Page 86 of Highlander Claimed

He continues to carry me, along a meandering path.

“Where do you take me, warrior?”

He sets me down and unties my blindfold.

We are in the gardens, in the midst of the pear orchard, where there’s a small clearing. And in the clearing, now, is a small blond-wood cabin, lit from within so that cozy circles of welcoming soft light peek into the near-night. On one side of the cabin is an open lean-to, with shelves and dirt-filled pots. And there’s a freshly dug well to one side of it.

I am speechless, and Wilkie is grinning at my stunned silence. He pulls me by the hand and leads me to the door of the cabin, which he opens, then closes behind us as he ushers us into the warmth. Inside there is a bed, laid with furs, a small stone hearth, where a fire has been laid and burns brightly, and nothing more.

“Here is our retreat,” he says, “which we can retire to when we are in need of some peace and quiet. You can tend your seedlings by night, if you choose, and eat your pears under the light of the moon, when the mood strikes you.”

I am nearly overcome with love for this warrior husband of mine, who understands the deepest corners ofmy soul and has cast his light into all my darknesses. I kiss him for a long time. I lightly stroke his hair and his face in a wordless plea for him to understand how very deeply he has captured my heart and all that I am.

I notice then my mother’s glass-jeweled pin, placed in the center of the small mantel of the fireplace, catching yellow light. I am aghast at the sight of it. “Warrior. My pin.”

“I had it retrieved for you.”

He picks me up and carefully places me on the bed. He begins to unbutton the front of my dress—a new shell-buttoned light green creation of Ailie’s, who visited not a fortnight ago with her new fiancé, Magnus Munro. My breasts are already fuller, and I wonder if Wilkie will guess my secret before I can tell him.

“I, too, have a surprise,” I whisper to him, and he’s suckling my nipples, playing them with his tongue.

“What surprise, lass?” he asks huskily.

“I had suspected it, and Ismay visited me today, and confirmed that it was true.”

He’s distracted and continues to pull with his mouth, sending warm channels of his passion deep into my body. He is fondling me and murmuring soft words. “I adore my wife. I worship you, my Roses. Your body is my haven. Your breasts are so very—” He stops, as my statement and his own discovery reveal a dawning realization. He looks into my eyes, and the blue of them is brilliant and fierce, questioning.

“Aye,” I confirm. “A child. To be born at harvest-time.”

He sits up, removing his touch, as though afraid he might break me. “Child?” he whispers.

I laugh at his intense awe and pull him back to me. “Aye, warrior. Our child.”

And he is holding my face, looking into my eyes. “’Tis a miracle, lass.”

“Not such a miracle.” I smile. “Babies are born each day.”

“Notourbaby, Roses,” he insists, charged and animated. I am reminded again of his size and his energy as his heat surrounds me and seeps into me, infusing my body with the profound and warming glow of true happiness. “’Tis the most miraculous thing on this earth,” he says. “It will be the most cherished wee bairn who ever was born. With golden hair and green eyes.”

“Or with black hair and blue eyes,” I point out, still laughing lightly, relieved at his outrageous excitement; I had worried that he might be reticent, with our marriage barely four months past and our new home with so much work still to be done. But then again, I’d reflected, he certainly hadn’t been reticent when it came to the act which might start a baby, not a once. “I had thought of a name,” I tell him.

“What name? ’Tis a bit early to be thinking names, nay?”

“There’s one that sprang to mind,” I say, “fairly insistently, too, as soon as I knew for certain.”

“What name is this?”

“Of course, if you don’t agree, we can—”

“Tell me.” Wilkie gets impatiently curious almost instantly when I keep any detail of my thoughts from him. I am teasing him, and he knows it, but still, he can’t abide this small distance.

“I mean, if there’s one that you prefer—”

“Roses,”he says sternly.

I am, as I have been so many times before, rocked by his beauty and by my own completeness when he’s near. My fingers smooth along the braid of his hair. “I thought...Mackenzie.”

Wilkie’s eyes glimmer at me. He appears to like this idea very much.

He kisses me and holds me until we are, again and always, as close as we can be.

Giving me everything he has to give.

* * * * *