Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

They walked farther. When they entered a clearing, he stopped as he saw a herd of horses. It was Nyama’s herd. His bay was there as well. It was as if they had banded together for the winter. All the horses were in their winter coats and it couldn’t take away from their beauty.

Ciara walked out to the edge of the clearing and released a low whistle. The black, Nyama, tossed up his head and came up. She spoke to him in a language Lucien couldn’t understand but knew that the horse did.

As she spoke to the horse, he took the time to look him over. He was interesting—not ugly but not as beautiful as he had been from afar. He was smaller than the thoroughbreds and had a distinctive face. The head was elongated and the quarters were sloped. The tail set was low.

He could see raw power in that horse, though. She was right—he moved with a grace that one wouldn’t expect if they stared at him.

With a smile that would rival the heavens, she asked, “Would you like to go for a ride?” When Lucien just looked at her with a blank stare, she tried again as she swung up on the horse.

“Would you like to take a quick ride? We can ride back to the cabin.” Her voice urged him to accept her proposition.

The thought of riding behind her was too good an opportunity to pass up. Titled or no, rich or no, he was not a man who had ridden bareback much. A frown crossed his face. How would this work? Pride dictated that he do it, but he didn’t want her to know that he had not done so before.

“Sure.” Arrogant male won out over logical person. “I will ride behind you.”

“No. Do you think you can handle the bay?”

“A stallion? With nothing on him? Are you sure that would be wise?” He didn’t care that the question was way less than a manly response.

Ciara quirked a brow in perfect imitation of him as she swung down from Nyama. She gave another low whistle and a mare came up. She was a beautiful brown color with a white rump that had spots on it. Looked kind of like she had snow falling on her hindquarters.

“This is Epona. She is my favorite mare. I got her from some of the Indians. She is something else. This is whom I want to breed Nyama to. I think that their combined endurance and speed will be amazing. You can ride her.”

Lucien looked at Epona. “What does her name mean? Epona?” He moved in and rubbed the mare’s nose. She was large—almost larger than the stallion—and solid.

“Epona was a Celtic goddess. Of horses. Besides, I couldn’t pronounce her name when I got her, so I changed it. Go on. Get on.”

Ciara swung back up on Nyama and waited for Lucien to mount. He did so, his action a bit clumsy but she made no mention of it.

As they rode through the quiet forest, Lucien gained a new appreciation for her and her horses. The mare he rode was calm and very strong. She walked along and responded to his legs. He stole a glance at Ciara and saw one of her rare, unreserved and wholehearted smiles that rocked him to the core.

They approached another small clearing when he heard Ciara whisper to him. Epona stopped and he looked at Ciara. “What?” he asked in a whisper as well, not sure if there would be trouble.

“Wolf, look.” She pointed to the trees. It was a bunch of bunnies that ran around on top of the snow, completely enjoying the sun and mild day. Their antics were funny and cute.

They sat and watched the bunnies until an overzealous kitten came into the picture. The sight of Kosse as he slid across the smooth surface of the snow, trying without success to catch a bunny, made Ciara peal out in laughter.

Lucien felt his heart stop. It was like the first time he’d enjoyed her laughter. It was not a little twitter meant to attract a man’s attention, but it did. It was a full laugh, husky and seductive, without intention of being so, but still seductive.

With a gaze slanted at her, he saw her head tipped toward the sun. Her teeth shone bright against her dark skin, that sexy throat moving as the laugh erupted. Her eyes sparkled with joy. It was unrehearsed. It was pure. It was life. It was what he had missed. Joy.

Ciara looked over at Lucien as he watched her. She smiled as she watched him try to contain a smile of his own. He just didn’t realize it yet that she was good for him. He needed to find happiness in his life. She was determined to help him find it. Even if it was for only the short time they were together. Everyone deserved to know what pure euphoria was like. No hidden agendas, no plans to get something back.

It was a way to honor her parents’ memory and the reason they had started Paradise Cove. To give people a place to start over, no matter where you came from or how you looked. If you were willing to accept others on those same terms, you were welcome to stay. Everyone was equal. Everyone deserved a chance to be happy.

Lucien seemed to have missed a vital part of life. He was rich, yes. He was titled, yes. On the outside he appeared to have everything, but the more Ciara watched him, the surer she was that he was far from being complete. His childhood had not been good, and now people didn’t want him as a friend, they wanted the benefits that came with knowing a marquess. That was something Ciara had no use for. What did she need? Her life was pretty much near perfect in her eyes.

Since she had grown up with nothing but love, it was hard for Ciara to imagine what it was like for him. A cold, bleak world. Money was important, but nothing, nothing, was more important than love and family. What good is all the money in the world if you have no one to love, no one to share your life with? It seemed that he was short on both.

“Go ahead and smile, Wolf. I won’t tell anyone,” she teased.

His eyes snapped to her face as she grinned.

“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it? You should smile more. You appear very—how do you say it in England? Suave? Debonair? I don’t know. I do know that it makes you very, very handsome. Come, we need to go back. The weather will change soon.” She nudged Nyama on with her knees and he followed suit with Epona.

“What does Faolan mean?” Lucien asked as Epona drew up alongside Nyama.

“It is a Gaelic word for wolf. Pretty inventive, don’t you think?”

“Well, why do you call me Wolf? It’s not even part of my name.”

“Does it bother you?”

“No. But that doesn’t explain why you do it.” He could listen to her talk all day.

“Why do people call you Saint?”

“Part of my name. Besides only certain ones do that.”

“Let me guess, certain ones that you see at the functions you attend. Right?”

“Yes. That’s right. My friends call me Luc. My parents call me Saint as well.”

“Sort of a formal title for you. Well, I call you Wolf because you remind me of Faolan. When we were first together, he didn’t trust me and was overly cautious around me and yet at the same time he was full of himself. When I would get close to him he would hackle up and bare his teeth, to try to scare me. I knew he was just full of bluster. He was more scared than anything, and while he knew I was no threat, he still had to act tough. That is why I call you Wolf.”

“What about Kosse? What does that mean, lion?”

“Actually it does. In the language of my mother. What can I say when it comes to names? I am not very clever.”

“I think you are very clever.” The words made her stomach go all quivery. “Will you let Kosse go?”

“When he is old enough to fend for himself, the choice will be his. Faolan will teach him to hunt. He just never would have made it through the winter alone without his momma.”

“Amazing. And you didn’t think of the meat that he would need to survive? How that could affect you?”

“Not everything is about what you have. If I went through life like that, I would have left you in the bear’s clutches. It’s what I do. I help things that are sick. And when they are better, they can go. If not, well, then I just have another mouth to feed on occasion.

“Sometimes when Faolan brings down a deer, he brings me to it and we split it. We share and we survive. It is the only way up here.”

“Amazing.”

They rode into the area before the cabin. She swung down with grace as he slid off Epona, not as nice as she had. The mare stood there next to him and nudged him. “She wants some grain. I will bring it out,” Ciara said before she disappeared into the woodhouse and came back out with two buckets of grain.

The horses made short work of it, then with final pats from both humans they disappeared back into the trees. The clouds rolled in and snow started to fly. Both of them loaded up on wood from the woodhouse and headed into the cabin with the four-legged members of the group.

Lucien built up the fire as Ciara began making dinner. They had missed lunch since they had been away from the cabin so they were both hungry. By the time she got the dinner on the table the winds howled and the snow was so thick she couldn’t see past the porch.

Dinner was relaxed and easygoing. Afterward, since they had stayed out later than she had first believed, she said she would do laundry in the morning. Ciara changed into dry clothes and found some clean, dry ones of her father’s for Lucien to wear. He changed in her room and when he came out she was making up his bed pallet.

He groaned as he saw her bent over to pull up the blankets, her butt encased in tight buckskins that hugged her small waist and firm legs. Her hair was braided down her back in a thick, black rope. Whoever said that women should not wear pants was absolutely right, but not for the reason he believed that they stated that. They would drive men crazy if they all wore those kind of things. It had to be a sin to look like that.

He made himself some coffee and sat at the table to work on his plans. He couldn’t concentrate. His eyes kept straying to the woman bent over across the room. She moved a chair to beneath a shelf. He put down his pencil and watched as she stood on the chair and reached up to grab a small trinket off the shelf. She was crazy. Utterly and totally adorable, but crazy.

As he stared at her, it gave way. He was moving even before it registered what happened. “Damn it, woman! What in the blue blazes were you doing? You could have killed yourself. I would have gotten that for you if you had asked. Don’t ever do that again. Promise me. You just took ten years off my life with that stunt.” Words came in a rush as Lucien tried to slow his heart that, to him, sounded like war drums.

Now that she was in his arms, though, he didn’t wish to let her go. Seeing her fall toward the fire was too hard on the slim control on his nerves.

“Why didn’t you ask me to get that for you? That chair was not meant to be stood on.” His voice, once again calm, belied his true terror.

“I am not used to having someone here with me. I had hoped that the chair would hold.” Ciara wasn’t fighting to be let down.

His voice, deepened by desire, asked, “What was it you were getting from the shelf?”

She blinked like an owl, staring at him until he tapped her cheek with a finger. Then he repeated the question.

Lucien smiled as he saw what her reaction to him was. No matter how cool, calm and collected she appeared on the outside, he rattled her. He had to repeat his question twice before she answered him.

“The…the box. The carved one. Please.”

Seconds after he stepped away from her, Lucien felt empty. He took down the carved box and handed it to her. He observed her in silence as she sat on his pallet and ran her fingers in a loving manner over the box.

Ciara held the carved box in her hands. It was made of maple and, on the top, her name was carved into the wood.

On two of the sides, opposite ones, were a string of Celtic knots that led up to the top. The other two sides had African designs leading up. She ran her fingers over the knots and pressed a hidden button. The lid flicked open.

The gold and gems that were there were ignored. She instead looked to the underside of the lid where her father had engraved a saying for her.

Our dearest daughter,

We were blessed the day you came into our lives

This is your legacy. You are our legacy.

No matter what, we are proud of you.

We love you.

Lucien glanced over her shoulder. His jaw almost dropped as he saw the gold and gems inside the box. When he read the saying, he sat down beside her and took the box away from her and pulled her into his arms.

When she was settled on his lap, he just held her. He was not sure how to offer support but what he was doing seemed to be working. He rubbed a hand in circular motions on her back as her body shuddered with silent sobs.

They sat like that for a bit. Lucien froze when Faolan jumped up onto the bed and settled himself by them. The wolf did nothing more than nose Ciara and lie next to Lucien’s leg. Kosse, after a struggle, pulled himself up and was on the other side of Lucien.

What a picture they made. An English marquess holding an American colonial flanked by a black wolf on one side and a mountain lion kitten on the other.

A sense of security flowed into Lucien as time passed. When he realized that she no longer sobbed, he leaned her back and looked down at her. She met his gaze and he saw the unshed tears.

“I am sorry. I take it down only once a year. Will you put it back up there please?”

“Sure.” He wanted to ask her about the money and gems but now wasn’t the time.

Ciara got off his lap and the pallet. As the lid closed, she whispered, “Goodbye, Papa. Goodbye, Momma. I love you.” She caressed the lid as he took the box from her.

* * * *

It was late when Lucien took his attention from the papers. He was done. He had come up with a plan for how he wished his stables to look and the training area. Excited, he glanced around for Ciara. She wasn’t there. He banked the fire.

He saw Kosse come out of her room and when he looked outside he realized just how late it was. Damn, he had wanted to share this with her. He still did. His foot tapped the floor and he acted before he could realize that what he was about to do was dumb.

Lucien entered her room, held the lantern up and watched her sleep. She looked peaceful. She lay on her stomach, head under a pillow, one brown hand tangled in Faolan’s coat. The wolf looked at him and bared his teeth.

“Just go away. I am not going to hurt her. Can’t you see that?” Great, now he was talking to a wolf. If his jaw hadn’t been attached, it would have hit the floor when Faolan rose and left the bed, to curl up away from them.

“Ciara. Ciara, wake up.” More than a bit unsure of whether to touch her based on what happened last time, he spoke a little louder. “Ciara. Wake up.”

“What is it? Is something wrong?” Her voice, heavy with sleep, came from the pillow.

“No. I finished. I want you to see. I’m done.”

She pushed up from the bed. Ciara rolled over. Lucien gaped at the vision before him. Delectable. Her hair was free and looked rumpled. She looked as if she had just been pleasured, and pleasured well.

His groin hardened. Her tongue slipped out to wet her lips. He groaned. Lucien inhaled as he watched her nightgown slide off to bear one shoulder to his lecherous gaze. Her skin shone like bronze silk in the muted light from the lantern.

She patted the bed. “Let’s see them. Come sit. It’s cold out there and I am not getting out of bed.”

He moved to join her, once the light was set on a table beside the bed. It was difficult to swallow when she flipped back the blankets for him to get under them with her. He slid in to be immediately surrounded by her scent of honey—how she got that he had no idea—and a faint smell of drying herbs.

She took the papers from him and spread them out in front of them. As if it were nothing to have him in her bed. Their hips were flush and their legs were pressed against each other. It was not a huge bed.

Lucien’s vision swam as he pictured making slow love to her in this bed. The sight of her naked body as it was exposed to his gaze. The feel of her skin on his. He blinked a few times to clear his mind as soon as he realized that she had spoken to him.

“What? Can you say that again? I didn’t catch it.”

“I said, I thought they were good. Very good.” She gathered them up into a pile as she spoke. She set them on the table on her side of the bed and snuggled down into the quilts.

“That’s it? Nothing more to say about them? What are you doing?”

“It’s the middle of the night. I am going back to sleep.” She snuggled up against him and he thought he heard her say, “So warm. This is nice.”

Why not? He blew out the lantern and as he slid down next to her, he half expected her to demand that he leave her bed at once. Nothing. Well, not nothing. She curled up even more and flopped over onto her stomach. She put one leg over his and placed her hand on his chest, over his heart. It was like they had been sleeping together for years.

The last thing she said was “Faolan.” The wolf bounded up on the bed and curled up next to her. Kosse, the cat scrambled to get up as well. Before long it was quiet except for her soft breaths into his neck.

It was going to be a long night.

They slept in. Ciara awoke first. Her hand was still on his chest and her leg was, well, it was up against something rigid. Waking had never been so nice. She felt the chill in the cabin, and as she moved out of his embrace he groaned and tightened his grip.

Ciara wished she could stay there but she slid out of his arms and made sure he stayed covered by the quilts before she headed for the fire. She fed it and let the animals out as she heated a bunch of water.

She slipped on his coat and boots before going out onto the porch to drag in the tub. She set it close to the fire so it would warm. With Faolan and Kosse outside still, she snuck back to her room and found some clean buckskins. She brought them, along with a drying cloth and her honey and berry soap, out to a chair by the tub.

Once all was ready, she sank into the hot water. She groaned in ecstasy as she let the water ease her stiffness away. She washed her hair then, as she rose out of the tub, she heard, “Oh my god.”