The Highlander's Touch

Page 71

“Look down, lass,” he said quietly.
Her gaze dropped to the floor. “Heavens, did you do this?” She glanced at Circenn, bewildered.
“I had a lot of idle time a few years past,” he said with a shrug. About thirty years, he didn’t add. Years during which he had thought he might go insane from loneliness, and so he’d buried his anguish in creating.
Her gaze flew back to the floor. It was an exquisite mosaic hand fashioned of wood, ranging out like a star from the center of the chapel. Light pine, dark walnut, and deep cherry interwove to create the patterns. Some of the pieces of wood were no more than an inch in diameter. It must have taken him years, she thought, amazed. One man, designing this floor, carefully carving and sanding the pieces and laying them in a fabulous geometric pattern that would have made M. C. Escher wild with envy.
“Go up near the altar,” he encouraged. “That is where I changed it.”
Lisa walked gently across the floor, reluctant to mar it with her footsteps. In front of the altar, he’d torn up the old pattern and laid a new one. The area in front of the slab had been divided into two sections: to the right, painstakingly inlaid into the pattern in deep ebony was MORGANNA, BELOVED MOTHER OF CIRCENN. To her left, in the same black wood, was CATHERINE, BELOVED MOTHER OF LISA. There were no dates, an omission she understood, because they certainly wouldn’t want anyone to see twenty-first-century dates in a medieval chapel. She could just imagine the heyday modern scholars would have had with that. The names were encircled by elaborate inlaid Celtic knot work.
Dropping to her knees, she ran her fingers over the freshly laid wood, her heart swelling with emotion. He’d placed her mother right next to his, clearly showing her she was half of his life. Now she could go there when she was missing her mother and feel as if she had a place to be near her.
It startled her, his keen insight. When Catherine had been diagnosed with cancer, Lisa had devoured “how to” books on dealing with the loss of a loved one, hoping to find some magic way of handling the impending loss of her mother. One of the things each book had addressed was that closure was a critical part of the healing process. In making this marker for her mother, Circenn had created a tangible and, by ancient social custom, innately comforting symbol of her absence, so that her absence became a soothing presence.
Lisa swallowed a lump in her throat and looked up. He was regarding her as if she were the most infinitely precious thing to him in the world.
“Was I a fool?” he worried.
“No. Circenn, I don’t think you could ever be a fool,” she said quietly. “Thank you. We do this in my time, too. And I will come here often to … to …” She trailed off, shaken by the depth of her emotion.
When he said, “Come,” she moved easily into his arms.
CIRCENN STALKED TO THE MIRROR AND STUDIED HIMSELF for the fifth time in as many minutes. He turned his face to the side and eyed his profile. He ran his hand over his shadow beard thoughtfully. Lisa’s skin was very sensitive; perhaps he should shave more frequently.
But that wasn’t the problem, he mused. Although she’d opened up considerably in the past few days, she retained a distance between them. She was healing, and it was time to complete the process. He needed to woo her into a closer intimacy, to help her fully accept her position as his soon-to-be wife.
Whom was he trying to deceive? He needed to bed her before he turned into a ravening beast. Not for a moment had he forgotten the vision he’d spied in his shield. And he wanted it, was eager to embrace his future. He’d been going excruciatingly slowly with her, allowing her time to heal. But she was changing again, becoming stronger.
He snorted, reflecting that she was not the only one who had undergone changes since her arrival. A few months ago he’d been a man of rigid discipline who despised many things about himself. Now he was a man of deep passion who welcomed what he might become—with her. A few months ago he’d eschewed physical intimacy, compiling dozens of reasons why it was logical to forswear it. Now he longed for physical intimacy, armed with dozens of reason why it was logical, arguably even necessary that he embrace it.
After he’d given her the chapel, he’d escorted her to her room, hoping to sweep her past a good-night kiss, but she’d been reticent. Her kiss had been stormy, and he’d plainly scented the desire in her body, but she’d been the one to stop the kiss, bidding him good sleep before leaving him at the door. He suspected that while she would allow herself to be somewhat happy, she was still not quite ready to believe that she shouldn’t continue to suffer for sins she hadn’t committed.