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Varrick was eager to hear. “Tell me.”
“My grandmother insisted it was because their deep love for each other defied reason and connected them far deeper than anyone would believe possible.”
“We do not love each other,” he said, his denial feeling like a stab to his heart.
Fia was not as quick to deny. “Perhaps fate knows something we have yet to discover.”
His hand stretched out and caught the back of her neck, holding her firm. “Do you bewitch me, wife?”
“I believe it is you who bewitches me since I have never felt as I do when I am with you, when you hold my hand, when you kiss me. It is like the trees in the woods in their winter slumber when finally awakened, ready to come fully alive again. I have never felt as fully alive as I have when I am with you, especially when you kiss me.”
“I have never known love. I know not how it feels,” he said, “but I do know I find great pleasure in being with you. So, I ask you again. Do you bewitch me, make me feel strange things, make me desire you?”
“I will repeat this to you as often as needed… I am no witch. I am a healer, a wise woman from a long line of wise women and I am proud to be one. I have no power over you, and I cannot in any way make you love me. That is your choice alone to make.”
He lowered his mouth to hers to kiss her gently and briefly. “If that is so, and we choose to consummate our vows here and now, then you will forever stay my wife and live your days out here with me. You will bear my children, you will obey me, you will be a good wife, on this I will have your word.”
Fia said what she felt. “The only word I can give you that I know without a doubt I can keep is that I will always love you and keep you in my heart until my dying day.”
“Nay,” he said, shaking his head. “It must be beyond your dying day, for it is with you that I finally feel what it is to be loved and I never want to let you go.” He kissed her again, but it was not with tenderness this time, it was with a need he had never known, a need that filled him with a joy he had never known. If she was not a witch and did not bewitch him, then it could be only one thing… he had fallen in love with his wife.
He kissed her with a mixture of tenderness and impatience since he ached for more.
He ended the kiss reluctantly, but he needed to tell her. “You are mine. You will always be mine.”
“And you will belong to me and always be mine,” Fia said softly as if exchanging vows that had true meaning to them.
“Aye, wife, I pledge that to you,” Varrick said, and he did not think his heart could swell with any more joy but it did.
Varrick stepped away from her and began to disrobe, loosening his plaid to rid himself of his shirt first, and Fia did the same, her hands trembling.
He stepped forward and took hold of her hands. “I will not hurt you. You are safe with me.”
“Somehow I have known that since we first met, when I should have thought otherwise,” she said. “It is just that… I know only what I have been told or heard from other women, and while some spoke of coupling pleasantly, others did not, and some would not speak of it at all. And what of this unrelenting ache that settles in my lower parts when you kiss me? Is that something to be expected?”
“Aye, that and more,” he assured her, his own ache growing even more, knowing that she desired him as much as he did her.
He lowered his lips to hers and barely brushed them when a shout stopped him from going any further.
“Lord Varrick!”
He reluctantly stepped away from his wife and slipped his shirt on. He wanted no one to know what went on between him and his wife, not yet. Not until he could make certain she would be safe.
Varrick opened the door having recognized who had shouted out to him. “What is it, Corwin?”
“You need to come see this,” Corwin said.
While Varrick would have preferred not to leave his wife, Corwin would not trouble him if it was not important. “I will be right there. You have two warriors ready to stand guard outside this door?”
“Aye,” Corwin said.
Varrick closed the door and went to his wife. “When I return, we will finish this.” He ran his fingers along her soft cheek. “Nay, we will begin our life together as husband and wife.” He kissed her gently, grabbed his cloak, and once at the door turned. “Two guards will be outside the door. You are safe.”
Fia wanted to ask what was taking him away, but his tender touch had sent a rash of flutters throughout her body, and she could barely think straight. And the ache down below had grown worse. She hoped he would not be long. She feared if too much time passed, she might question that what she was about to do was foolish.
She returned to sit on the bench in front of the hearth and removed her boots to stretch her stocking-covered feet out to the heat.
What was it her mum had said about love?
