After the Gloaming #4
Mollified, she finished telling him about the night of her death.
She said she remembered lying on the cold stone, feeling the energy drain from her body and blood from her head ooze down her cheek.
She remembered hearing Robert’s footsteps echo in the stairwell and how good it had felt to close her eyes.
The next thing she remembered was walking into Caerlaverock and realizing nobody could see or hear her.
“Five days after he killed me, Robert married Janet Douglas,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.
“Jesus! What a bastard!”
He instantly felt guilty using such language in front of a lady, but Deidre did not seem to mind.
“Aye.” Deidre flicked her wrist and sent the stone skipping across the glassine surface, then turned to look at him. “I am sorry to say most of Robert’s descendants have been bastards. But you are different, I think.”
“I hope so.”
The weight of exhaustion pressed heavily upon him and he knew he should return to Blackstone House to rest and check on James, but he didn’t want to leave Deidre. He stood and stretched his muscles.
When she saw him struggling to stifle a yawn, she smiled and said, “You are tired. You should go home and sleep.”
“I can’t leave you here alone,” he said, holding out his hand to Deidre. “Come with me.”
Deidre looked at Caden and her heart joyfully skipped a beat.
How tempted she was to take his hand and let him lead her back to Blackstone House, but this was the first day in five hundred years that she was able to feel, physically and emotionally, and she did not know how long it would last. If this was her only day to be whole and human again, did she want to spend it in the home of a dying Maxwell? With the son of a dying Maxwell?
Caden smiled, a charming, lopsided grin that caused dimples to appear near the corners of his mouth and her heart to skip another beat.
His dimpled grin and easy charm reminded her of Robert, but that’s where the resemblance ended.
Tall, tanned, ruggedly built, with dark blond hair and piercing blue eyes, Caden looked quite different from the Maxwells she had haunted.
She wondered what it would be like to be truly loved by a man as handsome and compassionate as Caden Maxwell.
She took his hand and together they walked through the woods to Blackstone House. He asked her many questions about her life before the curse and seemed particularly pleased when she confessed she had always wanted to learn how to blow glass.
“Seriously? That’s cool,” he said, holding a branch back so she could pass beneath it. “My mother teaches glassblowing at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma. It’s just a hobby of hers but I know she would be happy to teach you if––”
He let his sentence fade away but his if lingered in the air. If the curse had finally been broken. If she remained human. If they were ever to see each other again. It amazed her that such a small word could contain so many hopes.
They were climbing the steps to Blackstone House when the front door suddenly swung open and a plump, elderly woman appeared, a worried frown tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“Thank God,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “Whar huv ye bin? Ah huv bin so worried aboot ye!”
“I am sorry I worried you, Mrs Harriet. I couldn’t sleep so I went for a walk and must have lost track of time,” Caden said, squeezing her hand gently and releasing it. “Is James all right?”
“Aye.” Mrs Harriet’s expression softened. “Yer da is resting.”
Hades came loping up, his blue-grey fur flecked with dried mud and leaves, and would have trotted in the front door and across Mrs Harriet’s freshly scrubbed floor had the housekeeper not grabbed him by the collar.
“Just whaur dae ye think yer gaun?”
With a docile and properly chastened Hades still firmly in her grasp, Mrs Harriet walked down the steps. “Ah left ye a plate o’ neeps hash ’n’ eggs ’n’ thare ur fresh scones in th’ basket on the table,” she called over her shoulder before leading Hades around the house towards the stables.
Mrs Harriet passed through Deidre as if moving through thin air.
Caden noticed the pain in Deidre’s hazel eyes and the tears glistening on her long lashes and all he wanted to do was comfort her. Wrapping an arm around her shaking shoulders, he led her up the stairs to his room.
“She passed through me as if I weren’t even there!” she sobbed, burying her face in her hands. “The curse has not been broken.”
Nothing unsettled Caden more than a woman crying. It lacerated his heart like a shard of glass. It made him feel anxious and helpless.
Desperate to ease her suffering, Caden gathered Deidre up in his arms, carried her to the bed, and rocked her until her sobs subsided.
He felt the warmth of her body through her thick gown, the curve of her shapely body on his thighs, the silky strands of her hair teasing his chin, and it took all of his self-control not to toss her on his bed, hike up her skirt, and bury himself between her thighs.
But Deidre was not like the other women he had known.
He couldn’t wine her, dine her, and nail her all in the same night.
Even though she had spent the last five hundred years watching the world evolve, she was still from a different time, when women had gentle dispositions and delicate sensibilities.
When she looked up at him with tears still trembling on her lashes, the slender tether restraining his desire nearly snapped.
As a spirit of the netherworld, hovering near but never interacting with humans, Deidre had spent centuries watching people flirt and fall in love. Once, quite by accident, she had happened upon one of Robert’s grandsons making love to a serving wench behind a boulder in the glen near Caerlaverock.
She’d often wondered what it would feel like to be kissed and caressed again, but had long since given up hope it would ever happen. Now, Caden Maxwell was pressing his lips to hers and pushing his tongue inside her mouth.
When she finally mustered the courage to reach up and run her fingers through his close-cropped, honey-hued hair, his passionate response chased away her fears and doubts. He moaned and deepened his kiss.
The stubble covering his cheeks abraded the tender skin around her mouth, but she did not mind. In fact, she liked the intriguing pleasure-pain sensations it aroused.
Agitation pricked at her, prodded her. She wanted something from him but did not know what.
Caden knew.
He lifted her gown, slid his broad hand up her thigh, and began teasing the apex of her womanhood with the tips of his fingers, brushing over it softly, again and again, until she felt as if she were dying a second time. Only this time there was no pain, only sweet ecstasy.
Caden woke four hours later with his arms still wrapped around Deidre.
He pressed a kiss to her smooth forehead, before easing himself out of bed and heading to the kitchen for a bite to eat.
When he had polished off two ham sandwiches, an apple, and a can of Coke, he made a similar feast for Deidre and carried it to his room.
He found her fast asleep, so he left the plate of food on the nightstand beside his bed, and headed to the bathroom.
Caden ran his hands over the stubble covering his jaw and considered shaving, but decided he would rather take a quick shower.
Fifteen minutes later, he was dressed in his favourite pair of distressed jeans and an Abercrombie button down, and comfortably seated in James’s library.
Caden had found a tattered, yellowing copy of his mother’s book, Lords of the Land: A Brief History of the Maxwell Clan, in the library earlier in the week, haphazardly shelved between the leather-bound first editions of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.
Although he had grown up knowing that his mother, an esteemed historian and author and a woman he adored, had written a book about his father’s clan, stubborn pride and resentment had prevented him from reading it.
A memory flashed in his brain. He was fourteen and had just spent the summer at football camp where he had practised hitting and spinning, defensive moves that helped running backs avoid getting tackled (a move he employed both on and off the field).
For some reason, perhaps it had been seeing all of the proud fathers at the end of camp awards ceremony or the fact that he hadn’t had a father to slap him on the back and tell him “good job, son” when he won the trophy for being the best running back in his age group, he’d returned home feeling curious about James Montague Maxwell, so when he thought his mom wasn’t looking, he grabbed a copy of her book from the shelf in the living room.
He’d just opened it when she walked in the room.
Embarrassed, he closed the book and tossed it on the table, then grabbed the remote, turned the television on, and clicked to ESPN.
“Caden,” she’d said, taking the remote from his hand and pushing the button to turn off the television. “There is nothing wrong with wanting to learn more about the man who helped create you.”
“Why would I want to learn about anything about a man who had abandoned his wife and only son?”
His vehemence had surprise them both.
But he was no longer an angry boy.
He opened the book and began reading about the notorious Maxwells.
Apparently, the third Lord Maxwell had been accused of killing two of his wives.
The fourth Lord Maxwell, a notorious rake and daring soldier, had died at the Battle of Flodden Field, leaving behind a small army of bastards.
The book described Robert Maxwell, the fifth Lord Maxwell and the man responsible for Deidre’s death, as a slippery intriguer who conspired against his own countrymen with England’s Henry VIII.
Another Maxwell was found guilty of treason for his participation in the Jacobite rising of 1715 and was sentenced to death.