Desire ignited. They burned hot and fast.
Reeling, in a dance of hands and touch, of greedy fingers finding laces and buttons, they waltzed across the floor to the bed.
By the time they reached the canopied expanse, they’d stripped each other of every stitch. They fell on the silk coverlet, limb to limb, skin to skin, and passion roared.
She gasped; her fingers digging into his upper arms, she rolled and pulled him over her.
But there were things he wanted to say, concepts he wanted to impress on her; with words far beyond him, he resorted to the language of lovers.
To touch and caress, to the brush of lips and the tantalizing trail of fingertips.
To long, raspy licks and hot, open-mouthed kisses.
To suckling, kneading, stroking—stoking.
He loved her, made love to her, with care and devotion and a worshipful reverence.
She wanted to—expected to—rush on, but he held her back, held their reins in an iron grip, and held her cocooned in a web of wanting.
He let her writhe. Let her savor. Let her see and understand this—his surrender.
For it was that, and he knew it—had known it even eight years ago—that she was the only woman for him, hers the only arms in which he could find true succor.
Hers the only body in which he would ever find true release.
As, finally, he slid into her slick softness, and she clasped him tight, he closed his eyes and tried to hold his mind, his will, closed against the tumult of feelings and instincts. Tried desperately to hold against the temptation to plunder.
But she arched beneath him and inexorably drew him on, and the reins snapped, and he surged, and they lost their grip on reality.
The tide swept them into a familiar landscape, one of glory and wonder and inescapable togetherness.
Desperation built. Desire, passion, hunger, and need swirled in an inferno of wanting.
They rode hard and fast to a thunderous beat—rode on into reckless splendor.
Until they soared.
They clung, gasping, fingers gripping tight as ecstasy peaked and a coruscating brilliance shattered and raced through them, and scintillating glory overwhelmed their senses and swamped them.
Then passion’s wheel turned one last time, and the void swirled and swallowed them.
Slowly, the thrum of ecstasy faded. They spiraled by degrees back to earth, to the here and now, to each other’s arms.
Long moments later, he summoned enough strength to disengage and roll onto his back. She followed, settling as she often did with her head pillowed on his chest.
With one arm tucked around her, he raised and bent the other and settled his hand behind his head. He looked up at the canopy and waited for his wits to re-engage.
That was familiar, too.
After several minutes, he recalled where they were and where they were going—and the questions he therefore needed to ask, that he hoped like hell she would answer.
He lowered his arm and wound one long black curl around his fingers. “We’re going home. So what tack have you decided on?”
Her answer was several seconds in coming, but he knew she was awake; he could feel her breath on the heated skin of his chest, and he recognized the rhythm of her breathing in his bones. Finally, she said, “I say we follow the path we’re on and see where it leads.”
He considered that for nearly a minute, weighed various responses, then decided he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. “This path leads to the altar. Does that mean you’ll marry me?”
“Yes.”
Just like that? He squinted down at her face. “So you believe I love you?”
She tipped her head up so she could meet his eyes. Hers were frowning. “Why ask that?”
“Because that was what us breaking apart before—you slamming that door in my face—was all about, wasn’t it?” When she didn’t immediately reply, he went on, “You thought because I disappeared that I didn’t love you, that I’d gone into the handfasting for other reasons and I didn’t truly care about you—wasn’t that it?”
He might not have understood her eight years ago, but he was older and wiser, and she’d told him enough of her insecurities for him to have a reasonably good idea of what, at bedrock, had been the defining issue.
Her frown materialized. “Well, yes, but that was then, and this is now.”
And? The naked curves slumped against him were more rounded, her breasts distinctly heavier, her hips and thighs more lush...but she hadn’t changed that much. Not inside.
“Does that mean you understand and accept that I love you?” It was suddenly important—critically important—that her answer was yes.
But he could see in her eyes, dark though they were, that it wasn’t.
She stared at him as if he was being unnecessarily difficult. “If you must know, when we walked out of the jungle onto the beach, I realized I had had—somewhere along the way—an epiphany of sorts. I realized that it didn’t matter how much you loved me—that that was entirely the wrong question for me to ask—but rather what counted was how I felt about you.” She all but scowled at him. “So I’m staying with you, and we’re getting married.”
She slumped down again, wriggling back into her usual place.
He was getting what he wanted. And she had just, more or less, admitted she loved him.
It should have been enough.
It wasn’t.
“I love you. I always have. I need to know you believe that.” Until now, he hadn’t realized that was so, but that need burned, a bright and unwavering flame, inside him.
She sighed, pushed up on one elbow, and looked into his eyes. “I know you love me, or at least, that you believe you do. What I don’t know is whether the qualities the word ‘love’ embodies for me are the same as what the word means to you.” She paused, then, more briskly, went on, “As far as I can see, there’s no way to answer that question other than by going forward and seeing what happens. It’s a risk I have to take—” She broke off, then amended, “That, I suppose, we both have to take. The only way we can find an answer is through the experience of the years.”
With that, she slumped down again. Leaving him with very little room, much less reason, to argue. He wanted to argue, to wring from her some sort of admission that she recognized his love as the same as hers—as strong, as vital, as powerful, in all respects that mattered, the equivalent of hers—yet he knew her; he’d never win that argument.
He stared at the canopy for a full minute, then he closed his arms around her and dropped a kiss on her silky head. “Just as long as you accept, here and now, that I will never let you go.”
Invincible resolution rang in the words.
She patted his chest. “I know. And just to be clear, I will never let you—or Duncan—go, either.”
As he was never going to permit her to do so, that was irrelevant, but...
Just as there was more than one way to skin a cat, there were more ways than one to argue, even with an Amazon.
CHAPTER 14
They set sail on the morning tide. Isobel sat in the bow with Duncan beside her. The wind plucked at her braided and pinned hair. Spray stung her face as The Corsair heeled and led the Frobisher ships out of the harbor.
She glanced at her son, saw the wondrous joy shining in his face, and felt her heart swell. She looked ahead, into a future she couldn’t yet define.
She was a designer at heart; she liked to see things, enough, at least, to set them down on paper. Yet relationships were never that fixed; they evolved constantly.
Shifting, she looked down the ship at Royd, standing with legs braced behind the big wheel. His eyes were fixed far ahead, gauging the strength of the tide, the pull of the wind, the power of the waves.
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“Mama! Look!” Duncan tugged her sleeve.
Like her, he’d looked down the ship; with the wind whipping words away, she couldn’t hear orders called from the upper deck, but Duncan’s sharp ears must have caught one. She followed his pointing finger up and up to where the skysails on all three masts were unfurling.
The canvas billowed, then caught the wind and snapped taut.
And their speed increased.
She leaned to the side and looked past their wake to where the other ships followed in a staggered line. With something close to reverence, she breathed, “What a sight.”
Duncan immediately scrambled to see.
She’d worked on all of those ships in recent years, implementing Royd’s changes. She felt an almost proprietary glow, seeing them all under sail, majestic and uniquely beautiful, a line of graceful ladies gliding over the sea.
Looking farther back, beyond the ships, she watched Freetown and its harbor slip away. Tower Hill was the last sight to fade into the sea mist.
They were leaving the settlement, and even more its people, in a better state than they’d found them. They’d rescued those who’d needed their help and had shut down the infernal scheme. They’d all assumed the mission would be more or less over at this point—that they would be heading back to London to report and hand over their prisoners, and all would be done. While there was quiet satisfaction in what they’d achieved, they all accepted that the mission was not yet complete.
While she felt a certain cynicism over Melville and company’s motives, in this, she agreed with the government. Justice needed to be served—impartially and transparently. Those they’d rescued from the mine deserved that.
The Corsair reached the wide mouth of the estuary, and spars creaked and sails snapped as Royd changed tack, swinging the bow northward.
Heading home.
Well, to England and London first—the penultimate leg of their journey. What would need to be done when they reached Aberdeen, the arrangements and decisions and all the discussions over how to merge their lives...that could wait until later.
Unbidden, her mind ranged over the past weeks and all she’d done, all she’d been a part of. She was accustomed to working with other women—that was how Carmody Place operated—but joining with Edwina, Aileen, and Kate in contributing to and achieving all they had with the rescue had been in a different league of endeavor. More demanding, more exciting—more dangerous perhaps—but also immensely more satisfying.
Edwina, Aileen, Kate—she hadn’t expected them to be sisters-of-the-heart, yet given they had each chosen a Frobisher man, perhaps that wasn’t so surprising.
She’d swung to face the sea; she heard Royd’s footsteps stroll up behind her, then his hand lightly gripped her shoulder. She looked up—to see him looking at Duncan, who was looking up at him, an expression of eager expectation on his face, a readiness to fling himself wholeheartedly into whatever adventure his father next took him into glowing in his eyes.
That unrestrained confidence and eagerness to engage with life was a hallmark of Frobisher men, but nowhere was it stronger than in Royd.
She had her own brand of it, and while she didn’t need adventures far from home to satisfy her—there were challenges aplenty not far from her door—the exotic and wild in no way frightened her. She could deal with that, too.
Being with Royd again had reminded her of that. Joining with him on this mission had reopened a side of her she’d been content to shut off, to allow to lie dormant over the past eight years.
That door had been opened again, the cobwebs dusted away.
She was whole again. She hadn’t known she hadn’t been before, but she recognized that now.
Iona’s words on learning that Royd had agreed to allow her to sail with him echoed in her mind. This state you’re both in—as if a part of your lives has been indefinitely suspended—cannot go on. Had her grandmother somehow known?
And...if what Iona had said had been true about her, was it also true about Royd? Did she somehow complete him?
Searching his face, thinking of his words of the past night, she had to wonder.
Royd grinned and tousled Duncan’s hair, then looked at Isobel. He swiftly scanned her face and was content enough with what he saw there. That morning, before he’d left her asleep in his bed, he’d studied her features, stripped of all screens in sleep, and decided she was right; only time and the experience it brought would convince her that he loved her in the exact same way that she loved him.
As she’d agreed they would marry, he had a lifetime to achieve that goal.
Not that he didn’t want to rush, but with Isobel, perseverance often won what pressure couldn’t. For her to finally lower that last fine screen of reservation—for her to love him as she once had, with an open-hearted abandon that had captured his heart—for that, he was perfectly willing to wait a lifetime.
A wave broke beneath the bow, and she faced forward. He settled his hand on her shoulder and did the same.
The sea stretched, blue and unbroken, to the horizon. Sun glinted on waves; the breeze raked briskly across their faces.
Ahead lay their future, and before he’d quit the wheel, he’d called down the moonrakers—they were flying under full sail.
“Onward,” he said.
“To London.” She reached up and closed her hand over his.
Duncan swung to face them. “Can I come?”
Royd met Isobel’s gaze as she glanced up at him. At the question in her eyes, he shrugged. “Why not?”
She looked at Duncan.
His expression had turned pleading. “I’ll be good,” he promised.
Royd felt her hesitation, but then she nodded. “All right. But we’ll need to make some rules.”
* * *
Blessed with following winds and smooth seas, they sailed into Southampton Water eleven days later. The morning mists had already lifted, and sun glinted palely off the slate-gray waters.
Isobel stood on the stern deck and marveled at how very different the colors of England were to those they’d left behind. Along with the smells, the sharpness of the wind, and the temperatures.
Beside her, Royd swung the wheel and guided The Corsair toward the Frobisher wharf. Duncan hung on the rail beside the wheel, watching every move Royd made, listening to every order, seeing what was done and the effect the change had on how the ship angled as it glided along.
Isobel studied the pair, both entirely absorbed—the two men in her life.
She’d spent the days of the voyage learning how to live with Royd—Royd as he now was. Their three weeks of long ago were too far in the past to be of much help; they were both much more definite and assured—certain of what was important to them and what was not.
They were finding their way. Now they’d committed to sharing their lives henceforth, they needed to reach a working understanding, and while they were at sea and free of their respective families was the perfect opportunity.
Along the way, she’d realized how very true her epiphany had been. Love wasn’t something it was possible to deny. It simply was, and her love for Royd had never so much as faded around the edges, much less died.
His attachment to her—be it love as she knew it or not—had also withstood the test of time. Whatever it was, it was very much still there, unwavering and as powerful as he.
He was also proving to be an excellent father—the relationship he and Duncan were forging, although still evolving, was already strong. She suspected Duncan recognized himself—or perhaps the self he could grow to be—in Royd, and while he still instinctively turned to her for comfort, he turned to Royd for learning and guidance on what it meant to be a man.
On what it meant to be a Frobisher.
They’d spent time talking and making plans—all
three of them—but had agreed that all matters pertaining to their wedding should wait until they returned to Aberdeen. First, they had the mission’s final goal in their sights—specifically the identification of all six backers and the securing of their convictions.
As Royd brought The Corsair into the wharf and sailors jumped down to secure the ship, Isobel stepped to the rail. “I should return that tool to the shipyards before we leave.” She met Royd’s gaze. “I’ll go there while you sign off at the office. That way, we can be on the road to London as soon as possible.”
He thought, then shook his head. “Someone from the office can return the tool with our compliments. We need to get on as fast as we can.”
Duncan slid his hand into hers and smiled up at her.
She smiled back. “All right.” Aside from all else, Duncan would have been torn—should he go with Royd to the office or with her to the shipyards? Somewhat to her surprise, Royd had explained to Duncan what her work at the shipyards truly entailed; subsequently, Duncan had asked to accompany her to the shipyards when next she went—which would be as soon as they returned to Aberdeen. That her son was now curious to learn about her work...perhaps there was another sort of link he and she might forge.
The instant the ship was secure, Royd handed over command to Liam. “I can’t say how long we’ll need to stay in London. Take your time provisioning here, then go on to the Pool and send word. Shore leave for everyone as appropriate. We’ll join you as soon as we’re free.”
Liam saluted, then nodded to Isobel. “I hope you catch them all.”
Royd met Isobel’s eyes. “So do we.”
They’d already packed. He directed Bellamy to dispatch their bags and trunks to the coaching inn, then escorted Isobel and Duncan down the gangplank. On the wharf, he wound Isobel’s arm with his, and with Duncan skipping alongside, they walked briskly into town to the Frobisher Shipping Company office.
Higginson, the head clerk, had met Duncan and Isobel when they were in Southampton earlier; while Higginson asked and Duncan poured out a remarkably detailed description of the estuary and Freetown harbor, Royd signed off on The Corsair’s voyage, authorizing payments to his officers and crew. He set down the pen and pushed the ledger back to Higginson. “Mr. Stewart will sail on to the Pool once he’s taken on supplies. From there, we’ll be heading home.”