Page 58 of Never Kiss a Scot
“What is it?” he asked, still smiling as he pressed his forehead to hers.
“You…this… I’m so happy, Brock. I wish…I wish you could feel my joy.” She meant that with every breath inside her. She would have given anything for him to feel what she was feeling.
He played with a loose strand of her hair around one of his fingers “I feel it too, lass. I was worried about bringing an English lady to my home. It isna like the life you’re used to. I feared you would come to hate it—and me.” He whispered his confession, and it fractured her heart with fine splintering cracks.
Hate this man? Her warrior? Her protector? Her Scottish lord? She saw so much of his people’s past in him, the nobility of the soul that sometimes vanished from the men and women in English ballrooms. Here with him, she saw the people of Scotland and the ghosts of Culloden in his gaze. Yet he held no hatred toward her, no fury, only a plea for her to see. To understand. To love. To love the man he was and the place he called home.
I love him. I love him, and it cannot be undone. Come what may, he owns my heart, now and always.
“I love this place…and…” She held her breath before adding, “And I love you, Brock, my fierce badger.”
His gaze softened in a way that made her melt into him. There were some smiles that existed in a secret place in one’s heart, smiles that came to the surface only during moments of the purest joy. In that moment, she’d won such a smile from Brock, a smile that she wanted to burn forever into her memory.
“Oh, my sweet lass. I wish I could buy every book in the store for you.”
He didn’t say it, didn’t tell her that he loved her, but he hadn’t shied away, hadn’t denied her feelings. That at least was a start.
“Let me buyyoubooks instead.” She reached for the first title she could find behind him. When she lifted it up, the gilded letters on the spine flashed in the sunlight.
“The Lady of the Lakeby Sir Walter Scott. He’s one of us,” Brock declared proudly.
“You know it?” she asked.
“I do.” His gaze turned distant as he began to recite from memory.
Aloft, the ash and warrior oak,
Cast anchor in the rifted rock;
And, higher yet, the pine tree hung
His shattered trunk, and frequent flung,
Where seem’d the cliffs to meet on high,
His boughs athwart the narrowed sky.
Highest of all, where white peaks glanced,
Where glistening streamers waved and danced,
The wanderer’s eye could barely view
The summer heaven’s delicious blue,
So wondrous and wild, the whole might seem
The scenery of a fairy dream.
He finished his words by brushing the backs of his knuckles over her cheek, and she trembled with a force of affection for him that was so strong it made her knees buckle.
If she had not already been so in love with him, his recitation of poetry would have done it. She was hopelessly in love with her Scot. This man who only ever touched her with kindness and passion. His tenderness was infinite, and it filled her with endless wonder and fascination.
“We must take this one, then,” she replied, blushing. He moved away a little and took the book, adoration in his eyes as he gazed at the spine.
“Any others?” Joanna asked him.
“Books? I’ve near read them all.” He laughed, the sound washing over her like rich brandy.
