Her leg slowly slid down his body, and she tenderly kissed his mouth.
They remained against that tree, Payton’s cloak wrapped around them, in one another’s arms, kissing one another indolently, relishing the sensation of being so close again, whispering intimate endearments to one another.
But a distant sound brought Payton back to his senses, and he kissed Mared fully once more, then helped her shake her skirts out. Taking her hand, he led her back. They laughed together, conspirators in love, and walked languidly through the forest, pausing now and again to examine a flower or a tree, or a peculiarly shaped pine cone, laughing quietly at their private jests.
It seemed to Payton that the world was suddenly brimming with color—everywhere he looked there were various shades of the reds and golds of autumn and the greens and blues of the forest. His world, he realized, was suddenly bursting with color.
His future, he thought later, when the men returned and the axle was repaired, was only a few short hours away, bright with color and brimming with possibility.
They did indeed reach Eilean Ros late that afternoon, and as the baggage was unloaded and the coaches and teams put away, Payton divested himself of his cloak and hat and retired to his study to have a look through the post. He’d scarcely begun to do so when Beckwith announced the Lockharts had come calling.
He foolishly believed they had come to welcome Mared home again, for it was his sun that was shining—not theirs.
He found them in the green salon. Mared was already among them, holding Liam’s wee son on her hip, coaxing her long braid from the lad’s grip.
“Good tidings, good tidings!” Carson Lockhart bellowed the moment he entered the room.
“Good afternoon, laird,” he said and smiled at the child in Mared’s arms. Did she know how beautiful she looked holding a wee one? That she’d be a mother one day? That conceivably, she might already be a mother? Did she yearn for one of her own as much as he? “How good of ye to come and welcome yer daughter home again.”
“For good, it would seem,” Grif said from his position near the hearth. He was smiling, Payton noticed, his gray-green eyes as brilliant as Mared’s when she smiled. “We bear wonderful news for all involved.”
“What is it, then?” Mared laughingly insisted. “Ye canna keep me in suspense another moment!”
“Hugh MacAlister has returned,” Grif said, and Payton felt the air rush out of his lungs.
“What?” Mared exclaimed, clearly shocked by the news, forgetting the baby she held for a moment. “What did ye say? He’s here? In Scotland?”
“No’ only is he in Scotland, but at Talla Dileas,” Grif said proudly. “Old Ben was right for a change. He’s come home, he has, and he’s even come with the beastie.”
For a moment, Payton heard no sound, saw nothing. He was only aware of the laboring of his heart as it struggled to pound its way out of his chest, calling to Mared.
But Mared seemed lost in the news. She stared at Payton as Liam’s wife took the bairn from her arms. “Hugh MacAlister is at Talla Dileas?” she repeated, clearly disbelieving.
“Locked in the old dungeon, aye,” Liam said. “We’ll no’ risk losing him again.”
“There’s more,” Lady Lockhart said and came forward, took Mared’s hands in hers, her smile joyous. “Oh Mared…we’ve solved the curse!”
Her eyes as big as moons, Mared blinked. “I donna understand. What is there to solve?”
“When Hugh returned with the beastie, we took it to the smithy in Aberfoyle to have it cut into smaller pieces. But there was a surprise—there, in the belly of the beastie, in a bed of straw, was an emerald.”
“An emerald the size of a bloody goose egg, it is,” Liam chimed in.
“An emerald?” Mared echoed weakly, her eyes still wide with shock.
“Aye, leannan, do ye no’ see?” her mother said excitedly, squeezing her hands. “Think of it—the curse is that no daughter born to a Lockhart will marry until she looks in the belly of the beast. No’ a’ diabhal. The beastie. The first Lady Lockhart gave the beastie to her daughter, aye? It must have been a dowry, cast in that hideous thing for safekeeping. But it would seem that over the years, the promise of the dowry was separated from the beastie, and it became a curse.”
“But…but no daughter of a Lockhart has ever married!”
“Aye, but no’ because of some ridiculous curse,” Grif explained. “Mother read our grandfather’s accounting, and the daughter of the first Lady Lockhart, for whom the emerald was undoubtedly intended, killed herself when her lover was slain by her own father for having aligned himself with the Stuarts. The second daughter drowned in the firth with her lover when they tried to elope. And there were several ugly daughters, too—ye need only look at the family portraits to see that is true.”
“Grif!” his comely wife cried.