Chapter 3
I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night.
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.
—“I Arise from Dreams of Thee”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
British poet
“What are you thinking?”
Without taking her gaze off the road, Elisabeth said, “I am wondering why I allowed you to drag me to Scotland on a wild-goose chase to trace long-dead ancestors. You’ve just completed six years of college. You have your bachelor’s in anthropology and Classical studies, and a master’s in Celtic studies. Shouldn’t you be concentrating on what you are going to do, as in going to work?
“I don’t want to find myself on an archaeology dig, buried up to my armpits in piles of Celtic crockery bits. Do I have to remind you that I have to be back at Johns Hopkins in three weeks?”
“You’ve plenty of time,” Isobella replied.
“Do you think traipsing through musty old castles and creepy kirks is going to ease the pain of being jilted?” She gasped. “Oh, Izzy, I’m so sorry.”
Isobella barely heard her sister because she was wondering why it was so difficult for her to meet a man she could fall deeply in love with. She decided that Jackson had truly done her a favor, because she didn’t love him any more than he loved her. She had gone along with the idea of marriage because she wanted to be loved and married, but she’d gone about it all wrong. Perhaps it was time to give up believing in happily ever after.
Was the problem the men, or was it her? How would she ever know the answer? However, there was something about being in Scotland, and hearing the stories of the Black Douglas, that called out to her. She longed for such a man in her life and sighed woefully. “I think I was born a few hundred years too late,” she said, which sounded pathetic even to her own ears.
Elisabeth almost ran off the road. “A few hundred years too late? Good grief, Izzy! How do you come up with these things?
Isobella sighed, caught in a churning muddle of sadness, regret, and confusion. “It’s the men. I feel like a fish out of water. I long to find Mr. Darcy, and he doesn’t exist in the world I live in.”
“Good Lord above, where is all this coming from? You just make bad choices, Izzy. That doesn’t mean there aren’t wonderful men out there.”
Isobella gazed out the window, apparently not listening. “I wonder what I’d do if a man said, ‘I love you.’ like Mr. Darcy did. A man who could speak so…” Her voice drifted, borne away by another woeful sigh.
“Who is Mr. Darcy?” Elisabeth asked. “He sounds like a librarian.”
“He’s the hero in Pride and Prejudice. Don’t tell me you never read the book or saw the movie.”
“You mean Colin Firth? What on earth does Mr. Darcy have to do with you finding Mr. Right? And what did he say that has you so enamored?”
As if right on cue, Isobella began to recite, “‘In vain have I struggled. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.’ Imagine a man of today saying that. He would rather throw you on the bed to press his case.”
Elisabeth exploded with laughter.
Isobella wondered what Elisabeth would do if she told her that she owned copies of Dating Mr. Darcy: The Smart Girl’s Guide to Sensible Romance, or Jane Austen’s Guide to Dating, not to mention Jane Austen for Dummies, and, God help her, The Jane Austen Cookbook.
“Is ‘press his case’ a euphemism for penile penetration?”
“Do you have to make fun of everything? I may be too idealistic, but you are too clinical. What a pity that we can’t all be as practical as you.”
Elisabeth looked contrite. “Dearest Izzy, I don’t know where you got such a romantic soul. You’re a dreamer and a believer in the myth, the fantasy that doesn’t exist. Why would you pine for a man who spent most of his time sighing and looking bored, or gazing forlornly out the windows of his country house?” She paused, and then added, “If I didn’t have a medical degree, I wouldn’t believe it possible that we have identical genes.”
Isobella had already turned her head away and tuned Elisabeth out. Staring out the window lost in her own thoughts, she asked herself, just what do you want?
My very own Mr. Darcy.
Wishing for Mr. Darcy. She could write a book about it. She had been looking, wishing, and waiting for a man who lived between the pages of a book. Was it too much to ask for a darkly handsome man—heroic, upstanding and moral, with a heart filled to overflowing with love—to come to her rescue and sweep her off her feet and into his arms?
Where was he, this man of deep feeling, inner struggle, and fiery pride? How beautiful it would be to have a man who did not want to win her love by mastering or overpowering her, but by becoming her ideal; the man of her dreams, a man reformed by love and desire.
How she yearned for a man of strength and quiet reserve, a man of brooding countenance, who would play the hero. If she could only be the woman who unlocked that tortured soul and released the hidden passions that smoldered within! She knew it was hopeless. To find Mr. Darcy, she would have to go back in time.
She dozed off, but she did not sleep long. Awakened, she said, “You won’t believe the dream I had.”
“With all the strange stuff that’s been happening to us, I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“Eggs,” Isobella said. “I dreamed about eggs. I was standing under a big tree holding a bonnet full of eggs when two men on horseback rode by, dressed in the garb of knights.”
“Well, if you’re going to dream about eggs…” Elisabeth started laughing. “I hope they were hard boiled.”
***
Back at the hotel, Isobella did a computer search for interpreting dreams about eggs. “Listen to this. Dreaming about eggs is symbolic of fertility and that something new and fragile is about to happen. It can also mean entrapment.”
From her bed, Elisabeth said sleepily, “It was just a dream. Good night, Izzy.”
Isobella slept fitfully, tossing and turning until the bedding was twisted and tangled and her gown around her waist. She turned on the bed light, removed two Benadryl from a bottle and downed them with a gulp of bottled water. The Benadryl would ease the stuffiness in her head and make her sleepy—both welcome.
She dreamed of floating weightlessly through the mist and over the roar of the ocean, while strange shapes and colors produced weirdly distorted visions, a bizarre mixture of real and imaginary characters, places, and events. She heard waves crash, breathed the tang of salty air, and felt herself floating low over a vast body of water and into the darkness of a place she feared she would never leave.
Her soul was caught in the sweep of powerful forces, and she existed in a vague way above the earth, weightlessly adrift in an imaginary sphere of being. Her mind filled with pleasant thoughts, and fantasies crowded into her memory—beguiling shapes, beckoning shadows, whispered words, and hands that knew just how and where to caress. She breathed deeply, puzzled by the scent of wax candles that filled her nostrils, and when she stretched, she touched warm skin.
She wasn’t alone.
He was there, warm and alive, for she felt the honed smoothness of his flesh. Her eyes popped open. She was in a medieval castle. The trappings of a warrior lay scattered about the room. A candle burned down on a table by the bed and further over, in an enormous fireplace, a fire smoldered from its bed of glowing coals.
She thought him a mythological being with a face and body created by the gods, lying there, with his head propped up with one hand, watching her. The confident, drowsy, hungry look from his dangerous, mesmerizing eyes of vivid blue held her trapped.
He was dark, frighteningly and desirably bare to the waist, and, more than likely, bare beneath the bedding that covered him. His skin looked hard and smooth, beautifully sculpted with muscle. She tugged the bedcovering upward, for he gazed at her like he was starving and she was the only thing on the menu. Even in her darkest, deepest desires, she couldn’t imagine conjuring up a man this perfect. And he looked so real!
She poked him. He was real. Her body trembled. She felt a craving thirst for him that she couldn’t explain or understand. She wanted to feel the strength of his arm around her and to be warmed by the heat of his body against hers. Her gaze dropped lower, lingering upon his torso, so wickedly bare and beautifully toned, and then lower still, where the bedding rode dangerously low on his hips. Suddenly, his mouth was on hers, and a rippling of sensation cascaded through her, like a series of waterfalls tumbling over rocks.
And she was as naked as he. Another shiver rippled over her, and she opened her mouth, undecided if she should scream or invite him to keep up the good work. She had no time to think further, for he moved so swiftly that she was not aware he had moved at all, until she felt the delicious weight of him. She had a fleeting thought that they had yet to be introduced, but that did not seem terribly important at the moment.
He stared directly into her eyes, watching, inviting, and igniting a fire within her. Oh, my! She could feel the flex of powerful muscles, the kiss of his breath against her skin. This was unlike any dream ever. The room, her lover, it was all tangible. She must have had too much wine. Or had he cast a spell over her?
“Are you Merlin?”
Firelight danced in his eyes. “Nae, lass. I am no’ a magician.”
His voice was low, throbbing, soothing, and as seductive as the rest of him. It set her heart to pounding, and she began to think: medieval castle… candlelight, not electricity… a perceptibly irresistible Gaelic burr… animal skins, a tunic, and a mail shirt lying across a trunk.
“You are King Arthur.”
The faintest shadow of a smile tantalized her. “Nae, I am not an imaginary being but a mortal man in every sense of the word. Would ye like me to show ye?”
“Who are you?”
A hungry look settled upon his beautifully sculpted face. He spoke with a low, throbbing voice. “I am the man who will, in a moment hence, make love to ye. Abide wi’ me.” He kissed her intimately. “Abide wi’ me, my mysterious lass.” One talented finger drew an imaginary line from her lips, across her throat, and between her breasts.
Stupidly, she asked, “What are you going to do?” as if he had to draw her picture. Her brain didn’t seem to be functioning properly. Everything, each thought was distorted and her perception was all off. Way off.
“It is not so much what I will do but rather what we will do together.” His finger began to draw lazy circles around her navel.
She sucked in a breath, and when her eyes widened, he said, “Dinna worrit. No harm will come to ye.”
His hands traveled over her with unflappable skill, learning the texture of her skin, the curves, the indentions, the places that made her moan. Something low in her belly tightened, and she felt consumed by a wild heat unknown to her. She didn’t care who he was, what he was, or where he was from.
He wanted her, and she needed so desperately to be wanted, to be loved by a man who desired her and let her know it. He didn’t simply kiss her; he made love to her mouth, his tongue plunging and stroking her in a way that made her groan and ache for him to teach her the rest. Heat shot throughout her body.
He kissed her breasts, while strange, unfamiliar feelings fluttered inside. He whispered to her in Gaelic with a hot breath that made her want to mate with him, this stranger, this dream lover her mind created. She gave in to the aching need, the incredible pleasure.
Paralyzed with wanting, she relaxed and opened to him. Surrounded by his warmth, his nearness, his nakedness, and bewildered by her unrestrained desire for him, she lay passive, knowing that whatever consumed her was stronger than she was. He seduced her with hands that coaxed and persuaded with the promises of the erotic, the unknown.
I’m dreaming, and I don’t want to wake up. Please don’t disappear. I don’t think I could handle being rejected again. Not by my own dream.
Alysandir had no idea who she was, why she was there, or how she managed to get into his bed. But, she was naked and lying beside him, with the face of Helen of Troy and the body of Aphrodite. He wasn’t about to let her get away, this divinity among mortals, this giver of pleasure. He was adrift in a realm of desire where sea nymphs sweetened the salty sea air with their delights. She was both goddess and courtesan who offered him the joy of ecstasy and a long night of lovemaking; be it imaginary, idealized, or false in nature. She was here, and she was his.
In spite of her appearing quite suddenly and naked in his bed, she had a stormy look of uncertainty laced with fear that made him think she was a maiden. That was absurd. No maiden would be in his bed, inviting him to have his way with her. Where was she from? How did she get into his bedchamber without one of the guards stopping her? Or was this all a dream?
The sight and scent of her aroused him, and he had been too long without a woman. He chuckled as she drew the coverlet up beneath her chin. As if that would stop him. Firelight worshipped her face as he gazed into golden-green eyes full of puzzlement and something darker and arousing. This was not the wooing of a simple maid, nor would it be rape. Something about this night and their coming together transcended that. They were Adam and Eve in the Garden before sin entered the picture.
Consumed by mounting desire, he drank in the pure lines of her lithe limbs, the perfect silence of her nudity. He took delight in her lack of shyness as he uncovered her. Her body came alive in the glow of the fire, rendering it translucent and as priceless as a rare vielle waiting for its strings to be strummed.
He saw the look of uncertainty in her eyes. He wondered if he might have misjudged her, that she wasn’t in his bed of her own free will. Unless, of course, she had been sent to seduce him or to inflict bodily harm. But how could she do so? The only weapons she possessed were a body and face created to seduce and rob a man of his wit and wisdom.
He kissed her throat. He kissed the hard crowns of her breasts. He threaded his hands into her hair and leaned forward to kiss her soft, full lips, gently nipping, tracing their shape with his tongue, and then plunging into the sweet, warm depth of her mouth. When she groaned, his body hardened with desire.
He kissed his way across her throat and down to her breasts, moving possessively over them, kneading and learning their shape and softness. His thumbs teased her nipples to hard peaks that he warmed with his breath, before he tasted them, while his hand skimmed the flat planes of her belly and dropped lower. He held her close, for she was too perfect and too precious to let go. He wanted her to desire him, to put her arms around him, giving of herself as completely as he would himself to her.
Lying there, listening to her soft breathing, his thoughts consumed with images of what they could do together, he did not feel the ghostly touch of a hand to his brow, for it was as soft as the breath of a sleeping babe and gone swiftly. He was ready to make love to her one moment, and the next he was suddenly groggy, as if he consumed too much ale. The overpowering need for sleep began to creep slowly over his consciousness, and he fought against it. He held the woman fast, as if by doing so their entwined bodies would become one.
Alysandir slept on, not knowing that although he was the chief of the powerful Clan Mackinnon and protected that which was his, he had no power over the shimmering, sifting grains of time slipping beyond his grasp. Nor could he keep the delicate beauty beside him in his bed.