Chapter Nineteen
The world around Ismay was dark, but she wasn’t afraid to lie beneath the canopy of shedding branches. How could she be afraid held tightly in the embrace of the most lethal chief in the Highlands? She didn’t doubt for an instant that Constantine couldn’t keep her safe.
His body was slightly harder than the ground and immensely warmer.
They didn’t sleep, but that wasn’t because either of them were afraid.
“It would have served no purpose to tell ye MacRae cut my hair,” Ismay told him drowsily.
Instead of answering, he ran his palm over her head, down to her shoulder where her tresses stopped. “As much as it angers me, I dinna think killin’ him fer his crime is deservin’ of death. I take so much pleasure in the sight of yer throat and yer earlobes thanks to yer short hair.”
He made her smile. Anyone who dared suggest the Lochiel was a melancholy tyrant would answer to her!
They ended up speaking about Alistar MacRae. She had finally told Constantine his name. “I thought he might hurt the others if I was there.”
“Ye dinna need to run anymore,” he whispered into her hair.
“While MacRae is alive, I should be worried. Ye see that he was at the Doomsday Inn. Think of how close he was.”
“He willna look fer ye anymore, Ismay.”
She picked up the sharp edge in his voice and looked up at him. “What do ye mean?”
He was quiet for a moment. “I met him in Inverlochy.”
He met MacRae? Ismay blinked her eyes. “What? Ye met him?”
Did MacRae tell him who she was guilty of killing? That she was a MacPherson?
“What did he tell ye?”
“He told me ye had a viperous tongue and that ye beguiled men oot of their senses.”
Was that all? MacRae didn’t tell him she was a MacPherson?
She pouted her lips. “Ye didna believe those things, did ye?”
“I believed every word,” he replied succinctly.
She lifted her head off his chest and stared at him in the dark. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“My precious flower,” he elaborated softly, deeply. “Ye have indeed bewitched my logic—”
She sat up and took a swipe at him. “What is the matter with yer logic now?”
“It has abandoned me and set ye in the place of everythin’ else.”
She felt her hackles settling. Was he telling her she came before everything else?
“In that case,” she told him, leaning in close to his lips, “ye have bewitched me, as well. “But, Constantine, he didna tell ye anything else?”
“What else is there?” he asked.
If the MacDonalds at Tor found out the truth about her, they would likely want to kill her.
“Nothing else,” she lied.
“Dinna fret over him any longer,” he reassured in his deliciously deep voice.
Trusting him, she snuggled close against him and listened to the sound of his heartbeat in her ear.
He stroked her hair and back until she grew too tired to keep her eyes open.
But she wasn’t asleep. Her mind was too fixated on what was happening to her heart.
Even now in this moment of listening to his breathing coming slow and steady, her heart was swelling with affection for him.
How was it possible that he had infiltrated all her defenses, tore down walls she had erected beginning when she was almost too young to remember why she needed them?
Despite her father rescuing her from the MacDonalds, it had taken her years to learn to trust him.
Nae, it had not happened overnight. She trusted Constantine early on though.
Was it because he had passed her father’s test and kept his word?
There were other signs her father taught her to recognize a good man.
Did Constantine have good people around him? People who loved him?
His kin loved him for certain. They gave him their respect—not a meager offering coming from a Highlander.
And why shouldn’t they respect him? He had made them rich with cattle.
No one in the entire region wanted for anything.
He kept them all fed, housed, and busy with work.
He made the Camerons of Lochaber a name to be revered.
She hadn’t let a villain into her heart, but a good man, who knew how to water it and keep it blooming. She smiled against him and whispered into his chest.
“Thank ye fer finding me, Constantine.”
*
Constantine lay awake in rays of filtered sunlight coming through the trees. Beside him, Ismay slept, set aflame in the dawn. She took his breath away. He was ready to die for her, but he would rather live with her.
He pulled his plaid up around her delicate shoulders. Delicate but strong enough to drive a pitchfork through a man’s arm.
His heart warmed on her for the dozenth time this morning.
She was soft on the outside and so strong on the inside.
She was fashioned for the Highlands. Fashioned for him.
What was he going to do about it? He didn’t want to think about the future but this moment.
When she slept in his arms, treasured in his eyes.
But it was time for them to go. Until Hugh was found and questioned, being out in the open wasn’t wise.
He knew how he wanted to wake her, and so leaning in, he pressed his lips to hers and kissed her briefly, then moving on, he kissed her closed eyes, her temples, and buried his face in her tresses.
He felt her awaken in his embrace and smiled when she clung to him more tightly.
“There were so many times I thought I lost ye.”
“Ye will never lose me,” she reassured him, the strength in her eyes proof of her bold claim.
They kissed a little more. Constantine wanted more. His body felt feverish with his need.
Not here. “Let us go home.”
She sprang up smiling and putting the sun to shame. “Home?”
“Aye,” he said with a quiet, knowing smile. “That is where ye were headin’ was it no’?”
“I didna know it until I was halfway here,” she admitted with a slight laugh. “I think in my heart I hoped ye would know where to look fer me.”
He sat up with her and shook his head. Confusion knit his brow remembering his steward’s missive. “We have Hugh to thank fer that.”
“He carried me off the road after I jumped from a slaver’s carriage.”
Constantine let the rage that boiled beneath the surface cool. He rose to his feet and took her hand to help her up.
“Ye jumped from a movin’ carriage?”
Her eyes searched his, and finding the furious beast crouching in the shadows, she smiled as if her action was of no importance. She was incorrect.
“What else could I do, Constantine? I couldna stay with them, aye?”
He gazed into her eyes, as sunshine and stars restored his heart to life. He was in love with her. He almost sighed, thinking what a challenge she was going to be. He smiled instead.
When she took a step away from him. He took her hand and pulled her back.
“Ismay, take me as yer husband.”
She grew serious, staring at him in disbelief. “Why?”
“Why?” he echoed. He was hoping for an aye, not expecting a why.
“Why have ye changed yer mind? A sennight ago ye couldna let go of yer past. Now ye’re eager to race into another?”
He could have been offended at her criticism, but she was correct to question him. The change in him surprised him, as well.
He told her the truth. “’Tis as if I were in the darkness and I didna know it until ye shined yer light. Now, I never want to go back.”
Her bonnie eyes opened wide and her smile grew. “In that case, my answer is aye.”
He surprised her—and himself by the elation he felt. Swooping down, he lifted her off her feet and carried her laughing and cradled in his arms to his horse.
They shared his mount for a short way. The horse wasn’t built for two and Constantine would not push the beast.
With the reins in one hand and her hand in the other, he led her to the home he’d built.
He looked around at the hills darkened in the shadow of the high mountain range of Ben Nevis in the distance.
“I had to position my house where the shadows didna reach. It took two months to get it precisely correct, but being washed in the radiance of sunlight is worth any struggle to find it.”
She blushed and smiled knowing he was referring to her.
When the house finally came into view, Constantine remembered how much he loved it here, in his little sunlit glade beneath the great Nevis. He could do nothing but smile when Ismay broke away from him and ran forward.
He hadna had the chance to live here happily yet. He planned on doing it now.
Dropping the reins of his horse, he raced after Ismay. He caught up to her quickly, laughing with her as they entered the house together.
He showed her every room, as she requested, lighting candles in each room they entered and apologizing when he realized there was no food or ingredients in the larder.
“I wanted to prepare fer when ye came here,” he told her.
“’Tis perfect,” she said, coming up behind him and closing her arms around him. “I need nothing but ye.”
He turned in her arms and aimed his smile on her. “Ye have me, lass.”
“Even here in this house?”
He looked around and nodded. “Everywhere,” he promised.
When he leaned in closer, she closed her eyes, readying for his kiss.
While his tongue stole over hers, he lifted her off her feet and carried her upstairs to his bedroom.
*
Ismay opened her eyes and looked at the side of the bed where Constantine had slept in the night. The space was empty now. She thought about rising, but she didn’t want to leave his bed. Not ever.
She sighed then smiled, then giggled at the scandalous memories rushing into her head. She had no idea he could make her feel the way he had. What man was like him? None, that was who!
She squealed with delight at all the new sensations he had awakened in her. She had trusted him not to hurt her, and he hadn’t. He was gentle, though restraint tightened his jaw and made his muscles tremble.
She’d known from the moment she came awake that she was in love with him. Her! In love! Och, her father would not have believed it. If he had tried to wed her to Constantine, she would have agreed wholeheartedly.