Stirring in the night, still a bit groggy from the whisky, James was unsure what had woken him. He had not dreamed, exactly, yet had sensed voices, moving shadows around him. He needed fresh air to clear his head—the so-called fairy brew had been stronger than he thought.
Dressing quickly in trousers and shirt, he shrugged into the borrowed frock coat, leaving cravat and waistcoat aside. In the wee hours, no one would see him.
Slipping out of the house, he decided on a brisk walk, following the long earthen lane that led toward the weaving cottages perched between hills and a stretch of meadow. The night was cool and misty, and moonlight sliced through overhead clouds. James noticed translucent rings around the bright moon. The sky was clearing after days of rain.
His footfalls echoed quietly, but soon he was surprised to hear the clacking rhythm of a loom. Light glowed in the window of one of the weaving cottages. Was Elspeth unable to sleep too? The loom clicked the fast cadence of a weaver passionate about the work.
Approaching the door, about to knock, he realized this cottage was not the one Elspeth had been in earlier. Moving to the small window, he glanced inside.
Donal MacArthur sat at a large loom in the light of a single lantern, the rest of the room in shadow. He worked quickly, shifting and moving with power, speed, and certainty.
James frowned, then gaped in astonishment. MacArthur worked so fast that his hands, the shuttle and colored threads, the loom itself were simply a blur. The red tartan pattern gathered rapidly on the roller, faster than seemed humanly possible.
James blinked, rubbed his fingers over his eyelids, looked again. The loom whirred, clicked, and shuddered while the weaver sped through his work like a demon. The incredible pace seemed beyond what a man could do.
Had the whisky had been that strong? Was he dreaming after all?
“Come away!” A hand touched his arm. James turned to see Elspeth, who pulled on his sleeve. “James, please.”
He reached out, drew her close so that she could peer through the window. “Look. What is going on? How is he doing that?”
“Hush,” she whispered. He looked down, and the silk of her hair, loosely braided for the night, caressed his chin as she pressed close. He drew her aside, away from the window.
“Why are you out here? You must have been sleeping,” he said, noticing that she wore a dark plaid shawl over a night rail, the fabric pale in the moonlight. “Did the infernal noise of his weaving wake you?”
“I woke suddenly and knew you were out here. So I came.”
“Woke and just knew,” he said.
“Just knew. I feel you, in a way,” she whispered. “Sometimes I just know where you are, as if you were...part of me.” She touched his arm.
Part of her. Somehow he knew what she meant. He felt it too. He and his twin had a tie between them, and this was strangely similar. But how—he stopped. Was it possible to feel a bond with someone so quickly, trust so completely, love so immediately? And how, at this moment, was Donal MacArthur doing that unearthly weaving? His mind whirled.
“Come away,” Elspeth said softly. “We should not be here.”
“Wait.” He bent his head, mouth beside her ear. He felt her catch her breath. “I want to sort this out, whatever this is. I want to understand what is happening.” In the weaving cottage, he thought—and in his own heart.
“You must not watch my grandfather. Come away,” she insisted.
“He works the loom like the devil himself. Why?”
“It is a secret of the Kilcrennan weavers. Grandda’s own secret to guard. We must not look. Please, come away with me.” She tugged at his arm.
“That inhuman pace—how does he keep it up?” He glanced through the window. In a whirlwind of the weaving, Donal never looked up, snatching the roll of tartan from the loom and setting the frame again, absorbed in his work, all at a steady and astonishing speed. “I saw you today at the loom—such skill and grace. But what he is doing in there is unearthly.”
“It is not of this earth, what he does.”
A chill slid down his spine. “Please explain.”
She looked up at him, so beautiful in the moonlight, so solemn. “It is the fairy gift upon him. I should not tell you—but listen, now. Years ago, Donal MacArthur was given the fairy gift of weaving a month of work in an evening.”
“Fairy gift?”
“An ability bestowed on him by the fairies. A kind of spell.”
“Away wi’ you,” James murmured gently. “I did not have that much whisky.”
She was sincere, eyes wide and earnest. “It is due to the fairy whisky that you are able to see his pace tonight.”
“I am nae fou—well, nae that fou,” he jested softly. She shook her head.
“They say the fairy brew allows some, only certain people, to see the fairy magic at work. Without sipping the brew, you would see only a man at his weaving.”
He frowned, remembering that her grandfather had hinted something similar. “Donal mentioned the gift of the fairies. I thought he meant the Highland Sight.”
“That as well is a gift. Some are blessed by the fairies at birth.”
“You truly believe this?” Everything in him wanted to deny what she was telling him.
She shrugged, then nodded. “I have grown up with these beliefs and tales. Some I wonder about—others I do believe are true. There is no other explanation unless we are all truly mad.”
The small hairs lifted on his arms, his neck. He felt a strange and dreadful sense growing—what if fairies were real? “How do you explain Donal’s weaving ability? Can you always see it, or only with the whisky?”
“I see it,” she said simply. “I am a fast weaver, and I can make a good length of tartan in a few days. When the magic comes over my grandfather like this, he can weave dozens of plaids over a single long night,” she said.
“I—do not know what to say,” he breathed, glancing back toward the window, where the light spilled, and the wild clacking of the loom sounded.
“I wonder if Grandda wanted you to see this,” she said. “He gave you the fairy brew, which he shares with no one but me. Then he set to his weaving this night, knowing that anyone who had sipped the fairy brew could see him at work.”
“He did this deliberately so that I would see it?”
“It is my guess. Still, we should stay out of sight. He has a fierce pride, and he is careful to keep the fairy magic secret. But for you and I,” she said, looking up at him thoughtfully. “Well, and Peggy Graham, but she prefers to ignore it all.”
“I prefer that too, my girl,” he murmured. “I am hoping any moment now that I will wake in my bed, with the taste of whisky on my lips, with a thick head, and no memory of how I got there. I wonder if you will be beside me when I wake.” He wrapped her close, fingers easing over her shoulder.
”No, and hush,” she whispered with a soft laugh. She set two fingers to his lips, and he kissed them. Elspeth took his face between her hands, lifted up on her toes, and kissed his mouth.
Slow, delightful, the power of that tender kiss sank through him, crown to sole. His body surged, craved. He caught her by the waist, kissed her hard and sure until she moaned breathily. Then she pulled back.
“That was real, that kiss,” she whispered. “Truly meant. Not magic.”
“So is this.” He traced his thumb under the delicious weight of her breast.
“Jamie,” she breathed, pressing against him. He closed his eyes, holding her. Years ago, his family had called him that; now only his sister used the affectionate name. On Elspeth’s lips, it sounded right, intimate, ringing differently, dearly.
“Real, aye. But nothing, lass, can prove to me that I saw fairy magic tonight—it was simply too much exceptional whisky. That is what I believe.” His heart thumped like a drum. He kissed her brow, her cheek, traced down to her lips to kiss her fully.
She sighed. “Sometimes you must trust that something is true.”
He drew back, set his cheek against hers. Trusting easily was not his nature. Yet Elspeth constantly challenged him, having a sort of magic about her, but that was her natural charm, he told himself, a blend of whimsy and wisdom. And he had to admit to himself that she and her grandfather—his grandmother too—had pushed him to think beyond what he was prepared to accept.
Still, he shook his head. “It is the whisky at work on me.”
“And well it should. The fairy dew gives that whisky a touch of fairy magic.”
Enough, he almost said. Enough of this insistence on magic. She felt solid and real in his arms, and that was all he wanted. Needed. He brushed a hand over her soft hair, grazed his thumb along her cheek, the curve of her lips. He kissed her again, touched the merest tip of his tongue to hers. She opened, inviting more.
Real and reassuring, this warmth of breath and flesh, this passion burgeoning in his body. He needed her, wanted her for his lover and his wife, nothing to do with obligation or responsibility. He knew that now. He wanted to spend his life with her. He loved her.
Yet she had refused him, although her response felt as passionately real as his own. She pressed against him, lips lush and urgent under his. She pulled back, looked up. “Your feelings, and my own, that is what is real here and now,” she whispered. “That is truth, I will give you that.”
Once again, she echoed his thoughts. “You are a conundrum.”
“We must come away from here,” she said, and drew him with her through shadows and fog, away from the building and toward her own small weaving cottage, its windows dark. There, James pulled her into the shadow of the wall, where she set her back against the stone and lifted her arms to his shoulders. He snugged the small of her back, taut and slim, against him. Swathed in darkness and silence, he kissed her, deep and fervent, then slow and tender.
The wildness he had felt before with her came through him again, his heart thudding, body savoring the feel of her against him. Even as he cautioned himself to slow down, consider—she pulled him closer, opening her lips to his, giving him her moist, curious tongue. He grew full and hard, aching for her, and her fervor clearly equaled his, with no hesitating. He would follow the craving so long as she would allow it, standing in the lee of the stone wall, lost in needful kisses and touches.
Beneath the warmth of her plaid shawl, the softness of her night rail bunching under his palms, her body was all soft curves and slenderness, and his own quickened like fire. Kissing him, she ran her hands over his shoulders, then inside his coat, fingers slipping inside the fabric of his shirt, for he had foregone a waistcoat and neckcloth in his haste to step outside in the middle of the night. As her touch teased, he pressed her against the wall, hunger driving him now. He must master himself, pull back, he thought. But he was already changing with her, letting her see his desire, his vulnerability. It unsettled him to lose his accustomed reserve, but he wanted to be truthful with her, honest with himself.
All of him, his reliable, routine, careful life, his feelings, all of it had shifted since he had known her. What his logic found fanciful and impossible, she found easy to accept. She was open with her emotions, and his own feelings, guarded so strictly, were expanding. That scared him most of all. He loved her, and had almost from the first moment. Yet being impulsive was unlike him. And his certainty about loving her, without studying the problem from all sides, questioning and pondering—that was especially unlike him.
Now he was surrendering to the moment, accepting her permission, feeling her fervor build in tandem with his. She was seductive, charming, willing in his arms. Magic, fairies, all that was impossible, faded. Here and now mattered most.
Yet he was at his core a thinker, a scientist, a constant questioner. He sucked in a breath, drew back, breath ragged. He must remain true to that, and not change so quickly. It felt—capricious somehow, as if he was fickle to his own stolid nature.
She tilted her head, breathing quickly, leaned toward him to ask another kiss. He leaned away, cautious for her sake as well as his own.
“Just what are we doing here, my girl?” he asked.
“Hush.” Taking his hand, she led him around the corner to the stone step of the cottage and lifted the door latch. Feeling her intention match his, James lifted her in his arms, pushed the door open, stepped inside, kicked the door shut behind them.
The dark, snug space smelled pleasant, a mingling of wood and wool and peacefulness. He set Elspeth down, and she took his hand to pull him toward the corner, where plaids were stacked. She tossed a few of them down for a nest, tugged him to the floor.
“What are we doing, love,” he murmured, sinking to his knees.
“What we will,” she said.
“There are consequences,” he began.
“We can think about that later,” she whispered.
Elspeth drew James down with her to the soft plaids that she had spread on the floor. She knew there could be consequences, and she was stepping with him far past compromise. But for now, her pulsing, yearning body spoke most clearly, and she felt, deeply and surely, that this was right, and needed by both of them. Here in her own space, they would not be disturbed. Her grandfather would be weaving without stopping until dawn.
She knelt to face James, looped her arms around his neck. He streamed his fingers through her hair, cupped her face in his hands, then leaned to kiss her with a tenderness that made her ache with desire, with love. His lips traced along her cheek, her ear. He took her full into his arms.
“Elspeth,” he whispered. “What is this, between us?” His lips traced, touched.
She melted, closed her eyes, resisted the urge to say what came to her. I love you. I want you to love me. “I want...to feel what we felt the other night. Only that, before you leave for Struan House, and then for the south.”
“No matter where I go,” he murmured, “we can see each other when we want.”
“But not alone, as we are now,” she answered, touching his jaw, his beard like sand under her fingers. “Not where we may do as we will.”
He groaned softly, soothed a hand over her shoulder, over her braid, loosening the thick plait to spill down her back. Shivers cascaded through her. Returning his kiss, feeling the hard warmth of his body through the fabric of her nightgown, she pressed close. Her heart thudded against his as she pulled at his sleeves, urged him out of his coat. He tossed that aside, and dropped her shawl away, another plaid for the nest that cushioned them.
Kisses plummeted through her, took her breath. She fit her body to his, deliciously, savoring his smooth gliding touch down her throat, breasts. She tightened for him, tingled under his fingers, arched to ask for more. She felt as if she might do anything he asked.
Anything but marry him.
The thought made her hesitate. She ducked her head away. What was the meaning of this, then, if she would not marry him? It might be the last chance to be in his arms—he might leave, never return. Only a fool of a girl would refuse him, but she had no choice. Leave it be, then.
Surrendering to renewed kisses, she decided to find joy in this now, and give that to him. Sliding her fingers through his thick, wavy hair as he dipped down to kiss her breast, she gasped softly, and then slid her hand inside his shirt, smoothing over his warm, firm skin, finding his thundering heartbeat, resting there.
Tugging aside her gown, he touched his lips, so warm and moist, to her breast, to the tightening pearl there, and a shot like lightning went through her. She moved, melted with urgency, willing him to more as his fingers glided lower, as a raw need pulsed through her.
I love you, will marry you—the words were desperate on her lips. Yet she held back, let her body say what she dare not. If she committed to that dream, then all that she had to protect would be vulnerable.
As he sank down with her to the thick bed of plaids, breast and chest, hip to hip, as he slid his hand under her gown, she tugged at his shirt, encouraged him. She could not get enough of this, of his touch, his closeness, her body yearning. She could feel the hardness of him against her, could feel the moment when passion replaced thought, wildness displaced logic. Buttons cloth fell away, fabric was pushed aside, hands were warm and rousing and comforting beyond reason. She found the length of him, like warm velvet over iron, and she shaped him with her hand, moved boldly against him, felt him groan against her lips.
“Love me,” she said, without thought, breathing it out.
“I do,” and his voice was gruff, breath mingling with hers, hands skimming.
I do too, she thought in silence, letting her body ask as his hand skimmed, found, delved, just there, as she gasped. He covered her cry with his lips. Burning, melting, under his intimate, fiery, blissful touch, she explored his warm, wonderful length, until a spark caught within her like a flame, and she rocked in a rhythm and went shimmering into the aching, surprising magic of it.
He kissed her, guided her hand to touch him as well, stroke and rock and release. She gave a little sob against the warmth of his shoulder, feeling something blooming, and something missing, all at once. “I wanted—I thought we both—”
“My love,” he whispered, drawing back, “if we did all we wanted, we would have a wedding quick, whether or not you want it, aye so?”
He drew her gown to cover her, dabbed at moisture, kissed her simply. She felt his very spirit pull away from her, felt his solitary nature take over. Sighing, she curled under a plaid, closed her eyes, gathered herself to herself.
He was right. He was wise. But she ached, yearned, needed.
In a moment she stood, legs all trembly, feeling a mix of contentment and heartache. Dragging her rumpled arisaid around her, she turned. He was dressed now, shrugging into his coat in the darkness. He took her hand, pulled her to him.
She rested her head against his shoulder. He kissed her hair.
“I mean to marry you, Elspeth MacArthur,” he said quietly. “You know that.”
She nodded. “Leave it be, do,” she whispered. “I have my reasons.” She could not look at him for fear of surrendering. A voice inside her said this could all be resolved, she could be happy. But she could not listen to it. Not yet.
James nodded too and went to the door. “So be it. I will not ask again.”
“James,” she said quickly. He grew still. “If I ever marry, it would be to you.”
“But, and but. We will not argue it again.” He shut the door behind him.