After they tethered the horses, Nicholas carried the picnic basket and a large tartan blanket, the plaid of Scottish Highland cousins many times removed, and led her deeper into the maple copse.
The air was as soft as Old Velvet's nose, soft like silk lightly touching her cheek. The scent of wild roses and star jasmine filled the air. Was that lilac she smelled? There were animals rustling about in the woods around them. A lone nightingale sang from the top branch of a maple tree.
Rosalind looked around her, touched the leaves of a wild rosebush. 'What a wonderful place. It is perfect.'
He nodded. He was standing very still, his eyes closed. 'When I was a boy I always thought something good and fine lived here a very long time ago. Whatever it was, or whoever it was, it left an echo of sweetness behind. And joy,' he added, then flushed.
This hard tough man, she thought, who'd carved himself an empire with his brain and his back, and he thought of an echo of sweetness. And joy. And he was flushing because surely a man shouldn't speak so poetically.
He'd seen her and wanted her. Only her. He hadn't cared that she could very well be less than a nobody.
She watched him fail to his knees and spread out the tartan, and arrange the food atop it. She stood there, the journals still clasped protectively to her chest, and marveled at him. At Fate. At a two-hundred-year-old ghost and the journals he'd led Nicholas to find.
He smiled up at her, patted the plaid. 'Come, sit down.'
'I must be very careful not to hurt the journals.'
He said with absolute conviction, 'They're not about to disintegrate on us now, since I-we-were meant to find them. Hand them to me, Rosalind.'
He laid them on the tartan. 'Let's eat first, I'm starving to death, unless-'
'Unless what?'
He shrugged, all indifferent, picked up a leg of baked chicken, and bit into it.
She said, 'Unless perhaps you would care to kiss me first?'
He chewed on the chicken and looked at that mouth of hers, and slowly smiled. 'A very nice idea.'
She laughed aloud and leapt on him. He fell onto his back, tossed the chicken leg over his head, heard a small animal scurry to pinch it, and brought her over him.
He would never tire of kissing her, he thought, never, and when his hands touched her bare flesh, he trembled. She didn't know what to do-until she felt the earth suddenly tilt and all her embarrassment fell out of her head. She grabbed his hair to yank him down to her.
When she lay quietly, her head on his shoulder, her breathing finally smoothing out again, he sighed. 'I am a selfless man, a man so noble he ignores his own needs, content to bask in the pleasure he gives his wife. Ah, if I feed you, Rosalind, will you have the energy to perform your marital duties?'
'But, you-' She reared up and grinned down at him. She struck a pose. 'Ah, I understand. You want more than one marital duty from me. Do you know, I have some ideas about that.' She remembered one drawing in the haok her aunts had reluctantly given her that showed a woman on her knees in front of a standing man and he had his hands clenched in her hair while she was pressing her face against his belly. At least at the time she'd thought it was his belly, and hadn't understood why that was of enough interest to merit a page in the book, but now she knew the truth. She gave him a look to cramp his guts.
They didn't touch the journals until an hour later. Even then, Nicholas really didn't give a good damn. He was stretched out on his back, naked, his shirt, pants, and boots tossed to the ground beyond his right arm, a silly grin on his face, his eyes closed against the spear of sunlight coming through the maple leaves, basking in utter contentment, re-membering when she'd dropped to her knees in front of him. 'Tell me what to do,' she'd said, her warm breath on his flesh, but he'd said nothing at all.
'Nicholas?'
A soft voice, a sweet voice, coming from above him, insistent, that voice. She kissed him. Slowly he opened his eyes and looked up at her. What to say when the earth had opened beneath his feet, and he'd dived right in? 'That was very fine, Rosalind.'
She preened, she actually preened. If he'd had the energy, he would have laughed.
She nearly sang it out. 'You were as wild as I was, Nicholas.'
His eyes crossed. He blinked. 'Perhaps,' he said. 'Perhaps. I suppose you wish me to get myself together, don't you?'
'Yes. I just looked over at the journals, and I swear to you, they've moved closer to us.'
Nicholas sincerely hoped that Captain Jared's ghost hadn't nudged them closer since that would mean the old boy had gotten himself a ghostly eyeful. He raised his hand and lightly touched his fingertips to her lips. 'I love your mouth.'
She ran her tongue over her bottom lip and he swelled, ready to take her down again. He swelled even more when she looked down at him.
No, he had to get a grip on himself. At least she was wearing her chemise-how did that happen? But a chemise didn't matter since he was a young man and he was newly married and-he took her down, both of them laughing wildly, then there were only whispers and deep sighs. This time, he managed to work her chemise up to her neck.
When he buried his face against her breasts, and moaned deeply, all those dark places inside himself that had been empty far too long, bubbled and filled, perhaps even overflowed. It was astounding.
When he handed her his handkerchief, she walked into the trees, giving him a quick smile over her shoulder. Her wild curling red hair tangled about her shoulders. He lay back and closed his eyes, grinning like a fool, he couldn't help it. When she came back, her chemise was in place again.
He dressed himself, then assisted her with the buttons on her wrinkled gown, even rubbed at the grass stains, and knew the laundress would know well what had happened to the mistress's gown.
'It is two hours after noon, Nicholas, only the second day of our union, and you have already loved me three times.' She gave him a huge grin. 'And I loved you.'
'I have always liked the number four. Would you-'
She raised her face to the cloud-tumbled sky. 'I am stalwart, I am focused, I will not let you distract yet again. Ah, but you are beautiful, Nicholas.'
He had to clear his throat three times before his brain was focused enough to read from the first ancient journal. The handwriting was spidery and barely legible, the years had so scarred and faded the ink.
'This entry is dated the same year as his marriage to the Wyverly heiress,' he said.
'Goodness, you remember that?'
'No,' he said absently, 'Captain Vail wrote it here.'
'Have you already read the journals, Nicholas?'
'Just a few pages here and there. In this first one, he chats about what was happening at the time-how his decision to wed the heiress was a good one because his pockets were so empty they were dragging the ground. His creditors were six feet behind him, and closing fast. You will like this: She is eager, a fine thing for a virgin of seventeen, and even though she has an arse the size of a cow's-'
'What a nasty thing to write, particularly when she saved him.'
'Yes, very true,' Nicholas said. 'He goes on to detail the actual building of Wyverly-at great boring length, I might add-and the workmen he'd like to kick in the arse. Ah, he appears to have an obsession with this rear part. All right, here we go. Now he writes about what happened to him the previous year when he lost everything in the Mediterranean, his ship, his cargo, his crew, yet he was saved. He writes,
…I don't know who or what this being is, but I indeed promised to pay my debt so that I would continue living. … A young girl appeared in front of me, her hair streaked with sunlight, loosely braided down her back, eyes blue as an Irish stream, freckles across her small nose, a sturdy little girl with narrow hands and feet. She threw her head back and she sang.
