“Aye!” he agreed.
His mouth fused with hers. He kissed her with a wild, emotional passion. His hands were everywhere as his mouth pinned hers. She dragged her fingers through his hair, raked his shoulders. Dimly, she was aware of a rending of fabric. Her purple riding habit was coming open in tatters. The ribbons of chemise and corset were torn. His mouth was against her bare flesh, and somehow, the blaze of fire between them that so awakened her body seemed to ease her soul. The play of his mouth against her breast sent a sudden spiral of lightning shafting through her, and she gasped, suddenly still, then suddenly trembling. Again, her fingers were in his hair. Herbody arched and writhed to his. She felt him freeing himself from his trousers, felt the probe of his sex, and clung to him. Wanting him. Wanting him so badly.
Such passion burned like the great fire that had rendered the stables black ash and rubble, burned with a heat that could be sustained just so long. Wild, urgent, desperate, furious, it rose like a whipping wind, a storm surge.
Then was spent.
David’s body strained like a bow, climaxing within her again and again, like waves against the shore. She dug her nails into his back, arching to each great thrust, then shuddering downward as the sweetness of satiation spilled atop her.
He fell to her side.
Shawna lay spent, her sense of bewilderment with herself strong. He had taken her child. And she wanted him still. Wanted to be held by him.
What were they doing to one another?
She wanted to curl away from him then as well. She wanted to tell him that she hated him, except she knew that she didn’t really hate him. She hated the fact that she could no longer deny that someone she had loved and trusted all her life wanted her dead.
“Shawna?”
“I want you to leave me alone!” she whispered.
David was quiet a moment. Then he said, “Aye,” and he pushed away, adjusting his clothing. “I’ll leave you be, my lady, but don’t play games. You’re not so furious with me as you want to be. You can’t bear to see the truth, and I have forced you to do so.”
“Danny!” she whispered.
He leaned over her, touching her shoulder. “Shawna, the lad is safe, and that is what is important! Now I warn you, m’lady,don’t leave this room! Your kin seek to kill you, and I’m afraid that I cannot let you die.”
She rose as he walked away from her. “How can you! How dare you! You tell me that my child is returned, then take him from me. How dare you do this to me, then warn me?—”
“I dare what I do, my lady, because five years ago I fell into your arms—and awoke a dead man. I dare because I have discovered that in all those years, I had a child. And that child was cast to the wolves.”
“Damn you, you’ve got to believe me?—”
“Shawna!” he said softly. “It’s very difficult to believe what you never tried to tell me.”
“David, you can’t just lock me in here. I have to know what is happening for myself!” she cried. “I have to try?—”
“You will stay here. I intend to find out just who is trying to kill us both!”
He turned from her and started for the door. She raced after him. “David, you can’t just leave this way?—”
“Indeed, I can.”
And—as David Douglas, laird of Castle Rock—he departed the room. As the door slammed, Shawna jumped, and stared at it for a long moment, shivering.
She dragged the knit bedcover from the bed and swept it around her half-clad shoulders, then hurried back to the door, throwing it open.
David was gone.
But she hadn’t been left unattended. James McGregor sat whittling in a chair at the doorway.
“How…” she began.
“Lady MacGinnis,” he said, offering her his strange gamin grin. “Laird Douglas is gone, but y’may rest in peace if y’so desire.”
“Rest in peace…they write that on gravestones!” she told him.
He reddened. “Begging your pardon, m’lady. What I meant was that I’d guard y’with me life.”