Page 96 of The Forest Bride
“We were so young, aye?” He watched the rain on the glass. “You were three when I first met you. A wee faery creature. And later, thirteen when we found the bird.”
“Nearly fourteen,” she whispered. “And you were twenty.”
“Nearly twenty-one. And it did not feel right to me to wed such a young girl, let alone bed her, as would have been expected.”
“Girls that age marry all the time.” She heard her voice as if from afar.
“They do. But I could not do that. I had this rigid sense of honor and principle then. I had to prove myself a chivalrous knight. The ideal knight.”
“I always thought you were,” she said softly.
He shook his head. “I followed Edward for a short time and realized I could not condone his actions against the Scots, my people. So I sided with the Scots. And for years I sat in a dungeon, then in better quarters on the hope of a good ransom. Then I was shipped off to a foreign war. And so it went. Fighting in battles, existing, scheming to get away, doing what I could to survive. Ideal knight!”
“Then against all odds, you became that.”
“What I learned of true honor, I learned in those years from the men around me. Sir Andrew Murray—aye, the lad’s father. We shared a cell together. Sir John Comyn, who was killed by Bruce, or some say Bruce’s men, in this crush of right and ambition over the throne of Scotland. But first of all, my father, a man of integrity and a soul as big as the stars. And now Robert Bruce. He teaches all of us what dedication is. What it means to love Scotland. Persistence. Passion. Belief,” he added, fisting a hand.
“You learned well, Duncan Dhu.”
He looked at her then. “But I made a grave error before those years. Had we married as our families wanted then, and had I never left, I might have been a very different man than now.”
“Either way, a very good man.” She moved toward him. “And now?”
“And now I could be the kind of husband you deserve.”
Her knees wavered. “Is that what you want?”
His sweet and rueful smile poured into her heart. “I always wanted that, Margaret. And lately I see how much, and why.”
With a little soft cry, she ran to him and he opened his arms. She melted into his embrace as if she had always belonged there, as if he was some missing piece of her and she of him, found in joy. He felt so strong, warm, enveloping, that she closed her eyes to savor it, sensing his heart thumping against her cheek.
“Duncan,” she whispered, and reached up to cup her hands on his dark-bristled jaw. “I thought when you wanted to talk, sounding so serious, you meant to let me go.”
“Let you go? I only just found you again after so long.”
“Perhaps we both needed that time,” she said, as the idea of it occurred. “We both went through a great deal. I think we are stronger for it. We know what we want. What we need,” she breathed.
“I know what I want. The rest is yours to decide.”
She sighed, smiled. What did she want? All her dreams to come true. And in this moment, it seemed it could happen. So many dreams.
“I just want you to kiss me,” she said then.
He did, taking her, leaning her back, kissing her the way he had kissed her under the arch of birches, with passion and power and all his heart blown open. He kissed her as if all the years and regrets and grief vanished, as if she had never been a child with him, or even a woman in his arms with so much time wasted between them. Instead, he kissed her as one soul would kiss another, having searched and found and merged easily at last.
“You,” she said, drawing back for breath. “All this time, it was you I dreamed of. Even when it seemed impossible, thinking you were gone. I was angry and sad at first, but still yearning, still dreaming. I believed you did not want me, and still I never wanted to marry anyone else. Only you. It was only you I loved. Only you I love now.”
“Dearest. Listen now.” He snugged her in the circle of his arms, looking down at her. “The day I broke it off, I loved youin a way, but both of us were too young. I suppose I loved the memory of you, the thought of the woman you would become. In those days, I desperately wanted to come home to my kin—and then find you and ask forgiveness. But when I learned you were in a convent, I lost heart somewhat.”
“And all the while I thought you had died. What a tangle of knots made by rumor and fate. Yet here we are.”
“Here we are,” he murmured. Pressed to his chest, she rose to kiss his cheek, his lips, then pulled back. “Then all is well?”
“And all shall be well. There is still the matter of De Soulis, but we are still betrothed, and he cannot dismiss that. Though we do not know what he truly wants from you, which concerns me.”
“He has no claim over your betrothed. He never did,” she added.
He brushed a stray curl from her brow. “No claim, but if he is angered over it, he could have ill intent. And if Menteith should ever discover you shot him, he would come after you with vengeance and the law. Remember they tried to grab you when they took Lilias. There may be a reason. Edward will do anything to punish Robert Bruce. He did order the capture of his kinswomen.”
