Kissingate Magic #6
He knew his strength lay in denying passion, but Jacey filled his senses, her taste, her scent, her feel. She arched against him, whispered his name. Hearing it on her lips made him hard. Jacey, softer than silk, warmer than sunshine, his other half.
He cupped her bottom, and gazed into passion-bright eyes. She was his, only his … and Nicholas Daventry’s.
Like a winter flood, the thought washed over him. He groaned and fell against his pillows.
Jacey whimpered, bereft, and he pulled her tight against him, to console them both. If he didn’t get hold of himself, he’d weep with her.
“Passion,” he said, voice rusty, “almost killed me the last time, Jace.” He held her away from him, to see her face and for needed distance. “After you left – once I wanted to live again – I learned to control it.”
“No, Gabe. Not that.”
“When I thought the babe was mine – hell, getting you and a child was like a reward. Who cared if I lost my living, I would have you. But when you said it wasn’t mine …
” He cleared his throat. “Learning to control my passion was difficult. Until today, I thought I succeeded. I hate its wild unpredictability. Yet when you’re around, my passion has power. You have power.”
“Gabriel, you act as if it was all your fault. There were two of us in Lockhart Keep. I experienced a love bright and beautiful, as might have happened tonight.”
He laughed, bitterly. “You might not frighten easily, Jace, but it frightened your sister.”
“Clara?”
“I frightened her so much, she wept on our wedding night.”
“Clara was afraid of everything.”
“Don’t talk ill of the dead. She loved you. When she was sick, she—”
Jacey stilled. “Clara did what?”
“She said she’d never forgive me if I didn’t fetch you after she was gone.”
“But you didn’t.”
“One year. I had three months to go. I was counting days, but I didn’t know if I would.” He stroked her cheek. He’d never felt like this about Clara. “We’ll never know. You came to me.”
“I came for Bridget, to take her away and raise her myself.”
He sat up, his back straight, hair in disarray. “I wouldn’t let you.”
“You’re her stepfather, Gabriel, no relation at all.”
He rounded on her. “I swear, Jace, if I were her real father, I’d disappear with her so you’d never find her.”
Jace tugged the sheet around her unable to hide her panic. “You’re a good and decent man, Gabriel. You’ll do what’s best for her, as will I. We simply have to figure out which of us is best.”
“She’s mine. I know what’s best for her,” he shouted.
“You don’t. She plays you like one of Suttie’s puppets, like I used to do, which makes you sick with worry.
She couldn’t control losing her mother, so she tries to …
buttonhole you. Losing her mother must have given her the sense she couldn’t keep anyone where she wanted them.
When I was a child, I counted on two people.
One of them was you at my heels, or wherever I wanted you.
“Bridget is holding you by an invisible tether – call it love – pulling you this way and that. Just watch her. You can practically see her consider in which direction she’ll tug. You’ve had her two years, but you haven’t figured her out yet.”
“Don’t pretend to know my daughter.” Gabriel donned his dressing gown, tying it with a vicious yank.
He looked at her and his ire vanished on the instant. “Jace, I cannot stay angry with you in my bed, a sheet between my mouth and your body, your hair a veil I want wrapped around me.”
Sixteen
Jacey responded physically to his words. Aware of her power, she raised her hands above her head to stretch like a cat. “I like your passion.” She didn’t want him to deny passion.
He waivered in his resolve. “My passion becomes wild, almost savage, but only with you.”
“You said you were passionate with Clara.” Not for the first time, jealousy of her sister beat in her breast.
Gabriel went to gaze out on the night. “I wanted with Clara what I’d had with you. It was impossible; she wasn’t you. It never happened again.”
Jacey sat straighter. “So you’ll never be with a woman, again, never share your body?” With me, she wanted to add.
She held the sheet around her and went to the connecting door.
“Jace, who else did you count on as a child, besides me?”
She looked straight at him. “Nick,” she said pointedly. “To get me out of trouble.” But Gabriel didn’t get it.
She’d destroyed their love. In her own bed, she wept. Telling him Nick got her out of trouble was as close as she dared get to telling Gabe the truth.
Her decision to lie about her child’s father hardened him, not his passion, and she felt powerless against fixing it. She saved him when he didn’t want saving. If he knew, she felt he would never forgive her. The rift between them couldn’t be repaired.
An hour before Sunday service, Jacey took Bridget to visit her baby’s grave. “Baby Girl Lockhart,’’ the stone said, the date of birth and death the same. They left bouquets of heather and thistle.
Bridget traced the chiselled numbers with her fingers. “I know these numbers. Mama wrote them in her special book.”
She hugged Bridget and swallowed. “It was nice of your Mama to record it. My Mama didn’t.”
In the front pew, Mac leaned towards her. “Pray hard, young lady,” she whispered. “I found your missing slipper.”
Jacey frowned. “So?”
“Found it changing his bed.” She pointed to Gabriel at the pulpit.
His sermon, eloquent and magnetic, like him, bore a lesson. He even looked devilishly handsome in a cassock.
She loved him as much as ever, adored him, wanted a future with him, please God. She’d confess, if only he’d forgive
On the kirk steps, Prout pushed Olivia at him. “I told Livvy I’d pay for the new kirk as soon as the vicarage is cleaned out so Liv can decorate. After all, everything’s set, except for the ring on her finger.”
Jacey gasped and Mac hurried Bridget away.
“Given the company you keep,” Prout warned, “donations may dry up.”
Gabe frowned. “My Lady, may I remind you that charity is a virtue.”
Prout gave her a highbrow snub. “I don’t know why you persist in keeping such company, when you insisted, for decency’s sake, that she leave in the first place.”
Jace walked
“Jacey, Jace,” Gabriel called, right behind her.
She ran from her port in a storm, because he her sent her away.
The gypsy wagon sat near the stables, horses hitched, Suttie beside them. “Suttie, please take me away.”
“Ah, Jace.” Suttie lifted her chin. “If you went, what would we tell the wee one with her nose pressed to the window?”
Gabriel grasped her shoulders. “Jace, look at me.”
She focused on his cassock and wondered what he wore beneath it.
His sigh, heavy with regret, made her look up. “I wanted you gone, Jace, because of ignorant, callous fools who judge. You lost your child; you didn’t need to be flogged with words.”
“You wanted me gone, Gabriel Macgregor,” she snapped. “Because you didn’t want anyone to know your truth.”
Suttie blew them each a kiss. “Take the wagon.”
Jace heard the lock click open.
Seventeen
Panic and Passion seemed to meld inside Gabriel, as if he were fighting for his life. “Jace, please,” he begged. “There’s too much between us to be torn apart by spiteful words.”
“Your spiteful words, evidently.”
She fought him, so he swept her up, set her in Suttie’s wagon, and locked the door. Ignoring her threat of castration, he climbed on the box and flicked the reins.
The window behind him opened before they cleared the drive. “You’ll go to hell for this, vicar.”
“Without ballocks, I take it.” He laughed, and passed the kirk, and inside, he saw Jace at the side window waving at the slack-jawed Prouts.
Gabe urged the horses faster while the clouds spilled over.
The rain sliding down his neck made him reconsider. Turn back? Keep going? In other words: “Give up and die?” or “Fight for his life?”
He’d never got Jace out of his blood. She lived in every drop that pumped his heart. Forget the past, he needed her as much as his next breath. He loved her more than life, God help him.
Jacey failed to break the lock. Rain poured from troughs not buckets. The idiot must be soaked.
For the second time, she threw open the window behind him. “Blast it, Gabriel, stop and get out of the rain.”
He didn’t turn his head, but … “How can you laugh? So help me, when I get my hands on you, I’m going to beat you.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
She shut the window as hard as she dared.
Who knew Gabe was so impulsive he’d steal a sinner before his flock?
Jace stopped. Gabriel Macgregor had never been impulsive in his life, except the day he came home from the seminary.
She curled up in Suttie’s bed.
Their favourite haunt, hers and Gabriel’s, had been the ruins of Lockhart Keep, where their daughter was conceived.
After her mother sent her away, she dreamed he’d come for her, sweep her off her feet and take her home. Could this be the day?
When pigs flew above the rainclouds.
Gabe should have known she’d give him up before she caused him to give up his dream to repair his father’s failures and breathe new life into his home and parish.
Look at him, posture rigid, no hat or coat, defying the elements to get his way. Stubborn. Dear. Travelling a road as turbulent and deep as the man mocking it.
“Gabriel,” she called, and he looked back, surprised, to see her.
“Self-punishment won’t help. Take me home.”
The horses faltered on the flooded road, and when Jacey thought he had them under control, lightning struck nearby.
They bolted, tearing the reins from Gabe’s hands as they raced towards the trees.
Gabriel fought to keep his seat and shouted for her to get back.
She did, and watched him climb over the seat and through the window. He’d barely cleared the window when Jace saw the horses choose opposite sides of an ancient oak.
The wagon hit, a limb pushing through the window, shattering glass, splintering wood.
Gabriel swore and landed on top of her.
Books flew from a railed shelf, hitting him, head and shoulders.