A narrow valley spread below them with grass that shone green muted with the slate-gray of night, stones of all shapes and sizes strewn about. All one had to do was look a little closer to see the rocks weren’t scattered about, but precisely arranged into the shape of a large spiral.
“This place is magical,” she whispered, as if not to disturb the magic.
“Aye.”
Her gaze flicked toward him. “I do love it.”
For an instant, his heart caught in his chest.I…do…love…A wild hope had surged that the sentence would end with a word different fromit.
He gave himself a mental shake. He couldn’t think of that other word.
Not yet, at least.
If ever.
He cleared his throat. “There’s a fairy glen on the Isle of Skye, too.”
“Oh?”
“It’s considerably larger and more intricate.”
She nodded with understanding. “A place Scáthach might’ve known.”
“Aye.”
She turned so she faced him squarely. “Didn’t you lure me out here with the promise of a dance?”
“That I did, lass.”
He reached for her hand and slipped her elegant fingers through his considerably thicker ones. Then he caught her at the small of her waist and pulled, her body swaying forward until she was fast against him, slender and soft against his bulkier form. Their feet began moving, not in the steps of a waltz or a mazurka or any other dance that might be happening in the assembly rooms at this very moment.
But in a dance of their own making.
This dance was simply them beneath the stars, moving to the beat of their hearts…the only music the in and out of their breath…the faint susurration of a summer night’s breeze…the distant song of a nightingale.
Informal and intimate was this dance. No eyes upon them. Their eyes only for each other.
There were the intimacies of the body, and there was this—an intimacy that tapped a deeper well.
The intimacy he’d been seeking all along.
He’d sensed it thrumming beneath the other intimacies they’d shared, but hadn’t known how to unlock it.
Their moonlit dance finished, he released the small of her back, but held on to her hand, and led them to a grassy patch of turf at the edge of the hill. He shrugged off his evening coat and spread it flat, wide enough for both of them. He took a seat, hoping she would follow his lead.
She did.
Together, they sat in silence, shoulder to shoulder, and gazed upon the fairy glen below, the inky, twinkling sky meeting the horizon on the far side of the valley.
He’d bound this woman to him with his body, but that wasn’t enough.
It never had been.
He wanted her to be his.
Not for mere reasons of the body.
But for one deeper.