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‘I like it when you call me Will,’ he said frowning. Strange how good it sounded to his ears.
‘Aye, but you avoided my question as you have been avoiding me.’
‘T’is not avoidance. I see it more as resisting temptation for I think I have made it plain that I want you.’ He looked out to sea over her head, for words seemed to stick in his throat all of a sudden. ‘You stir something in me, Morna. I don’t know if it is lust, or pity or protectiveness or the fact that I saved your life and I think of you as belonging to me now. Whatever it is, until I am sure you want me in return, I’ll not behave like some loathsome lecher, chasing you around Fitheach.’
‘I am in no danger of being seduced by you, Will.’
‘Then what would you have me do, humiliate myself pursuing you. Stand before the flames so that I can get burnt?’
‘I should not have kissed you like that the other day. It was wrong of me to let you think that…’
‘And what is right, Morna, living your life at the behest of God and the law and the King and your brothers. Why not be sinful and dangerous for once? Grab hold of what you want. There’s no shame in passion, only pleasure, in wanting to take and be taken. A life lived by another’s rules and against one’s own nature is a withered runt of an existence. I sense you want to be free.’
Morna looked up at him, wide-eyed and confused, suddenly she was so much softer than she liked to appear. For a moment, Will thought he could actually care for a woman, such was the tenderness flooding his breast.
‘Will…I…I don’t know what to do and what to feel,’ she said, looking down at the ground, her face going scarlet, and then, to his utter surprise and dismay, took hold of his mutilated hand and brought it to her lips and kissed it. ‘I am sorry for this,’ she whispered, ‘does it pain you?’
‘Aye, sometimes when the cold is bad, my hand aches. Other times I feel as though my fingers are still there.’
She bit her lip, small white teeth digging into soft pink flesh. Tears filled her big, brown eyes. ‘That must be awful. Oh Will, the truth of it is, I have long dreamed about getting away from Beharra and, now I have, it is all danger and confusion. I don’t like this twisting in my heart, for it thrills and frightens me all at once.’ She looked down the beach with such sadness on her face that Will could do nothing but take her into his arms and hold her close. Morna let him, and he stood stroking her hair for the longest time as the rain clouds scudded in, swallowing the light in the sky.
The mask had slipped. Morna suddenly seemed young and vulnerable. Will almost pitied her and then he thought, ‘this is how she holds a man, this peek at softness, so rare, so often hidden. A man can want her in his bed, but it is only when he sees the gentle woman inside that he is caught, and cannot get free.’
A rumble of thunder sounded overhead, and a few fat drops of rain plopped onto the beach.
Will gently pulled Morna back from him and stared into her eyes for the longest time.
‘What is it you want, Morna Buchanan?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then let me help you decide.’
Will put his hands to her face, wet with tears, and he kissed her, slowly, gently, tenderly, as his heart twisted in his chest. The rain picked up, and the wind buffeted them in strong gusts whipping up Morna’s dark hair around them, but it was as if it were a perfect sunny day with a blue sky above. Nothing else existed for Will at that moment, save the two of them and the tentative trust budding between them.
Will pulled back and looked up at the black clouds smothering the castle in the distance. Wordlessly, he took hold of Morna’s small hand in his and led her back to Fitheach’s dark walls. By the time they approached the shelter of the cave mouth, the rain had intensified, and they ran inside, laughing. Will glanced up and thought he saw a lone figure on the walls, watching, but it was gone at once, smothered in the rain and mist.
Chapter Eleven
Morna rushed to her bedroom, all breathless excitement, and sat before the hearth, squeezing rainwater out of her hair and fanning it out to dry before the fire. That kiss! Oh, it was wonderful, as if a thousand little butterflies had been loosed in her stomach. She was so weak with longing that an ache rose in her chest when she thought of Will.
There was so much expression in those deep ocean eyes of his, they held you, they seduced and delighted you, they made you feel as though, for Will, no other woman existed in the world. Could she trust in them, for they could also look so savage when he frowned, his dark brows making that face seem fierce even when at rest? Those eyes may be irresistible, but they also gave her pause, for they belonged to a man who was dangerous to his core, reckless, covetous and fiercely intelligent. Perhaps the kindness in them was a lie.
One thing she was sure of, Will liked to win, at everything, be it warring or women. Oh, but when he smiled, it raised little lines at the corner of those eyes, and dimples in his cheeks and Morna saw in that smile a shadow of what he must have been before fate and misfortune had twisted him. There was insolence about his smile that warmed her heart and brought a rush of feeling for him. If she let it take hold, it would be the end of her. She so wished she had the time to make sense of him.
The creak of the door made her jump, and she glared at Drostan as he entered. She wanted to be alone with delicious thoughts of Will, not suffer his cousin’s complaining.
‘Do I disturb you, Morna?’
‘Aye, a little Drostan. You should not turn up unannounced, you startled me.’
‘Forgive me, I felt the need to speak to you.’
‘Your cousin will be angry if you are here with me alone. You should go.’
‘I don’t care what Will thinks, and I must say my piece before it is too late.’
‘I bid you go, Drostan, for I am tired and wet through. I must get out of these wet clothes.’
