Kissingate Magic #2
She squared her shoulders and saw a familiar silver dresser set, her sister Clara’s hair things. Jacey covered her heart. Gabriel had given her his dead wife’s room.
Jace traced the engraved initials on the hairbrush twice before she sought with her gaze the connecting door to Gabriel’s bedroom.
Hope flared, but she squashed it. His choice of room meant nothing. This had been her sister’s bedroom, after all.
Gabriel had been unbending and unforgiving, proof he didn’t want her here. He acted the way he did the day she convinced him that her child … the day she lost him forever.
“Forever,” she repeated, for her own sake. He’d also been Gabriel, more devilishly handsome than any man of the cloth – any man – had a right to be. He could never be hers, because to save him, she’d destroyed him.
Tired of regrets, Jacey sat on the edge of the old four-poster, stroked the faded coverlet on which Gabriel’s mother had stitched primroses, when she was seven and wished the woman was her mother, too.
Only society could claim her own mother. For hugs, Jacey came to Kirk Cottage, more a home than Lockhart Keep, the ancient stone fortress on the hill. Gabriel had been the boy she made bow and scrape for fun. Back then, he did anything she asked.
Jacey wasn’t sure when her disdain for the scabby-kneed peasant turned to something more. She remembered that after he’d come home a new-minted parson, life was bliss. Then it was hell.
She rose and worked her shoulders before putting on her nightdress. She’d aged, too, she saw in the mirror, but she’d not yet reached Gabriel’s advanced age of thirty.
Life goes on, she thought. It can be good, or not, depending on what we make it. Tomorrow she’d meet her niece, and eventually she’d give the child a happy life, for Clara’s sake.
Jacey took the note Suttie sent her from her bag, and read it, again:
Suttie, I need your help. My step-daughter is sullen and sad.
Since her mother died, she rarely speaks, never laughs.
A man like me, alone with a daughter to raise; it’s killing me not knowing what to do for her.
You made me smile when I was young and sad.
You always knew how. Come with your puppets?
A motherless four-year-old who never laughs; how can you resist?
Come soon, my friend. Your Faithful Servant, Gabriel Macgregor.
He wanted Suttie but hadn’t expected his past to come with her.
Jacey didn’t want Bridget sad and unhappy. When she read the letter, she knew she had to come, lay old ghosts to rest, and get on with raising Bridget for Clara.
Behind the humble village cleric hid a stubborn, hard-headed and arrogant man, who would, in fact, be shocked to his black stockings to hear it. She imagined he could be difficult for a wee girl to live with.
In the note, Jace saw his plea, not only for the child, but the writer. He didn’t know he’d asked for help, but Suttie did, and so did she.
Six
Thinking she should look in on Bridget, she threw on her old wrap, still tying it when she hit the hall, and headed towards the spare room, but stopped.
Another door stood ajar, wide enough for her to see Gabriel bent over a wee figure settling her in for sleep.
Jacey’s heart cried out to see and meet her niece, but she’d wait for the child’s sake.
Gabriel tucked Bridget in, whispered a word, kissed her wee head. When he straightened, Jacey read concern in an expression as clear and open as it had once been for her.
He saw her and tried to mask his emotions but failed. Rounding the bed, he came out into the hall, while Jacey stood rooted, knees weak. She had never been more aware of Gabriel as a man of the cloth as when his pastoral attire revealed so much of the flesh and blood man beneath.
He had discarded his black frockcoat, unbuttoned his waistcoat, the top buttons of his shirt, and tucked his snow-white cleric’s collar into his pocket. His shirtsleeves, rolled to his elbows, left his muscular forearms bare. God strengthen her weak knees.
Bridget’s door shut with a soft click, snapping her gaze to Gabriel.
Stepping before her, he raised a finger to trace a path down her cheek, his look penetrating. “Tear trails,” he whispered, brows furrowed with regret. Jings, she should have wiped her face.
Isolation enveloped her, as if they were alone in the universe. She yearned to sleek her hands along his forearms – the hair soft as silk, her fingertips seemed to remember.
Gabriel grasped her lapels, stroked them up and down, while prickling waves of awareness reached the furthest depths of her being. Despite an inner caution, she allowed herself, for the first time since her return, to devour the flesh and blood vicar with her gaze.
His hair feathered away from his face, except for a curl on his brow. She swept the undisciplined strand aside.
His eyes closed, in ecstasy or pain, and she whisked her hand back, but he caught and placed it against his tripping heart.
His dark brows and deep-set eyes formed a perpetual scowl, a sternness denied by his heartbeat, though he didn’t smile.
The rare times he did, the sun grew bright in the sky.
He kept her hand and moved close, his warmth and scent, tobacco and cloves, raised her to a place where memories lived, gold and good, and she welcomed him with all her heart.
“Jace,” he breathed, his lips a whisper away.
She squeaked and found herself watching from the entry to her room.
He stood alone in the centre of the hall, wounded.
Jacey shut her door, having taken a painful step in exorcising her demons. So why did she feel like weeping?
Afraid she loved him still, that her body would react, even if her mind knew the danger, she should leave, but she and Bridget should get to know each other in a familiar setting.
No, she’d be strong where Gabriel was concerned. Soon enough, he’d remember he despised her and why. Better it should happen when she expected it.
She almost wished he expected the blow she’d deal him. But he’d said Bridget was unhappy in his letter. Who wouldn’t be with a broody stepfather?
The child would be better off with an aunt who embraced joy. Oh, Gabe cared about her. It’d be easier to take Bridget, if he didn’t. He begged help for his child and she came to claim that child.
There’d be no running. For Bridget, she’d have to stay, and if her instincts proved right, she’d go to the magistrate and claim her niece.
Regret and conviction battled in her mind until dawn.
Seven
Gabriel didn’t sleep at all. He paced, brooded, and lusted for the woman on the other side of the connecting door.
“You’re up early,” Mackenzie said entering the kitchen, her grizzled hair at odd angles, as always of a morning. “Couldn’t sleep?”
Gabriel shook his head, neither denying or confirming her supposition. The old meddler could interpret his response however she chose.
“Difficult sermon to write?”
God, he hated Mackenzie’s prying. “I was up half the night delivering twin lambs to Lady Hamilton.”
“That ewe’s too old.”
“Tell her that.” Gabriel felt a smile forming, until he recalled the reason he’d paced. “Oh, and we have company, if you must know.”
“Well, ’course, I must, so I can make more boxty and scotch eggs. Drop scones too, I’d warrant. How many and who?”
“Suttie Scotney and Jacey Lockhart.”
The cast iron griddle hit the floor with a clatter. Mackenzie covered her cheeks, emotions marching across her features – fear, acceptance, then, oddly, relief. “’Bout time you two—”
Gabriel smacked the table with a hand. “No, by God!”
He startled the old bird into a screech.
“Mackenzie, forgive me.” He took her arm, led her to a chair, and fetched a cup of water.
Her Scot scowl grew fierce. “Good thing Bridget’s not up, or it’d take a month for her to look at you, again, after that outburst.”
Why it mattered so much, Gabriel didn’t know, but for the life of him, he’d get through to that wee bundle of bones with big eyes. “You’re right.”
“I’m always right,” Mackenzie said, climbing the back stairs.
Gabriel sat at the table and scrubbed his face with his palms, the lamb butting his thigh. He leaned down to scratch its head, starved, like a beggar, for a hint of Jace’s voice.
Jacey, getting dressed. Jace, in the hall in her night clothes, smoothing the hair from his brow.
Jace with ruffles on her robe, pretty, like the first time he saw her in the Lockhart pew, in his father’s Kirk.
A three-year-old with dark ringlets, like Bridget looked today.
The family resemblance was uncanny. Although, praise be, his wee one didn’t resemble her aunt in temperament.
Back then, Jacey liked to work the vicar’s scruffy son the way Suttie worked her puppets. But Gabriel adored Jace and followed her everywhere. He would have kissed the hem of her gown, surprised she never commanded it. Lord, she’d been a tyrant.
Then everything changed. He went to seminary. Rare visits home, he saw the changes in her. A woman grown, her raven hair formed a striking contrast to alabaster skin kissed by roses. Gull-winged brows hovered over bright emerald eyes and high, perfect cheekbones. Jace’s smile could make poets weep.
Short conversations revealed the woman who replaced the brat to be beautiful inside and out. The day he came home, a scruff no more, he’d found her at their favourite haunt.
Perfection in a siren’s body, lush, ripe, Jacey’s smile illuminated her features, her arms opened to embrace him. And he was lost.
Drugged by her welcome, the opium of her skin, its taste and texture, he kissed her with a frightening passion.
Dark. Untamed. Forbidden.
The birds chattered, the heavens blessed them with sun, and in the ruins of Lockhart Keep, he gave his body, heart and soul, to the girl he’d loved his whole life.
Before three months passed, his love hardened his heart and sliced into his soul. His body wasn’t so good, either, for some time after, as he hadn’t cared to look after it.