Page 46 of Never Kiss a Scot
Brock sighed at the unfairness of hiding those knees, but he nodded. “Aye, ye will. Or you could wear breeches.”
“Breeches?” she gasped, the scandal of such an idea heating her face. “Wouldn’t you be furious? Forbid it? I cannot imagine any man would let his woman go about in a man’s clothes.”
Her husband chuckled. “Those men would be fools. I’d love nothing more than to see your bonny bottom in tight breeches.” He eyed her bottom as he said this, and a new flush of heat, this time from desire rather than embarrassment, rolled through her.
“Perhaps…perhaps I will have some breeches made.” She grinned at him.
He mounted his horse, and they rode through the bailey and under the open portcullis farther down from the main door. Then he kicked his horse’s flanks, and they raced down the sloping hill toward the still waters of the loch.
It felt good to be home, to feel the wind upon his face, to see the heather upon the hills and the sun bathing the tops of the forests with gold. He hadn’t minded Bath, but the ballrooms and townhouses were confining in a way that his castle and the hills could never be.
“Brock, this place is beautiful.” Joanna sighed wistfully, her gaze sweeping over the countryside.
“These lands have been in my family for more than four hundred years,” he told her with pride.
The breeze played with Joanna’s hair, tugging it loose, and she looked more like she belonged here than any other person he’d ever seen. She fit into the land the way a dryad would fit in the shadowed glens.
“May we see the loch?” she asked, her blue eyes bright with fire. The excitement and wonder in her voice woke a sense of longing inside him that he’d been afraid of for far too long. The longer he spent with her, the more he believed he might yet fall in love with her. But could he love someone the way his mother had loved? Loved beyond all doubt, reason, and good sense? Loved through the end of his days and even longer? Did he dare to? It had done his mother no good in the end. But then, Joanna was no monster. She wouldn’t treat him the way his father had treated his mother. But the thought of letting that stone wall around his heart come down was too terrifying.
“Aye, we can.” He wanted to show her everything, and the lake was by far one of the best parts of the Kincade lands. She grinned at him, and this time he saw less of Ashton in her and more of Rafe’s mischievous temperament. That was a side he was interested in exploring. A playful wife was a happy wife, and he wanted Joanna to always be happy.
He led her down past the lake, through the forest that bordered his lands, and they stopped deep in the woods. The clearing had been made thousands of years ago by the men and women who had lived on this land before it had become Scotland. A group of gray stones formed a strange pattern that pointed to a pile of stones in the center. During the summer months, the sunlight cut through the trees in streaks of light that illuminated the patches where the stones stood, making the site even more mystical.
His mother had told him that the pile of stones was possibly a burial chamber for an ancient chieftain. Whenever Brock visited this place, he felt as though he could hear the stones of the burial chamber breathing, in that way things in nature often can. A delicate but somehow deep inhalation that went straight to the core of itself. His mother used to tell him and his siblings that magic,oldmagic, resided here, deep in the circle of these stones that guarded the eternal rest of an ancient chieftain who’d perished defending these lands.
“What is this place?” Joanna whispered as they slid off their horses. He took her hand again as they passed through the muted gold beams of light. They paused before one of the taller stones, which stood like a flat rectangle pointing up to the sky.
“These are the stones of Kincade, but many call these tall piecesfir bhreige, or false men.” He pulled her closer, embracing her from behind so she leaned back against him as he whispered his family’s stories in her ear.
“When the trees were younger, the stones pointed to the sun and moon. It also showed the men the way home during the seasons. They would travel far from home to hunt, and seeing these stones upon distant hilltops was the only way in which they could find their way back to their tribes.”
They walked up to the tallest stone nearest them. He placed his palm on the tall flat stone. The rock was rough. Brock swore that if he closed his eyes, he could feel the people of the past—his past—humming just beneath his fingertips, like the murmur of a thousand whispering souls.
Joanna placed her palm over his.
“It’s so peaceful here.”
“It is,” he agreed.
Scotland was a place of deep peace and beauty, a land God made to be perfect. He could never live anywhere else but here. His blood would always yearn to be on Scottish soil. He wondered if Joanna would someday feel the same. What if she changed her mind, decided she missed England, her friends and family and the life she’d had there? He wouldn’t want her to be unhappy or to force her to stay here. The thought made a sharp pain knife in his chest.
“Will you miss England?” he asked, forcing his voice to sound calm so she didn’t hear the concern in his words.
She was quiet a long moment as she circled the stones. Again he couldn’t help but picture her as a dryad, tempting a man into the woods so he might catch and kiss her, only to find she’d turned into a beautiful tree. She peered around the edge of one of the stones to look at him. The wind tugged her unbound hair playfully, the blonde strands dancing across the roughhewn rocks.
“I suppose I will, but this…I can’t quite explain it, but I feel as though I was destined to be here.” She shook her head. “I know it sounds silly.”
“No, it doesn’t.” He circled around the stone, catching her waist from behind and pulling her back against him as he breathed in the floral scent of her hair. He laced the fingers of his hands over her stomach, holding her to him. She covered his hands with hers, leaning back against him as they watched the light and shadows dance through the stones the way they had done for thousands of years. For the first time in his life, the quiet around him was a peaceful one, not an awful, foreboding one that filled him with dread. Holding his wife and standing among the stones, he felt his soul, which had been so often wounded, begin to heal. This moment with this woman was a gift he’d never fully deserve.
He brushed his lips against her ear. “Thank you for marrying me, Joanna,” he whispered. “I know you gave up everything to be here.”
She turned in his arms, her eyes filled with hope.
“I thought I was running away from England and the disappointments there, but now…” She shivered and leaned closer to him. “Now I know I was running toward something better.”
Brock leaned down, stealing a slow, sweet kiss that sent flames up the stone wall around his heart, challenging it to crumble. That aching in his chest began again as her gaze searched his for answers, and he knew before she spoke what she was about to ask, only he was too terrified to answer truthfully.
“Do you love me?” she asked.
