Page 60 of Vows of Revenge

She lifted her other hand, and with a touch that was as light as the hand on his sleeve she brushed his cheek.

‘But I do,’ she whispered.

Her eyes were lifted to his, and he saw they were no longer smeared, but lit with a silver light.

‘Kassia, dear God...Kassia!’

That emotion was sweeping up in him, powerful and strange and unknown—the emotion that had swept over him the night he had made Kassia his own. But now he knew what it was. Knew that the spear which had been thrust so deep inside him, twisting viciously as he’d faced walking away from her for ever, was suddenly gone.

With a jerking movement he folded his hand over hers on his sleeve. Pressed it down. Never to let it go. Never...

Then he slipped his fingers under hers. Lifted them. Lifted them to his mouth. Kissed them.

In homage and in plea—and in love.

Because that was what he knew was filling him—that was what had caused that unbearable sense of loss when she had fled from him that hideous night. That had been the desperation driving him to find her, to make his confession to her, to do whatever he could to make amends. To show her that what had started as a lie had become the truth...to beg her to believe him.

‘I am yours,’ he said, and his voice was low, filled with all he felt, all he had come to feel, would always feel. ‘I am yours for however long you might want me. Yours for an hour, or a day, or a single night—or for a lifetime.’

She reached up a hand, enfolded his as it enfolded hers. She was looking at him now, and her eyes were filling again with tears. But her tears were diamonds...

‘Or for eternity?’ she said, and reached his lips with hers.

Was this love? Was this love pouring through her like a tide? Washing away all that had tarnished and poisoned and destroyed? Was it love she had tried to silence, to kill, after she’d realised what he’d done to her?

Oh, but it must be love! For what else could lift her like this? What else could turn agony and anguish into such joy? Such joy as streamed through her?

He was sweeping her to him, crushing her to him, saying her name, kissing her hair, her cheek, her mouth.

‘I don’t deserve you—I don’t deserve a single hair on your head. I don’t deserve a single moment with you! Oh, God, Kassia, if only I could undo—’

She pulled away—but only to place a finger across his mouth, to silence him.

‘No more,’ she whispered. ‘It’s gone...it’s over—we will never let it come between us again. Simply to know how much you regret it means all the world to me. It...it heals us, Damos. Heals all the harm that was done.’

She kissed him again, to seal that healing. And then, as she drew back, she spoke again. There was something new in her voice now. A rueful note.

‘And you know...maybe we should be grateful for your coming here for the reason you did. Because if you hadn’t...would we ever have met? And if we had—in Athens, say—you would have had some gorgeous, glamorous female with you and you would not have looked twice at me.’

She was given no chance to say more. Words fell from him, urgent and vehement.

‘Kassia, if you spend the rest of your life looking exactly as you do now, without a scrap of make-up and in clothes that should be buried deeper than those broken pots you keep digging up, I will love you and adore you and desire you all the rest of my days!’

He seized her hands, his eyes pouring into hers, and what she saw in them made her faint with love.

‘It’syouwhom I love! And when I say I will always,alwayswant you to look as stunning as I know you can, it is foryou—not me!’

His mouth lowered to hers, and in the touch of his lips was all that she could ever desire. For a long time they kissed, and as at last they drew apart she saw he was gazing down at her, love light in his eyes...love light that was like a warming flame inside her, one that would warm her all her days, and all her nights, for ever and for good.

Her heart was singing. It would sing for ever now.

Damos’s arms came around her and he held her close, against his heart, where now she would always be. Her arms wrapped him just as close, and closer still. Heart against heart—for all eternity indeed. And so much longer.

EPILOGUE

KASSIACOULDN’TSTOPLAUGHING.Both she and Damos were making endless mistakes, but no one minded. All the other dancers were helpfully calling out to them which way they should be turning, whose hands they should be taking now. One thing was for sure, though, reeling was an energetic business. The foot-tapping music was driving them on, with fiddles, pipes, drums and accordions, and it was just impossible not to dance. They’d already Stripped the Willow, Dashed the White Sergeant, been to Mairi’s Wedding, and were now completely confused in an eightsome reel.

When it ended she was more than ready to collapse down on one of the chairs around the edge of the village hall where theceilidhwas being held.

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