“Here,” Undine said, tired to the bone and shivering in the night air. “Now.”
Michael slowed his walking long enough to give her a sidelong smile. “I’ve heard of forward women before, but that pretty much tops it.”
“Ha.” Her feet ached, her shoulders hurt, and she was nearly asleep on her feet. But the patch of red clover they were walking through would make a fine pillow for her head. “If I could move a muscle,” she said, kicking a few stones aside, “it wouldn’t be to, well…”
“Do this?” He took her in his arms and gave her a thorough kiss. At once, her shoulders relaxed.
“You tempt me, sir.”
“What if I told you that you wouldn’t have to move a muscle?”
“Could you tell me I wouldn’t have to remain awake?”
He laughed and dropped his bag on the ground. “Unfortunately, there’s a rule about that in the gentlemen’s code. But if you insist…” He lifted her into his arms, laid her on the mound of clover, and then settled beside her with his back against a tree.
She sighed and closed her eyes. “This is more comfortable than the bed of the Prince of Anhalt-Bernburg.”
Michael made a noise that, if she’d forgotten, would have instantly reminded her he was Scottish.
“I’m going to assume that’s a saying of some sort,” he said.
“Oh, aye.” She smiled and stretched her legs in the coolness of the stems and leaves. “It’s a saying.”
He took her foot, and she stiffened. “What are you doing?”
Michael slipped off her mule. She cursed herself for changing for Morebright’s dinner. Her boots would have been far more comfortable. “Did the prince not perform his duty as a masseur?” he said.
“Masseur—? Oh my. What are you doing?” He was rubbing the ball of her foot between his palms. She arched her back and closed her eyes. “That’s…that’s…soul splitting.”
“Naiads have souls?”
“Of course they do. What sort of a being do you think I am?” She sniffed.
“Slippery.”
“Pardon?”
“Slippery. Like the silk on corn or the mists on water. Hard to pin down. Hard to know. Yet as immovable as Ben Nevis.”
“That’s not overly flattering.”
“It’s not? I rather like it. It’s like reaching out and never knowing if you’re going to touch velvet or the fur of a tiger.”
With one hand on the ball and another on the heel, he twisted and turned her foot, releasing more of the soreness.
“You have a taste for danger, Michael Kent.” She groaned with pleasure.
“I have a taste for something else as well.”
Despite the hour and her feet, the hollow space in her belly began to fill. “Do you?”
He removed the other mule and squeezed her tender instep. She pressed her other foot against his thigh and could feel his long muscles move under her toes. His presence was an elixir like none she’d known.
“I gave you the most powerful travel herbs I know,” she said. “Why did you not use them?”
“You sound disappointed.” There was a smile in his voice.
“It used every bit of twinflower I owned—and that’s not easy to come by.”
“It sounds like you wanted to send me as far away as you could.”
“I did.”
It was the truth, or had been then, and she couldn’t disavow it. Any man who wished to stand beside her needed to speak the truth and be able to hear it as well.
He made a small hmm and tightened the circle in which he rubbed.
“Seducing my feet will not force me to retract my statement, you know,” she said, though, in fact, she would have promised nearly anything if he promised to continue this unorthodox rubbing.
“I am aiming somewhat higher.”
She snorted. “’Twas a home-finder spell with marigold and naiad tears, and I wouldn’t have been the least surprised to find you took half the residents of Peeblesshire with you when spread the herbs.”
He held her foot between his palms in a long, apologetic embrace. “Well, that would have been a bit hard to explain. I wonder, is it even safe to have the herbs in my trouser pocket?”
“I can’t say what might happen,” she said. “I can only imagine you’ll end up being led into the performance of some very salacious penance.”
“Like rubbing your feet?”
“For a start. When I consider the power of your magic, I am half-inclined—”
“Undine, please tell me you know I hold no magical power over you. I should be very sad to have my acting overshadow the feelings—the true and unalterable feelings—you might have for me.”
He spoke soft and low, and the plea in his words unnerved her.
“The way you’ve made me feel…” She shook her head, afraid to believe. “I’ve never felt anything that so radiated magic.”
“But that doesn’t make me a magician—just a man who fell in love with a woman who he hopes has fallen in love with him.”
She looked at her hands and feet as if the answer lay in some external force. “’Tis a very powerful force.”
“The most powerful of all.”
She sat up and reached for him. This kiss was different from the others they’d shared. This kiss—as light and open as a ray of sun—sealed a promise.
“I misjudged you,” he said, “and dishonored your work. I hope I’ll earn your forgiveness.”
She smiled. “Oh, I believe you might.”
With a pleased sigh, she turned on her side and tried pushed her worries about Nab from her head. “You think he’ll be there in the morning?”
“Aye,” Michael said. “I do.”
The Tweed gurgled a short distance from where they sat. For some reason, the sound made her think of her mother and all the things she’d lost.
“Tell me about your wife,” she said.
His hands stopped, but only for an instant. “Young,” he said wistfully, “beautiful, smart—so smart.”
“Was she a director too?”
“No.” He chuckled. “Nor an actor. She taught at the local school.”
“In Bankside?”
“No, but not far. We lived in Lewisham. We had no money.”
His rubbing had slowed. She’d opened a dam somewhere in time with her question, and he was making his way slowly upstream.
She turned around, laying the back of her head upon his thigh, and he began to comb his fingers absently through her hair.
“She died.”
“I could see the pain,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“In a car crash. ‘Car.’ It’s sort of like a carriage without the—”
“I know what cars are.” She patted his knee, hoping to help him through the current.
“Right. Of course. Well, we hadn’t been married very long. Four years. She was coming home from the chemist. She needed bandages. She’d burned herself cooking a stew the day before and wanted to cover the blister. She wasn’t a very good cook, but she was determined to ‘make her mark,’ as she said. I wouldn’t have cared if we ate biscuits and tea every night. Honestly. Anyhow, the bandages were on the floor of the car—after, I mean. I remember thinking how weird it was that the crash had killed her but the bandages were still there.” He shook his head and sighed. “A lot of odd stuff goes through one’s mind at a time like that.”
She took his hand and laced her fingers in his.
“I can see her,” Undine said. “Hair the color of warm coffee. Eyes like Grasmere lake. Ready smile.”
“As I said, she was everything back then.”
“I don’t mean back then. I mean I can see her now.”
His breath caught.
“She’s quite content, Michael. They don’t have the regrets we have, you see. She’s around you at all times. She wants you to know she didn’t feel or know anything when it happened. No fear. No pain.”
Michael’s hold on her hand grew tighter, and she knew he was crying. Undine didn’t know everything she’d just said. That wasn’t how the information came to her, in neat, readable summaries. But the colors of his young wife in her head were a mix of cool and settled violets, and one said what one needed to, to bring people peace.
Undine squeezed his hand. “She also says you’re too good an actor to have given it up.”
This happened to be Undine’s own opinion, but she had no doubt it was his wife’s as well. The violets swirled and lit.
I shall care for him, she said. You may rest now.
For a long time Michael said nothing. And the next thing she knew, she was asleep. And the after that, he was asleep too, breathing steadily, arm wrapped tightly around her waist.