Lord of the Highlands (32 page)

But she couldn’t play those games. She had to be with him, one more time. Will was so perfect, it was impossible for her to resist when offered.

“I feel as though you’ve left me already.”

She couldn’t stop herself. Her breath hiccupped, and she curled in more tightly on herself. It was unbearable.
Leaving him.

“Och, love.” His whisper was unsteady, unbearably tender. “Do you cry?”

His body melded to hers. Hot flesh along her back. Muscle, the light bristle of hair, his hardness. “Please.” She felt his mouth at her shoulder. “Say something.”

Will’s touch was tentative, reaching around to cup her breast. She nudged her hips back, letting him know it was all right.

His hand stroked to her thigh. She shifted her leg, resting it over his.

He slipped into her from behind.

He didn’t move at first. She wasn’t sure when he’d started to move. He went so slowly. Every motion, quiet tenderness. Every moment to be savored.

She’d truly believed she was his. Til this very last moment, she’d held out hope. But hope had faded to despair. She’d thought Will was the one, and yet Gormshuil had told her, if she left, she’d never return.

Looking back now, she wondered, had they always been saying good-bye? Somehow, from the start, their time together had never fully been their own. Always anchored in place and time, they’d never been free to be lovers, carefree and easy.

“My love,” he murmured simply.

She felt her body coiling. Building. She wouldn’t cry out.

Felicity gasped as her climax slammed into her. She wanted to scream, to moan and shout. To shout at Will, at the fates conspiring against them. But she stayed silent, biting her lips to swallow her cries.

Will held her tight. She felt a tear in the corner of her eye. It spilled to her nose, hovered there, and then drifted down. She shut her eyes tight, willing sleep to take her.

This last sleep by Will’s side.

Chapter 32

Though they traveled now on separate horses, the memory of their ride together, on a single mount with her body pressed close, crushed him.

Such memories pierced Will, buffeting him in the silence. Each was a tiny flame that had sputtered to life in his heart, lit by Felicity. And now he would feel them wink out, one by one, until slowly he’d be extinguished.

They traversed Cameron lands, across emerald green glens and over tangled Highland hills, toward the spot where they’d mark out the labyrinth.

Will adjusted himself on the saddle, adjusted his sporran. The crude map folded inside weighed on him more than the heaviest physical burden.

“From what Ewen told me, it isn’t far now,” he said, trying for the thousandth time to talk to Felicity.

“We’ll not need to build the maze, of course,” Rollo continued. Felicity had fallen behind a few paces, and he slowed his horse to let her catch up. “This Gormshuil claims the power lies in the star map itself, which Ewen has already begun to etch into a stone that will someday be the heart of the labyrinth. He and Lily dream of saving one whom he called brother. A man named Robert who took a bullet for the laird.”

“This paper I carry bears the pattern in its entirety. The witch claims you need only place it over the stone and trace it with your finger.”

She didn’t even nod her acknowledgment. Her silence gutted him.

Past conversations poured through his mind. Why had he not treasured every single one? He regretted any times he might have dismissed her, hushed her. All he wanted now was to hear Felicity’s every thought.

“The witch promises, if you trace the lines just so, you will go to the correct place in time. I wish there were some way to return you to your exact location, but Gormshuil knows only the magic of the maze, and unfortunately the maze is in Scotland.”

Why won’t she speak?
The total absence of Felicity’s easy chatter was a shock to his system. Like being deprived of air he hadn’t realized he was relying on to survive.

“That is a concern to me, though she does assure me of your safety otherwise.”

Felicity pulled her horse to an abrupt halt, the reins wound tight around her fists, and swung her head to look at him. Her eyes were swollen and red, and such explicit evidence of her pain stung like an accusation.

“Safe?” she croaked. “Yeah, my heart feels real safe in your care, Will.” She turned away, scrubbing at her face.

Her words lashed him, and Will reminded himself he was doing the right thing. Felicity was better off sad and alone, than dead.

“Love—”

“Don’t
love
me,” she snapped, and he thought himself a pathetic sot, for even angry words from her were better than none at all. “I don’t think you know what love is.”

“You are wrong,” he said, his voice a tight rasp. Felicity, who felt so quickly and lightly, who blithely moved her way through the world, she had no idea what depths he plumbed. How powerful love became when forged by darkness and loss. “I am desperately in love with you.”

“It’d only be desperate if I didn’t love you back.”

He shuddered an inhale. Would that he could stay with her for always. “You don’t understand. My world doesn’t allow for feelings. Has never allowed for them.”

“Then come to my world, with me.”

“Could I, I would go with you. In a moment, I would go with you, follow you to the ends of the earth. God help me, Felicity, I dream of going with you. But what kind of man would I be if I abandoned my responsibilities here?”

Sensing his angst, Will’s horse skittered, fighting to trot. He eased his seat, slowing the animal. “Felicity, don’t you see? You’ve made me a better man. But there is a debt I owe here. You’ve made me a better man, and I can’t dishonor that gift by going back on my word.”

He let the words hang, then added quietly, “I am a man of my word. And I keep my promises.”

“Then promise to find me.” Her voice was small, so timid and small and unlike Felicity it shattered him.

“I cannot,” he whispered.

“Why not?”

Because I’ll likely be dead.
“Because it would be a vow I don’t know that I could keep.”

She looked away, staring sightlessly into space. Will sat, the silence torturing him. He couldn’t think what more to say, and so let the horses resume walking.

Their journey had grown gradually more difficult. Low braes had risen into steeper hills, the smooth, green glens replaced by land more tangled and ragged.

“There,” Will said, seeing their destination. Looming like a scar in the earth, in the greens and reds of gorse and bracken, stood a wall of cold, gray granite.

“The path forks and narrows,” he recited, “in the shadow of a granite crag. That’s the spot Cameron described.”

Pulling his horse to a stop, he pounded life back into his legs, preparing to dismount.

Trembling, Felicity forced air in and out of her lungs. It was time.

She watched Will punching at his legs, just the way she’d told him not to do. But now she was too tired to say anything, and instead just watched, sadly remembering their first carriage ride so long ago, when their time together had still been ahead of them. She wondered if there was something she should’ve done differently.

He was off his horse, making his way to her. The land fought him, thick and tangled with life, ferns and bulrush challenging his every step. But he came to her, raised his hands up to her, and she let him ease her from the saddle.

The feel of his strong grip on her waist stung fresh tears in her eyes. He brought his thumb to smudge them from her cheeks, and she flinched away. These tears were only the beginning, and she’d let them flow.

“We’ll place the pattern over the rock,” he said, opening his sporran. He unfolded the paper tucked there. It bore a crude map of lines and dots.

How odd
, she thought.
The secrets of the universe etched just there, on some old scrap of paper.
There was no going back now, and it made her feel dead inside.

“The labyrinth itself matters not.” His eyes went from the paper to her. “They build the maze merely to obscure the map, which will someday lie hidden at its center. This”—his hand tightened on the sheet—“is what holds the power.”

They walked to the rock face. Though the sun still had a couple hours left in the sky, the high granite wall obscured it, casting them in cool shadow.

She saw the spot. A curve in the wall. A niche in the rock, and a stone tablet within.

This is it.
And then, a sudden shrill at the edges of thought:
Is it safe?
She pushed the thought away, letting fear and grief blank her mind.

Her surliness seemed a stupid thing now, a ridiculous, tragic waste of their time together, and Felicity grabbed him tight.

He responded at once to her touch, wrapping a strong arm around her. “Och, love,” he whispered in her hair as he leaned to kiss the top of her head. “My heart and soul go through that rock with you. You leave only the shell of me behind.”

They approached, and she saw where the laird had begun to chisel lines in the stone tablet. They would place the map over the stone, as if it were tracing paper.

She stopped in her tracks. Afraid now, and uncertain.

“If it’s the map that’s so important . . .” she hesitated, cleared her throat. She stared at the paper in his hand. “Why can’t I just draw that anywhere and disappear through time? I don’t get why you’re so sure this will work.”

“There is some magic held by this very rock.” He stared at it, brow furrowed. “Some magic spoken, some talisman cast. The witch claims you must leave from just here.”

She trembled fiercely now, and he supported her as they walked the final steps to the stone. Icy perspiration prickled along her body. Her breathing and heartbeat felt shallow, and she thought that maybe if she passed out, she might prolong their time together just a little bit more.

But she didn’t pass out. Events marched forward.

She stood before the rock and Will put his hands on hers. Together they smoothed the sheet over the stone.

“Wait,” Felicity said. Will stood behind her, and she craned her neck to look at him.

She memorized his features. Would she see them someday on the child she carried? Thick brown hair. Hazel eyes that looked brown in the shadows. Those sharp, strong lines of his cheek and jaw.

Could she grab his hands, grab Will tight and pull him through with her? Wouldn’t Livvie just die to meet him?

Livvie.
She’d see her aunt soon. And yet the thought just made Felicity sad. She wasn’t ready.

“Is this it?” she asked, realizing that a part of her had been waiting for something else to happen. Some intervening force that would keep her by Will’s side. The fates had sent her here, where were they now?

A cascade of small rocks spilled from overhead. Slivers of shale bit into her exposed skin, and Will pulled Felicity to him, covering her head with his own.

They both looked up. A rider stood on the rise above.

Cold dread crushed her.

Will shaded his eyes, glued to his brother overhead. Finally, he asked, “How did you find me?”

“It’s easier than you’d think, getting folk to talk. Be it bribe or blade, there’s always a way to loosen tongues.” Jamie’s horse pranced nervously, and a shower of gravel rained from the high ridge. “ ’Twas a crofter who sold you out just now.” Jamie shrugged. “These Camerons are a stubborn lot. This one was forced to pay in blood.”

Will’s brother was lit from behind, and when his lips peeled into a smile, the dramatic shadows transformed his face into a sinister mask. “Paid in blood,” Jamie added, “as your woman will also pay.”

“
My woman
has done nothing,” Will snarled, stepping in front of Felicity to guard her at his back.

“To the contrary. Any woman who lies with you is soiled. That is crime enough.” Jamie’s hand went to the broadsword at his side. “And now she will pay, and I will enjoy having you watch.”

There was shuffling, and Felicity saw the heads of two other horses, tossing just in view. Jamie had brought friends.

Will must have spotted them too. He turned to face her. His attention only on her.

She saw the intensity in his eyes and she knew. The fates weren’t intervening to save her. Jamie’s appearance was a shove further down this path of no return. She whimpered simply, “No.”

“I love you, Felicity.” Will’s voice was hoarse with emotion as he turned her to face the stone once again.

She stood limply, yet between Will at her back and her legs locked under her, somehow Felicity remained propped upright.

No.
The thought was tiny. The events unfolding around her were too big, too inexorable to stop. There was no fighting it now.

But she’d been so positive she was his. She couldn’t go through. The witch said she’d never come back.

He took her arm in his hand.

Distantly she heard the scuffle of horses along the ridge overhead.

Will began to draw her finger over the marks.

Her hand was cold and limp in his. She couldn’t accept this. The blood drained from her head, and she felt clammy and woozy.

There was the dull patter of gravel falling at their feet. A hollow laugh from above.

Her arm started to buzz.

This was it. It was happening.

“I can’t live without you.” Her voice hitched, tears streaming down her face.

“Go around,” came a shout from above. More rock rained down. “This way, you fools.” Jamie’s voice, moving along the ridge.

Will worked faster. Her finger grew hot.