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“Roderick?” Her whisper, so tentative, revealed how afraid she was.
“What is it you need to say?”
“I have not tricked or swayed you, I promise you that. I healed Adam and I called upon the weather to hasten our journey, but that is all. What happened between you and me was purely borne of our passion for one another.”
Roderick gritted his teeth, casting his mind back. Then he shook his head. “What of those strange things you did when we were alone, and the way you were at the moment of your release? You lit up the cabin when there was no candle.”
Her head rolled against her arm, her soft, lush mouth turned down at the corners. “It is so hard to explain briefly, but in offering myself to you and sharing our passion, my magic grew stronger. That is what you saw.”
He jerked back. “So you were—”
“No!” Her very posture forbade him to think further on that path. “It happened, it empowered me, but it was not used as a tool against you, never.”
Oh, how he wanted to believe her. Had she really been as cold and calculating as Brady had suggested? Was their lovemaking part of a plan to bend him to her will? It trickled through his mind again, every strange thing she had done, every brazen suggestion and whispered word. “Why are you this way? Where did this magic come from if not from the devil himself?”
“It is in my lineage. We hail from the Highlands, where my kind live a life closer to nature than to any prescribed by a god. We cherish the lessons of the seasons and the elements, and we live by those lessons, not by laws passed by church or magistrate. The old magic that thrived in the hidden glens is passed down the line from mother to child. Like my kin, I have the ability to call on nature and to wield its powers...for good.”
Roderick frowned. It seemed fanciful. As a seafaring man he had a healthy respect for the elements. The rest was beyond him. She explained with such conviction, though, it was difficult not to believe in it. “You use these powers only for good?”
“Unless we are threatened, or...or if we are tricked into it.” She paused, and he saw how upset she was by that admission. Who tricked her? “I can defend myself by magic,” she continued, “but I choose not to. I want you to trust me because of the rest of me—what I say and how we are when we are together.”
That much was true, he was sure of it. If she could heal Adam’s hand and direct the wind, she could easily have averted this situation with her strange talents.
“You have never used your magic for gain, or to hurt anyone?”
She sighed and hung her head. It made him fear what she was about to say.
“Not knowingly. I was kept, in London, sheltered by a man who understood my craft, but I didn’t know he meant to use me as a tool. When I discovered his true intent, I fled.” She lifted her head. “And you aided my flight.”
That was why. It was not because she was being sought out by witch hunters. She had fled to escape a man who would use her. All this talk of laws of the natural world and the power of the elements as a life force, it dazzled his mind. He did not claim to be anything but a simple man, and yet he felt as if she believed it all. He knew he couldn’t trust her, for she had hidden so much of herself from him and he couldn’t identify the overriding emotion he felt in response to that. Was it anger, frustration or grief? All those things flitted through him. It left him torn between the need to cast her out, and to punish her for not revealing this secret nature to him earlier, so that he might have been prepared for it.
In that moment none of it mattered. Still he had to listen.
“This man, he had me create magic, but I didn’t know he would gain from it. I was innocent of his true nature. There may have been wrongdoings. It breaks my heart to think of it.”
He had to see her eyes in order to be sure of her honesty. He untied the blindfold, knowing even while he did that it might be a trap. “This man you speak of, is he the one who made you mistrust all men?”
She nodded. That solemn look was back in her eyes.
This bastard from London, whoever he was, had put it there. “Is he the one who wanted you for his own?”
“The same man, yes. But I didn’t want him, and because of that I found you, and you’ve been the best part of my life.”
“And you mine.” He trailed the back of his fingers down the soft curve of her cheek.
“You have spoiled me for other men. I know I’ll never find another lover like you.”
There were so many ways he wanted to reply to that, but he knew it would be wrong to make false promises. Reaching out, he allowed himself to touch her. With one hand around the back of her neck, he embraced her softness. If it was a mistake, he didn’t care anymore.
She moaned softly and turned her face to his arm and kissed it.
That simple touch made his reason trip and stumble, good sense flying from his mind. “You have me, my lady. God help me. You are like a siren calling to me, luring me to my end—”
“Never.”
It mattered not. He was hers. Embracing her, he lifted her from the floor as he kissed her, taking the weight from her arms.
The way she trembled against him, her body flexing in his arms, made him wonder if he would ever tire of this. Her kiss was every bit as hearty and passionate as his. Roderick reminded himself that her motives had been self-protection, nothing more. Learning that fact heaped scorn on the vague notion he had of making her his for much longer than this troubled journey. Roderick knew that whatever her thoughts on the matter, and her reasons for offering herself to him, he adored her. Her virginity had come in exchange for her passage to Scotland; she had not lied about that. But he also knew that she wouldn’t do such a thing without great deliberation. He’d learned that much about her.
