‘Where are we going? You should be inside, with your injury,’ I said, half-running to keep up with him.
‘Tegan. Don’t fuss. The dressing is good.’
He did seem to be walking easier, and Nancy had given him an herbal tea of some kind to drink that she said would take the pain away.
We were walking along the dirt track at the edge of a field, and on the brow of the hill I could see a small building.
‘Whatisthat?’ I squinted. The field we were walking in was full of head-high corn stalks; we could have got lost in it.
‘Somewhere I used to go,’ he said, shortly.
We reached the brow of the hill and William went to the building. It was a small stone hut with a thatched roof, but it had glass windows and looked well-kept. It wasn’t a cow byre or a hay store; in my time, it hadn’t been there. But, in 1867, it was.
He opened the door and went inside. I followed, stubbornly. We were going to have a conversation, even if I had to punch him on his injured flesh to make him listen to me.
I wondered who owned the little hut. William had a gift for acting as if he owned everything he touched; in his own time, as Lord of Trevarron, he did. Here, in this time, he owned nothing, but he still acted like he did. The blood of the aristocrat flowed in his veins; his natural entitlement ran deep. However, I’d never known the privileges of the aristocracy, so I knew that what we were doing was breaking and entering.
William shut the door behind me, frowning.
‘Looks like the gamekeepers still use it,’ he said, his tone still gruff. He struck a match and lit an oil lamp on the table. A warm glow suffused the room.
Inside the hut, it was surprisingly cosy. There was a good-sized bed pushed up against the far wall, covered in blankets, a stone fireplace, a couple of buckets by the door and a stack of dry firewood. There was also a small table and chair, and a basket containing some apples.
‘Oh!’ I exclaimed in surprise. I hugged myself to keep warm; it was a mild night, but it was still chilly inside the stone hut. ‘What will we do if they come back? We shouldn’t be here,’ I said.
‘I didn’t ask you to be here. You followed me.’ He fixed me with a baleful glare.
‘We need to talk, and you can run away as much as you like, but that doesn’t change the fact we need to be adults about this. I thought you were leaving me, just then. You terrified me. It was hard enough to lose you the first time,’ I argued,my hands on my hips. Despite his size and ability to win any physical fight he entered, I had never been afraid of him. I knew that, of the two of us, I was better educated, more strategic, and I knew what had happened in the hundreds of years of human history between his time and mine. I had that advantage. And, as William had correctly observed more than once, I was wilful and stubborn. As was he.
‘Are you suggesting that I am a coward?’ he roared, suddenly, taking me by surprise. ‘How dare you? I have never run away from anything in my life!’
‘You are the last person I would call a coward. But, yes, I do think that you ran away to this little hut because you didn’t want to talk to me. Because you feel lost and humiliated and angry, and you don’t know what to do. Tell me I’m wrong,’ I challenged him, staring up defiantly into his deep brown eyes.
There was something indescribable about being close to William; it made me feel as if I’d dissolved into a delicious, sweet syrup of longing. I knew that I would feel warm, safe, held and protected in his arms. Even though we were arguing, I couldn’t deny that I was deeply and primally aroused.
It was partly his physicality. William was tall, about six feet two or three, and heavily muscled. On the occasions I had seen him naked before, I had marvelled at the somehow graceful beauty of his long, muscular legs, the width of his chest and shoulders and the sculpted muscle of his forearms. But it was something else, too, and William was wrong when he assumed that, without the title of his lordship, I would stop being attracted to him. Because the truth was that William possessed a deep, wild power in him that I knew came partly from the demons that still besieged his soul.
He still felt the guilt over his involvement in his wife Elspeth’s death, even though he wasn’t to blame. And I knew that he felt guilty about leaving Edith and his brother, Charles, in the custody of their abusive father when he went away to the Navy; he would never forgive himself for that, and there was a depth of passion in his lovemaking that belied any peace that he might have found.
William was a bad boy. I couldn’t resist him. Even now, when he was being rude.
‘You have such confidence in your opinions and thoughts, Tegan. I wonder if anyone has ever persuaded you that you were wrong?’ He lowered his voice, but I could still see the anger flickering in his eyes.
‘You certainly haven’t,’ I shot back, unable to help myself. However, I was painfully aware of the fact that, in private, William De Vere Trevarron knew exactly what to say and do to make me a quivering mess. We both knew that, when the bedroom door closed, William could persuade me that black was white and I would have no argument whatsoever.
There was a deep emotional connection between us. I had felt it the moment we’d met. Somehow, we both knew that we had been linked through time. We had dreamed of each other our whole lives, and when we met, it was as if two puzzle pieces slotted together. With him, I felt complete in a way I never had before.
Every time I was in his arms, I knew deep in my soul that every day I had spent without him had been filling in time. Every one of those days, I had been half-alive; I mourned my own ignorance of him. I mourned the days that had passed in my life, not knowing the ecstasy of being with him.
‘You are a scold. A caustic harpy,’ he muttered, stalking towards me with fury in his eyes. He grabbed my arm and drew me to him. Without warning, he bruised my lips with his kiss. ‘And yet, I find that I cannot draw myself away from you.’
His touch sent shock waves of electricity through my body, from my head to my toes.
When he touched me, I felt as though I was plugged into a circuit of honey-sweet lassitude that suffused me with pleasure. All thought except pleasure turned off; all I wanted was the taste of his lips, his touch, his skin on mine, his smell. I wanted the pleasure I knew he could give me, and I wanted, in the core of my being, to please him.
William turned me into an animal whenever we were alone; Iwas savage in my pursuit of pleasure, and he gave everything of himself, dedicated to giving me what I needed.
Now, as he kissed me hungrily, I returned his passion.
