“Please,” I breathed again, pressing his hand closer to the life that I had just introduced for the first time. “Gideon.”
His muscular body stilled. I wasn’t even sure he was still breathing. I reached up and laid my hand over his heart, which inside that immovable body beat steadily. It was a comforting, grounding beat.
“I’ll be back. I’ll owe you a dance,” I said and then, “I promise.”
I knew how he felt about promises. I knew he had no faith in them and that he gave none himself. And yet I gave him mine. I would be back to face the consequences of my actions, but I would do this first. If they weren’t all so bloody rigid in their ways, then I wouldn’t need to run away with Devyn. I had to believe that Rion Deverell would forgive me after the fact.
“Go,” he commanded.
He removed his hand and took a step back into the shadows. I hesitated for a moment. Was he really letting us leave?
“Go.” His tone, this time, had an edge of exasperation to it.
I whirled around and was through the door to the waiting Marcus before he could change his mind. Marcus took my hand and we hurried along beside the well-tended herb beds and under the bare fruit trees.
At the far wall, Marcus pulled me to a stop as he retrieved two packs from behind a low-lying bush. The warm cloak was a welcome sight.
“Devyn told me they’d be here,” he explained. “Marina, and her brother.”
“I told her not to tell anyone.”
“I’m not sure she counts her brother as anyone.” He smiled, wrapping the fur-lined cloak around me.
“I thought for sure it was all over,” he said of the scene at the far side of the garden.
“Me too.”
“Why do you think he let you go?” It was a reasonable question. Marcus hadn’t been close enough to see or hear the interplay that had made Gideon step aside.
“I told him about the baby,” I said, smiling.
Marcus’s face changed, and if it weren’t for the darkness, I would have said it greyed.
“What?” His voice was off.
“Marina figured it out,” I explained. “How do you think we got Devyn to agree to this?”
He opened his mouth and closed it again. He pushed a hand through his hair. I was taken aback at his reaction. Gideon had been angry – that I could understand. My pregnancy by the disgraced Griffin was a major upset to the expectations that his lord, my brother, and everyone else the length and breadth of the island, had for me. Marcus didn’t want me; we had never felt like that about each other. Maybe it was a lingering effect of the handfast, the news catching him unawares.
“All the more reason for us to do this,” I said. “They’ll have to agree to let us marry anyway; this means we can just skip the arguing part.”
“Yes, of course,” He shrugged off his surprise. “Let’s get you two hitched then.”
He bent down, taking up both our packs, and then we were out of the gate, through the outer wall, and down to the treeline and the waiting Devyn.
Devyn was there with two horses. The last time I had met him like this, in the moonlight under the trees, it had been in an attempt to run away to a new life. This life. A life together. Last time our plan had been scuppered by the handfast tie to Marcus, so this time we were bringing him with us. There had, of course, been the small matter of the armed soldiers who had been in pursuit, so hopefully this time would be nothing like that night in Richmond.
Devyn slid off his horse at our approach and lowered his face to mine for a slow, lingering kiss full of promise. His hand went immediately to my belly.
He leaned his forehead down against mine.
“It’s true?”
“Yes,” I said.
His eyes were bright with a light that went all the way through to the core of him, as he laid a palm against the tiny bump. He kissed me once more before stepping back.
“You’re late,” he growled. “I thought you might have changed your mind.”
“Ha. Me?” I scoffed. I was the steadfast one here. He was the one who was always trying to do the right thing and leave me. “As if. It’s hard to slip away when you’re a miracle brought back to life, you know.”
“I wouldn’t know.” If I was the rainbow, then he was the dark cloud that people only suffered because they couldn’t have me without his sacrifice. It was a mantle he donned all too readily for my liking.
“Gideon caught me,” I said, as much to distract him from his train of thought as anything.
He looked past me up the path we had arrived by, immediately on alert.
“He let me go.”
Devyn looked at me in disbelief. To be fair, it was a fairly unlikely turn of events. If everyone else wished that Devyn would disappear accidentally, then Gideon would be more than happy to provide the accident.
“He let you go,” he repeated, still surveying the treeline. “I don’t suppose you asked him to be best man while you were at it?”
“You made a joke!” Devyn was always so serious. Was this a sign that he was happy at last?
He huffed and handed me the reins of my horse.
“Maybe we can make him godfather while we’re at it,” he added.
I almost fell back mid-mount.
“Ooh, two in a row,” I teased, as he actually chuckled aloud at my ungainly stumble.
The night was magical as we rode through the countryside, a thing of silk and possibility, an ebony coverlet full of stars on a perfect crisp winter’s night. For once, we were
