“I told you.” She lowered her lashes, feeling self-conscious and very small next to him. “It’s silly. Tedious, even.”
“Nay, I ken just what ye mean, lass.” Ravencroft leaned forward, his own neck arched to turn his face to the sky. “I feel as though I’ve been everywhere in this world. There were days at war, or on a ship, where I would think that maybe home was nothing more than a memory, or a dream. I would wake at night afraid that I’d forgotten where I hied from or who I truly was. I thought I’d lose Liam Mackenzie to the Demon Highlander. It was then I began to study the constellations.”
“Did it help?” Mena wondered aloud.
He glanced down at her as though her question had pleased him. “Aye, it did. In a world where men paint the ground with blood, the stars gave me a reason to look up. They’re a map when ye’re lost, and points of light when all is dark. I ken why you think it makes them seem friendly.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I suppose that they remind me that the world always turns. That things are constantly changing. This moment, every moment, whether good or terrible, will pass into oblivion and so I must live it. I must see it through. And, eventually, a new day will come again. Another chance for something better.”
Mena thought his face, turned down as it was, half to the light, and the other half to shadow, should remind her that she conversed with the Demon Highlander, the dangerous man she’d promised to avoid as much as possible.
But something about the arrangement of his features belied any of her reservations. His lips seemed fuller, drawn out of their hard line into something resembling a lazy half-smile. The tilt of his deep-set eyes and angle of the brow above wasn’t stern or scowling, as usual, but relaxed and at ease and, if her gaze didn’t deceive her, perhaps a bit unsure or—dare she think it?—shy.
He seemed younger like this, with his hair loose and his shoulders free of their customary tension. Mena thought that when he smiled, he must be the most handsome man God had ever molded of this earth.
She swallowed, doing her best to ignore the warmth beginning to glow deep in her belly, and lower.
“I think I’d be more comfortable in perpetual darkness,” he murmured.
“Why?”
His shoulders heaved with a weighty breath, pressing deeper against hers. “Do ye believe that the things we’ve done in the dark will be answered for in the light of day?”
“I certainly hope so.” She nodded.
He searched her face then, lifting a hand to draw away a tendril of hair the breeze had blown across her cheek. “Perhaps because ye have a clear conscience.”
“I don’t, I assure you.” She turned away from his fingers, unable to bear the sweet memory of his skin against hers. Unwilling to give words to the message in his eyes.
He dropped his hand to his lap. “Perhaps, then, because ye hope that someone answer for their crimes against ye.”
Tears burned behind her eyes, and Mena dipped her chin against her chest. It was the darkest desire in her heart. That her husband answer for all the times he’d caused her terror and pain.
How had he guessed?
“Because,” he answered gently, alarming her with the discovery she’d spoken the question out loud. “I ken what it’s like to fear the darkness, Mena, and to hate the man who beat that fear into me.”
Mena felt the rough pads of his fingers drift over her down-turned cheek. When he reached her chin, he gripped it softly between his thumb and forefinger, lifting her face toward his.
“I find myself in the middle of a dance I doona ken the steps to,” he admitted, his eyes gilded by an unholy light as they searched hers for something she could not give him. “When ye’re near me, I doona know what to say or how to act. I canna figure what platitudes to give ye. I never learned the soft words that would reach through the walls that ye’ve built around yer heart.”
Though she didn’t allow herself to blink, Mena could still feel tears gathering in her lashes. She needed him to stop. She should pull away. But God help her, she couldn’t tear her gaze from the abject beauty of his face.
“I doona know which urge to act upon and which to suppress, but I want ye with a strength that even the gods canna understand … even though I canna always tell if it’s fear or desire I see reflected in yer eyes.”
Because it was both, Mena knew. Fear of him. Fear of the desire she felt for him. Of the things she wanted to do again in the dark.
“It was written in those stars that we meet.” His voice gathered a tender fervency that unstitched something from inside Mena’s soul. “We are bound in some inescapable way, thee and me. I’ve known it since I first laid eyes on ye in that dress.”
Mena wanted to deny it. To shake her head and make him stop whatever it was he was about to say. But she knew she could not. Though her heart threatened to gallop away, her body was frozen in place. A captive of his warm, gentle hand.
“Don’t.” She whispered a tortured plea as she wrapped her fingers around his wrist, meaning to push his hand away. “It’s impossible.” She was married. She was a fugitive.
She was unworthy of a man such as this.
“It’s impossible to deny it, lass.” He smiled down at her, and Mena suddenly knew that one could feel the warm rays of the sun even in the dark of night. “Try as ye will to resist me, I’m after ye, Mena, and I willna claim ye until ye yield. But I’ll not stop until every last one of yer defenses are in ashes at my feet.”