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19
The ruins of the small castle had one small section that was kept private for Keira, and she treasured it. Sometimes, when the wind was blowing its hardest, driving stinging raindrops before it, she would come to the top of the highest turret, look out over the sea, and dream. She rarely visited the tower on a calm day or a sunny one because she preferred to see the sea in its wildest, angriest moods.
Today it was a stern blue-grey, the crests of its restless waves whipped into what looked like the manes of white horses by the scouring wind. The sky was a mass of lowering, bruise-colored clouds that heralded the approach of a violent storm, but Keira loved the storms. She felt wild and free, as if she could do anything. On days like this she almost felt able to fly like the gulls and terns that were sweeping the sky as she watched. Sometimes she envied them, as she did now. They could look down on the troubles of ordinary human beings like herself and laugh at them. What did they care if those two-legged earthbound creatures fought and killed each other? They had no such worries.
Keira sighed. She felt overwhelmed with happiness now that her father was out of her life forever, but she felt a little calmer today, content instead of euphoric. She did not have to look far to see the source of all her happiness, for he was standing not thirty feet below her, up to his knees in seawater.
Murdoch Holmes.
“Why are you mine?” she said aloud. “I do not deserve you. You will never know how much I love you, Murdoch Holmes. Men are so blind!” Then she laughed as she watched him slipping on the wet stones and landing on his backside, cursing.
Keira was so immersed in admiring Murdoch that she did not notice that the rain had started until it began to run down her cheeks. She hastily dashed it away and watched, fascinated, as Murdoch bent down and hauled a net full of shellfish out of the waves.
One of the little girls in the settlement, who looked about twelve years old, brought him a cup of ale.
“Thank you, Ailie!’ he said gratefully, smiling at him. “How did you know I was dying of thirst?”
“Ma said ye would be,” Ailie answered shyly.
“You are a good girl,” Murdoch said, and he thanked her with a kiss on her cheek.
Even from the considerable distance between them, Keira could see that she was blushing as she turned and ran back to the main building. Now there would be a story to tell her friends tonight!
Keira chuckled softly at the sweet interaction between the big man and the little girl. As the rain began to fall more heavily, Keira sighed and went downstairs. She wanted to sit down with a cup of warm milk and do nothing for a while. She wanted to chase every thought out of her head, sleep, and dream happy dreams.
Accordingly, she filled a pot with milk from the pitcher and set it over the fire to warm up while she lay on a soft cushion and watched it as her mind emptied and her body relaxed. Her eyes drifted closed.
She was abruptly startled out of her slumber when a heavy hand landed on her shoulder and she heard a familiar voice saying urgently, “Your milk is boiling over!”
Murdoch wrapped a cloth around his hand and snatched the pot from the fire as the milk poured over the sides, hissing and spitting, then he put the vessel on the floor. He stood up and frowned at her, intending to reprimand her, but as he looked at her face and her eyes twinkled as she gazed at him, he chuckled. How could he ever be angry with her?
“Thank you, Murdoch,” Keira said tiredly. “You know how clumsy I am. That was very stupid of me.”
Murdoch poured the milk into a cup and offered it to Keira, feeling how cold her fingers were as their hands touched. He squatted down beside her and put his arms around her, hearing her sigh with contentment.
His mind went back to the first day they had met in the pinewood, the crackle of attraction that had passed between them as they walked toward each other. His manhood had sprung to life at once, and he had felt an urgent need to sweep Keira into his arms and kiss her senseless right there and then. He had managed to resist, but now that time had passed, he was finding it more and more difficult to do so. She was everything he had ever wanted in a woman. She was perfect.
As he sat down, Murdoch watched her taking her first sip of the milk, loving the way she rubbed her lips together then licked the corners of her mouth. He almost growled with desire but resisted the impulse, although his body disobeyed him and surged to attention as he caught the scent of her skin. There was no perfume, or even anything as humble as lavender water, just the plain earthy smell of her, but it might as well have been one of the most exquisite French fragrances ever concocted.
“You look tired. Perhaps you should take a rest tomorrow,” he suggested. “It is Sunday.”
“No. Sunday is just another day here,” she pointed out, yawning then smiling. “I cannot sit idly by while everyone else works.”
“You are the leader here,” he pointed out. “And you have been working harder than anyone else I know. It is time you were good to yourself, Keira.”
Keira looked into his shining green eyes for a moment. She knew she could look into them forever and never become tired of it. What a beautiful man he was, and how long it had taken her to know how much she loved him. At that thought, her body began to respond to him in its most primitive way, and suddenly she was flushed, sensitive, and wet in a very inconvenient place.
She snapped her gaze away from him quickly and took a deep draft of her milk. “I have no wish to be a leader,” she told him.
“Then what do you want to be, Keira?” he asked softly.
I want to be your wife,she thought.
She was not the kind of woman on whom the responsibilities of hearth, home, and children would sit well, yet for Murdoch, could she be all of those things? Somehow she knew that he would not want to tame her wildness, and he would allow her the same amount of freedom as he, a man, would expect as his right.
They stared at each other, each of them seemingly unable to look away, before Keira sighed and shook her head in complete exasperation.
“I just want our people to be happy,” she replied at last. “I don’t care who is the leader as long as they take care of everyone and keep them safe.”
