celt, of—”
“Stop!” She jerked away. “I may have had to marry you to save my neck, but I don’t have to pretend we have a future together.”
“’Tis done, Caitlin, and not even your stubbornness can undo this marriage.”
She turned to him, defiance flashing in her eyes. “The English have taken our homes and our lands. Your laws forbid skilled men to ply their trades. Your soldiers burn our fields and rape our women. You snatch unsuspecting girls from their families and transport them to a hellhole where they’ll be slaves to the devil.”
“None of that is my doing.”
She shook her fist. “But this is. You think to conquer me by forcing this marriage. It won’t work.”
“It must, or you’ll die at Cromwell’s hands.” He took her arm. She resisted, but he pulled her toward the bed. His rampant imagination conjured an image of her lying there, arms open to receive him.
A sprig of hawthorne peeped from beneath the feather bolster. Small damp spots dotted the bleached linen sheets.
“Father Tully has blessed the marriage bed with holy water. He approves of the union.”
“You must have threatened him, too.”
“No,” said Wesley in a low, rough voice. “To him, I told the truth. That I had no true vocation as a priest. He released me from my vows.”
She stared at the slanting floor. “Wesley.” She spoke so softly that he thought he might have imagined hearing his name on her tongue.
He brushed his finger along her cheek. “Aye?”
“I’m asking you, too, to release me from my vow.”
A coldness formed around his heart. “I can’t do that.” To his utter chagrin, he felt a hot tear drop onto his finger. “This doesn’t have to be such a tragedy.”
With the swiftness of a recoiling spring, she drew back. Anger danced with the tears in her eyes. “Did you never wonder, you great fool, why I hadn’t married?”
The coldness in his heart became an icy burn. “I didn’t dare wonder for fear of spoiling my good fortune.”
“I was waiting for the man I love,” she flung at him. “I would have waited seven lifetimes.”
The words stunned Wesley, stealing his breath. Long ago, he had considered the possibility and discounted it. Now the truth assaulted him like a rapier thrust.
“Who is it?” His voice was knife sharp with jealousy.
“He is Spanish, and highborn, and I’ll not profane his good name by revealing it to the likes of you.”
“Ha!” Wesley forced out the bluff exclamation. “Now you’re the one with pixies in your head. Name him, or I’ll know you conjured him out of wishful thinking.”
With an angry swipe of her hand, she dashed the tears from her face. “He is Alonso Rubio, son of the grand duke of Alarcón.”
Part of the Spanish ambassador’s retinue, Rubio resided in London and worshipped at the Catholic chapel Cromwell allowed for foreign dignitaries. Like a man wounded in the dark, Wesley probed his memory. He recalled a slim, courtly gentleman of astonishing beauty and graceful demeanor. Everything John Wesley Hawkins was not.
“And how did you meet this paragon?” he demanded.
She tossed her head. “He was on a trading vessel bound for Connaught to take on timber. The ship stopped for refitting at Logan Rafferty’s yard in Galway.”
“He gave you the stallion, didn’t he?”
“Aye, and his promise to wed me, to help me defend Clonmuir.”
And what did you give him in return? Wesley choked off the question. Instead, he snorted rudely. “And you believed him?”
“Unlike you, he doesn’t make his living by lying.”
Wesley poured more wine. He needed courage for the task ahead. It was no longer simply a matter of winning her heart. First he had to drive out the dark Spanish hero who dwelt there.
But not for nothing had he been a cavalier. Caitlin had thrown down the gauntlet. With grim determination and pounding anticipation he took up the challenge.
“Four years is a long time, my love. I’d never let you wait so long. How can you be certain he’s been true to you?”
“He sends letters, when he can, and I answer them. Every single one.” She enunciated each word clearly.
Wesley recalled his last meeting with Cromwell. The Lord Protector had referred to a letter from Caitlin to a Spanish gentleman. “Your tender missives,” he said bitterly, “betrayed you. Cromwell intercepted at least one of them.”
Her face paled, but the anger burned steadily in her eyes. “Sure isn’t it the English who have forced hardships on us,” she retorted. “If we were at peace, my life could go on.”
“Life,” he said, sinking to one knee before her, “is what has been happening to you during all those years of waiting.” Intent on banishing the Spaniard from her thoughts, he took her hand and carried it to his lips. She bent her head, and the rich, untamed waves of her hair shone with reflected lamplight.
“Caitlin,” he said, “I need you.”
She glared down, tight-lipped, regarding him with the esteem she might afford a toad. “If you need a woman that badly, I’ll buy you a whore in London.”
Her disdain slashed at his pride. In one swift motion he surged upward, clasped her around the waist, and pressed her to the bed. “I need you, not a whore.” He kissed her face, her neck.
Like a cat with a bad itch, she squirmed beneath him. “Get off me.”
“No. I’ve been honest about my needs. It’s time you were honest about your own.”
His words whispered a seductive song through her yearning heart. A wild hunger rose in her, and it was all she could do to summon back the anger. “Get off me, you ill-mannered Goth,” she said. “Or will you rape me? You English have much practice at that.”
“I don’t. You know that. Look, I can’t woo you with poetry. I can’t overwhelm you with my virility. Good God, what must I do to win you?”
“You’ll never win me. Get used to it.”
“What’s wrong with me? Am I ugly?”
She laughed without humor. “Faith, you know better than that. You’re as comely as heather in springtime. When I first clapped eyes on you, I thought you a vision spun by the fey folk.”
He dropped a kiss on her brow. “That’s encouraging.”
Caitlin knew no reason why his weight pressing on her should feel so agreeable, yet it did. In spite of everything, they were comfortable with one another. Their bodies…fit.
But she willed away the thought and said, “Take no encouragement from that, for the fact that you’re English makes you as loathsome as a troll to me.”
“Oh. Anything else?”
“Yes, since you’re after asking. I find you faithless and lacking in conscience. You swore a vow before God when you entered the novitiate. Yet see how eager you are to break faith.”
His thumbs circled her temples, finding the shape of her skull beneath tendrils of hair. “It wasn’t right for me. I knew that even before I met you.”
“How can I accept a man who tosses away pledges like so much rubbish? What of the wedding vow you made to me this very day? One day you’ll decide that, too, isn’t right for you.”
“This is different. You have to believe me—”
“I believed you when you claimed you were a deserter from the Roundheads, and a few weeks later you marched against the Irish. I believed you when you said you’d help me free the priests of Ireland, and you made me your captive. Why should I believe anything you say?”
His hands moved to cover hers, palm to palm. He laced their fingers and held tightly. His face wore a look of aching sincerity that she did not want to see. “I swore I’d not attempt to escape when I was your prisoner, and I held true to that promise.”
“Only because it served your purposes.”
“In time, all will become clear.” Wesley nearly choked with the effort to keep from confessing to her. He wanted to tell her about Laura so she would understand why he had lied, why he had forced her to marry him.
But not yet. He must not speak yet. He was too close to saving Laura to jeopardize his daughter’s life. He wanted Caitlin, craved her with a desire so vivid it staggered him. But he could not trust her with his secret, for her anger was too new, too raw. Reluctantly he remembered Hester Clench, a woman he had trusted. Caitlin had more honor, but she had a temper, too. And if anyone could kindle that anger hotter, it was Oliver Cromwell. He might goad her into revealing that Wesley had betrayed his part of their bargain.
Besides, he told himself, feeling an ironic smile twist his mouth, a man did not speak of his illegitimate children on his wedding night.
He pressed her against the bolster and nuzzled her neck. She tasted of scented soap and spindrift. The deep golden cloud of her hair cushioned his face. “I want to be in your life.”
“You can’t. I won’t let you, Mr. Hawkins.”
“I swear you will, Mrs. Hawkins.”
Red blotches bloomed in her cheeks as if he had slapped her. “Don’t call me by that name.”
“It’s your name now,” he pointed out.
“I took it only to save my neck.”
Instead of cooling his passion, her words merely sharpened the challenge. His ears strained to hear her cry out in passion; his mouth hungered for the taste of her. He wanted his babe in her belly. For the utterly practical reason that even Cromwell would bring no harm to a pregnant woman. And for the utterly unbelievable reason that he adored her.
The truth of it struck him. He had gone to her with no other purpose than to use her to regain his life and his daughter. But somewhere along the way, he had lost himself in the mystical enchantment of Caitlin MacBride.
Though she didn’t know it, Caitlin held his heart and his life in her sturdy hands. She had bound him in a spell of unbearable sweetness and overwhelming power. He gazed down at her, certain she would read the staggering message of love in his eyes.
“You look sick,” she said. “Are you going to be sick?”
The response was so unexpected, and so very much like Caitlin, that he laughed. “No, my dear love, it’s not a sickness of the gut that plagues me, but one of the heart.”
“You have no heart. And I have no skills for mending one.”
“You’re right. I have no heart because I lost it to you.”
She framed his waist with her hands. “Blarney.”
He expected her to push at him, but she held still, waiting. “It’s our wedding night.”
Her hands slid up his back, then down again. Closing his eyes, he reveled in the slow, massaging motion—until he felt the prick of a knife at his back.
“Get off me.” Her voice was strange, dark and rich, like silk gliding over steel.
Swearing, he got to his feet. She leapt up after him. Her fist was clenched around the dagger she had stolen from his hip sheath. Holding the blade with the sharp edge turned outward and the tip pointed up, she planted her feet on the gently shifting floor. “I will not honor a pledge you forced from me.”
Wesley took a step toward her. “It would be a sin to break a vow made before God.”
“It would also be a sin for me to kill you,” she retorted, “but that won’t stop me from slitting you from your gullet to your crotch. Besides, you broke a vow.”
“But I’m a desperate man.” He took another step. In all the weeks he had spent as her prisoner, she had not harmed him. He had to believe she would not harm him now.
Acting on pure instinct, he undid the row of small orb-shaped buttons that ran down the front of his doublet. She watched warily as he shrugged out of the padded garment.
“You see,” he said. “I trust you. I would bare my chest to you so that nothing stands between my flesh and your steel.” Lifting his hand, he found the tasseled ends of his collar tie. The welsche came loose and drifted to the floor. Clad in a white cambric shirt, the sleeves loose but tightly cuffed, the neckline gaping wide, he advanced another step.
“That’s far enough,” she warned.
He yanked the shirt over his head.
“Stop,” she said. “Put that back on.”
“Do you remember what I said to you that last day on the strand? Do you remember how I described all the ways I wanted to make love to you?”
She said nothing, but the furious blush that stained her face from neck to brow gave him the answer he sought.
“I still want those things. I want to feel your bare breasts against my bare chest. I want to touch you—”
“Stop it!” She edged backward so that her hips touched the table. “I’ll cut your tongue out!”
“Go ahead.” In one long stride he closed the distance between them and stood inches from her.
She lifted the dagger. Her gaze fixed on his broad chest. “You have a lot of scars. I suppose you lied about where they came from, too.”
“It hardly matters now. Are you going to stab me? You’re a warrior who knows how to wield a knife.” He pointed to the muscled flesh below his ribs. “This is a good spot here. No bones to get in the way of your blade.” He spread his arms wide and hoped she would not discern the wild pounding of his heart. “Here’s your chance. Will you take it?”
The dagger swung downward. Wesley tensed, awaiting the cold slice of steel. The knife fell with a clatter to the floor.
“Thank you, Jesus,” Wesley muttered. Then he reached for her.
She jumped back. “I’ll scuttle your knob with my daddle, see if I don’t!”
His gaze searched her, wondering if he had overlooked a second weapon. “What’s a daddle?”
“This.” Her hard, closed fist smashed solidly against his jaw, sending him reeling.
Bright points of pain sparkled before his eyes. The entire lower half of his face caught fire. Stumbling back against the bunk, he sank down, cradling his jaw in his hand.
Caitlin looked on with an uncertainty he had never seen in her before. He worked his jaw tentatively. Not broken. But bruised to the bone.
“Good God, woman!” he burst out. “I am heartily sick of your games. Would you fight to the death to protect your hallowed virginity?”
“Men and maidenheads! You’ve probably swived half of England. What matter is it if I’ve had a man myself?”
“Ah, so the Spaniard’s already had y—” He broke off, shook his head. “No. I know better. The first time I kissed you, I tasted your innocence.” He ran his finger along the throbbing tenderness in his jaw. Cavalier’s tricks, forcefulness and logic had gained him nothing. No man would ever have Caitlin MacBride but with true love.
How could he show her what was in his heart if she wouldn’t let him near her, if she clung to fanciful dreams of an elusive Spanish nobleman?
“I’d like to make a bargain with you.”
“I don’t bargain with faithless Englishmen.”
“Just hear me out. You claim to love this Spanish fellow, and I assume you believe he loves you.”
“It’s not a matter of believing, but of knowing beyond all doubt.”
Wesley lifted one eyebrow. “True love? The pure, all-forgiving kind that the poets sing about?”
Her features softened with reminiscence. “Aye. Pure as the green on the hills in springtime.”
“And all-forgiving?” Wesley persisted.
“Of course.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Well. I should not like to stand in the way of a love so great as that.”
For the first time, she seemed to relax, her hands opening and her shoulders sloping downward. “It’s glad I am that you’ve decided to see reason.”
“I’m glad you’re glad. Take off your clothes and get in bed.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“But you said—”
“I did. Play the wife. Share my bed and my life—just until we settle our business with Oliver Cromwell. Then if you still taunt the angels with your towering passion for the Spaniard, I’ll arrange an annulment. And then—” he let a teasing smile curve past his throbbing jaw “—you’ll have the rest of your life to remember how I made you feel.”
Perhaps it was a trick of the swinging lamplight, but he thought he saw her lower lip tremble. “I thought annulment was granted only in cases of consanguinity, or when a couple fails to—to—”
“Consummate the marriage. Quite right. But Father Tully will be more than willing to help us. Think of it. A few weeks with me, and you’ll be free to pine away for Don What’s-his-name. If the love you share is as deep and abiding as you say, then nothing you and I do together will change that.”
“But he’d—” She snapped her mouth shut and turned away.
“He’d what? Regard you as damaged goods? Not if he loves you.”
Caitlin shivered. She reached deep into the channels of her memory and sought Alonso. He hovered there, a shadowy figure, the echo of a whispered promise, the faint fragrance of masculine perfume, the tender brush of lips against her brow.
She swung back to face the Englishman. Alonso’s image drifted away like a wisp of fog before a blast of wind. Now there was only John Wesley Hawkins, standing with his bare shoulder propped against a support post, his chest wearing fearsome scars like medals of honor. His long rusty hair framed a face too comely to look at. One lock fell forward, a teasing question mark in the middle of his brow.
“Well?” he asked. “Is the MacBride not woman enough for an Englishman?”
“Of course I’m—” Caitlin couldn’t continue, for at last she saw the truth he tried so desperately to conceal behind his insouciance.
John Wesley Hawkins was afraid.
Fear shone in his eyes, visible despite the deep magic of his masculine appeal and the subtle wizardry of his smile. Like a siren song his vulnerability drew her, peeled away the layers of her resistance, mocked her denials, and found the truth at the very core of her.
She wanted him.
It was for Clonmuir, she told herself as she took the first step toward him. For the sake of Clonmuir and all the people who depended on her, she would give herself to the enemy.
To her husband.
A soft gasp escaped her. She felt his arms close around her. Her cheek brushed his chest and she turned and put her lips there, for she wanted to taste him.
He was so gentle, this enemy of hers. He lifted her face and lightly traced the outline of her lips with his finger. His hands and mouth seduced her with promises no man had ever made to her before. He was a light glimmering through the darkness, as captivating and compelling as an ancient song.
His fingers manipulated the fastening of her wide belt. The absence of the cinch gave her a feeling of freedom. She became weightless, boneless, a sailing cloud. The long tunic skimmed down her shoulders and drifted to the floor. The shift of gossamer lawn that had once belonged to a great lady followed in its wake.
She embraced a man who was her enemy. But where was the shame, the fear? She felt only a breathless anticipation, and then sheer intoxication as he brought his lips to hers. The madness of desire flowed into her, driving out doubts and fears.
Before long, an uncanny feeling of urgency took hold of her, and she gripped his shoulders. The magic seemed so tenuous and fleeting that she feared one wrong move or one errant thought would shatter the spell.
“Wesley,” she breathed against his mouth. “Hurry. Before I change my mind.”
“My love, I want this night to last forever. I want you to remember each moment.”
He led her to the alcove bed. A great lassitude gently dismantled her will. She relaxed against the linens, and the spots of holy water cooled her fevered skin. Her lips, slightly parted, still stung from the moist fire of his kisses.
“Cait,” he said, “look at you, lying there like a goddess, awaiting me.”
She reached for him but he put her hands aside, bent and placed his mouth on her throat and then moved it lower, skimming the tops of her breasts. She gasped at the unexpected heat. Arching her back, she reached upward.
She sensed a certain lazy grace in his movements, a teasing quality to his caresses. He kissed a sinuous path across her skin, his tongue flicking at, but never quite touching, the most sensitive spots. She hung suspended, her body in a state of burning awareness, her every sense focused on his warm, wet mouth.
“Ah, for the love of God, Wesley,” she whispered.
“Patience, sweetheart.” With maddening slowness his mouth traced rings around her breasts. Just when she thought she would go mad, his tongue flashed out at one burning peak, bringing forth a gasp from her.
Finally, answering the terrible need he had awakened in her, he closed his mouth over her breast.
She dared to think that she had found the magic at last. She could rise no higher than this dizzying height. And yet…and yet…his hands skimmed down her torso, and she realized she had only glimpsed the very edge of wonder.
“Aye, there is more,” he said, reading her thoughts. He stretched long beside her and bent to kiss her mouth. “Would you like me to show you?”
“Yes. I want to know—to feel—everything.”
His hand slid up her leg, the hand of a master harp maker smoothing a perfect length of ashwood; the hand of a sorcerer conjuring a spell. She was an empty jar which he filled, drop by precious drop with a potion more powerfully intoxicating than poteen. Yet with each drop she craved more.
In the back of her mind she realized that what he was doing was extraordinary. She knew the ways of lusty men; she had heard enough tales whispered in the women’s corner of the great hall. Men did not often trouble themselves to see to a woman’s pleasure.
But Wesley behaved as if her satisfaction were his only goal. She absorbed his unceasing caresses as parched earth absorbs the rain. The pleasure filled her, swirled around her. She forgot to breathe. She forgot to think. She forgot he was her sworn enemy.
Drop by precious drop. The rhythm of his hand matching the pulse of her heart. Finally the passion rose up and spilled over, drenching her in a warm rain of sensation.
A long sweet sigh escaped her. She opened her eyes to find him smiling down at her. He had an odd expression on his face. It was the delight of shared pleasure, she realized, but deep in his eyes she recognized pain, as if he had shouldered a heavy burden. As if the breaking of vows truly distressed him.
“Caitlin,” he said. “Touch me, I beg you.”
She responded because he had asked, not demanded. Her hands made a study of his scarred and thickly muscled body. She discovered the tautness of his shoulders, the silkiness of the hair on his chest. And to her surprise, she discovered that she loved the warmth of his flesh against her palms, the rapid thudding of his heart when she lay her cheek on his chest.
So this was how a man was made. She touched his body in ways she hadn’t dared to dream about. He responded with a hiss as if she had burned him.
He pulled her into an intimate embrace, his arms supporting her back and his legs separating hers. And to think, she reflected languidly, that only a short time ago they had been twined together in the heat of battle, each intent on murdering the other.
Now her emotions flared just as high, but not with rage. She hugged him with her legs, bringing his body close. Closer.
He moved against her, his shoulders trembling and his face a mask of concentration.
Wesley battled the lust raging inside him. He forced himself to remember she was a maiden. He did not want to hurt her. He pressed downward into the deep moist center of her, and then deeper still to the wisp of silk that stood between innocence and fulfillment. With one gentle stroke, the veil was swept aside by his ardor.
Her head fell back, and she smiled. The secret, beguiling smile of a woman. He kissed her closed eyes, her cheeks, her mouth. He whispered words that had no logical meaning.
Caitlin listened with her heart. The pressure inside her built, pressing at the edges of a world that would never be the same again. He was a wizard, full of mystery and magic, and he offered a gift she hadn’t known she had craved.
She lifted her hips and he began to move, long slow ripples of motion that streaked her senses with fire. She was surrounded by a mist that held no beginning and no end. No world existed beyond this small alcove; no time passed beyond this moment.
Wesley’s movements quickened, and she joined him in the rhythm of a song that had no words. She surged toward a great unnameable purity and burst into the light with a cry of joy.
Wesley’s voice joined hers. She felt a movement, gentle pulsations that thrust him deeper inside her and seemed to touch her soul. He buried his face in her hair and inhaled deeply.
“Caitlin.” Her name blew pleasant and warm near her ear. “We are complete.”
With the steadily slowing beats of her heart, the magic lost its potency. She turned her head away. “I have betrayed myself, my people—”
“No.” He propped himself on an elbow. The high color in his cheeks gave him a robust look of satiation. “I won’t let you say that this is wrong.”
“But we’re enemies—”
“Stop it.” Again, the pain glimmered in his eyes. “You say I broke a holy vow. Contrary to what you think, I did not make the decision lightly. For three years I kept faith with that vow. I’d nearly convinced myself that I could stay chaste until the day I died. But saying our loving was wrong only cheapens it. Don’t do that to us.”
“We’ll speak of it no more, then.” She turned away, drew up the coverlet, and reached out to embrace regret and shame. But when sleep stole over her, it was not Alonso she dreamed of, nor even Clonmuir, but her husband, John Wesley Hawkins.