Kissingate Magic
Annette Blair
The matchmaking fairy of Kissingate,
Every year capitulates
And brings a pair who hesitates,
A love meant to be.
She’s the shape-shifting fairy of Kissingate
Nudging an intractable young prelate
Who lost what he could never see straight:
A love meant to be.
Kissingate, Scotland, 1846
One
Jacey Lockhart, hidden in the midnight shadows, fixed her hungry gaze on Gabriel Macgregor, the most formidable of the ghosts she had come home to face.
Gabriel the guarded – named for the bright angel, when he should have been named for the dark – lowered his head to avoid an old oak barn beam, the hint of a smile in his eyes … until he saw her.
The knave stepped back, stretched to his full towering height, and squared his shoulders to a stunning span – Lucifer, face carved in unforgiving angles.
Despite her resolve, Jacey wanted to catch the next train back to Essex, though she couldn’t seem to move.
Here stood the father of her child, and firm between them, the lie she told denying it. In one stroke, she’d saved and destroyed him.
A horse shuffled in its stall, freeing hay musk into the air, breaking the silence, hazing the past, and allowing her to breathe.
As forbidding as her nemesis appeared in lantern light, dressed entirely in black, the tiny white lamb tucked into his frockcoat humanized him, the contrast bringing his cleric’s collar into conspicuous relief. A rogue’s heart, a vicar’s trappings, and no one seemed to know, save her.
His face, lined and bronzed by age and parish responsibility, gave him a mature, patrician air. His hair, a tumble of sooty waves, thick and lush, showed grey at the temples. No ghost, but the bane of her existence in the flesh, more vitally masculine than ever.
He’d always been proud, even when they were children – he, a poor vicar’s son, she, the heir to a fortune.
But she’d reversed their roles. Now, a disinherited outcast, she stood, once again, before the boy who adored her, then hated her, with all his heart.
“Gabriel,” she said, wishing her voice didn’t tremble and her body didn’t remember.
Two
Gabriel wondered if the sum and substance of all his dreams, good and bad, could hear his stone cold heart knocking against his ribs. “Jace,” he said, his rasp awkward.
He cleared his throat, but Suttie stepped up and kissed him on the cheek. Suttie, the ageless puppeteer whose gypsy wagon they’d once chased giggling down the High Street. “Welcome, both of you,” Gabe said, his voice working, again, hope suddenly alive.
Suttie beamed. “I see you found the surprise I brought.”
Found her? He thought. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“Aye, Gabriel, I’ve come home. I’ll stay in Suttie’s wagon.”
Gabe’s chest ached for hiding his joy. “You’ll both stay at Kirk Cottage. No argument, now.”
Suttie beamed; Jacey looked terrified.
“Please, Lady Lockhart?” Gabe begged in the way Jace once commanded, for a piece of butterscotch pie, but the words evoked her fall from grace. “I apologise,” he said. “That was thoughtless.”
“Aye, it was.” Jace turned to Suttie. “Can I stay in your gypsy wagon? I’ll take the morning train back. I shouldn’t have come.”
Gabriel gave the lamb to Suttie, placed his hand against Jacey’s back to propel her towards the vicarage, her body heat curling like a spiral around his icy heart.
Inside, she stepped from his touch. “I won’t stay. I cannot.”
If she left again, she’d never come back. The thought of losing her forever cut deep. Gabe turned to build up the fire in the hearth to chase away the damp, warm the lamb, and gather his wits.
Jacey, here, in his house, where he pictured her nearly every day.
His Jacey. As beautiful as ever. More.
No, not his. Never again. That was past.
He was a vicar now, in control, unemotional, his passion a vice overcome. Long-buried. Dead. He turned to his guests. “Mackenzie’s asleep, so I’ll ready your rooms.”
The lamb bleated. “She’s hungry,” Jace said.
“I planned to make a bottle.” He felt big, clumsy beside Jace and remembered a time it didn’t matter.
“Did her mother die?” she asked.
Gabriel took the lamb like a shield. “She’s a twin and a runt.” He stroked its neck and the mite closed its eyes in ecstasy.
Jacey watched transfixed, yearning in her emerald eyes. Seeing it, he might once have lowered her to the grass and—
The fire snapped. They stepped back, released by the sound.
“I’ll fix a bottle—”
“I’ll get you a bot—”
They spoke together, stopped together.
Gabe set the lamb on its wobbly legs and fetched the supplies Jace would need to feed it then he headed out to get their bags, Suttie beside him.
Three
Jacey watched him go and released her breath, a victim of the soul-deep longing that led to her downfall. Five years and she hadn’t come to terms with it. Getting herself with child, without a husband, she’d disgraced her mother, a true Lady of the Manor.
After her babe’s birth and death, she got a job at Briarhaven School, Essex, England, where she lived, taught needlework, and hid from the past.
Surprisingly, she came back to life, found her self-respect, and with the help of Suttie’s letters, knew that before she could have a future, she must face her past.
Yesterday, Suttie had come for her. She’d set boldly forth to face the world she left behind, and ended trembling in a vicarage kitchen.
To calm herself, she warmed a pan of milk and rinsed a lambing bottle. She couldn’t leave; she’d come for Gabriel’s step-daughter, her motherless niece, who slept upstairs, the child she planned to take and raise. Only Gabriel stood between her and success.
Some things never changed.
Jacey sat by the hearth, coaxing the lamb into her lap by making use of its grip on the nipple.
First, she’d have to face a condemning village, Gabriel among them, a flock who considered him a saint and her a sinner. But he was human. Flawed. Jacey knew better than anyone.
Oddly enough, she’d forgiven him, but not herself.
Four
In the kitchen after bringing Suttie and her bags upstairs, Gabe stopped at the sight of Jace, while his old enemy, lust, returned for just looking at her.
He backed away and sat at the round old table, with its scarred slab top and legs big as tree trunks, not sure what to do with his hands.
“Where’s Suttie?” Jace asked, her voice a wobbling croak.
“Fell asleep while I showed her the room. I threw a blanket over her. Is she getting old, our Suttie?”
“She certainly doesn’t look it. More stubborn than anything, I think. We shouldn’t have arrived so late, but Suttie insisted on driving through. I’m glad we didn’t wake you.”
Gabriel quit the table and dropped down beside Jace to stroke the drowsing lamb’s lanolin-soft wool. Instantly, he saw his mistake. Too close, he thought. Oh, God, Jacey.
The mite roused at his attention and suckled as if it hadn’t eaten in a week, until it pulled on air-bubbles, and Jace tried to wrest the empty bottle from its grip. When Jace won, his hand slipped and grazed her breast.
He froze at the contact, their gazes locked, a primitive energy rising hot and thick between them – an intangible yet undeniable force, savage in its intensity.
Jace bit her lip, drew blood. Did her body betray her as much as his?
Gabriel lost his breath to lust, molten and heavy.
He’d controlled passion for years, with his wife’s staunch approval after their sorry wedding night.
But a minute in Jace’s company, and passion, like Lazarus, rose from the dead.
Trapped. By weakness. His strength lay in denying passion – a hard-won lesson. But around Jacey, desire overcame determination, and strength became a wisp of smoke where once burned a zealot’s fire.
Jacey. Jace. Home. His Jace.
No, and again, no.
She’d made him call her Lady Lockhart when he wanted to call her Jace, like the rest of her friends did, except for the day he came home a new-minted vicar, when he finally called her his.
Once again, he felt like that runny-nosed boy with torn clothes and dirty nails. Why, when his clothes were new, his home comfortable and clean, elegant even? Why, when Jace’s grey dress, mended and pressed to a pauper’s shine, must once have been blue?
Trapped. By passion. By Jacey. Gabriel wanted to swear, to rage, to pull her into his arms and kiss her until she gave passion back, as Jacey surely could. If only he wasn’t the only man who’d experienced her passion.
Gabriel crossed the kitchen to get as far from captivation as possible. He couldn’t be near without taking her in his arms, any more than he could bear the reminder of her betrayal, and his foolishness.
“I’m looking forward to time with my niece,” she said, her rush of words pulling him from pain but shivering him to his bones. He gazed at her, looking for no greater significance than her words betrayed. “You mean, my daughter,” he said, foolishly desperate to stake his claim.
Jacey rose with the lamb in her arms. “Step-daughter,” she corrected. “I hope she remembers her real father.”
He’d face any and all demons, real or imagined, for Bridget. “Her father died before her birth. Her mother and I married before she turned two. I’m the only father she knows.”
“I’m her aunt, kin by blood.”
“Blood, as we know, does not always tell.”
Jace stepped back under the weight of his verbal blow.
His barb, born of self-preservation, hurt him as much as it did her.
Ashamed of his callous words, he claimed the lamb, but couldn’t calm. He wanted to take Jace into his arms, soothe her, and he wished to the devil he didn’t bloody well care how Jacey Lockhart felt. “I’ll show you to your room.”
Preoccupied by his demons, Gabriel took the stairs first, realized he should have let a lady precede him, though this lady had been disowned, her title stripped, if only in word, by her own mother.
Then, again – as she had often reminded him – neither was he a gentleman.
He stopped to let her pass.
Five
Jacey leaned against the bedroom door. “No more tears,” she whispered. “Look forward not back.”