Falling, she grabbed and yanked, pulling him from his feet so that they sprawled on the turf in a complicated heap, Troth half on top of him. She laughed, her face inches from his. "You learn quickly, my lord. Remind me not to underestimate you again."

Her hair cascaded silkily over his face and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s crushed against his chest, enticing as the fruit offered by Eve's serpent. Their gazes locked and levity faded as deeper, more primal emotions coiled between them.

He should pull away, stand up, ignore what he saw in her eyes. Instead he said huskily, "You're overestimating me if you think I can resist this much temptation." He pulled her head down and kissed her. It had been so long, so very long...

Her lips opened, her tongue touching his. He responded like a starving man receiving manna from heaven. How could he have forgotten the raw power of what was between them? He wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her hard against him. "Dear G.o.d, Mei-Lian, I've wanted you so much. To touch, to hold, to love."

"What... what about the chi?" she said breathlessly. "We don't want to risk bursting into flame."

"I already have." Blood pounding, he rolled them over and kissed the satin curve of her throat. Her hands slipped under his loose tunic to caress his bare skin with electrifying effect. As her hands danced distractedly across his back, he raised her tunic and bared her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She arched and moaned as his mouth covered her nipple, tugging as it hardened.

After almost a year's hunger, he couldn't get enough of her. Her pale, tender skin was faintly salty, delicious against his tongue. As he pulled off her loose trousers, a breeze scattered pink petals across her torso, a silken accent as he trailed kisses down her belly. Her legs separated under his hand, revealing her most secret female places so he could worship them with tongue and mouth.

She cried out at the intimate kiss, her hips thrusting urgently and her fingers tangled in his hair with sharply erotic power. "Oh, Kyle, Kyle!"

Her pa.s.sion inflamed him, making him want to return it a thousandfold. Make this last, give her an eternity of pleasure, absorb the untamed wildness of her gasps as they echoed among the trees. After a culmination that went on and on and on, she groaned, "Enough. Dear G.o.ds, enough, or I shall die."

Panting, he rested his head on her belly, inhaling the intoxicating scents of s.e.xuality. Her hands became a caress, stroking back his hair.

When she recovered her breath, she murmured, "Come to me now, my lord," and tugged at his hair. "My yin calls out for you."

He stripped, the cool spring air welcome against his heated flesh. She'd spoken truly, for her femaleness completed him as he buried himself inside her. Yin and yang, wholeness of body and spirit expressed in fierce movement and sudden taut stillnesses.

Together they spiraled higher and higher until she climaxed again, carrying him with her into a stunning plateau of ecstasy. Time vanished, leaving only sensation, and the captivating woman in his arms.

Tiring together, they slowed their frantic coupling to a tender, tidal rhythm where they matched each other breath for breath, pulse for pulse. Near exhaustion, he bent his head for a last kiss, wanting to inhale her essence into himself.

"In this, my lord, you are a master," she breathed against his lips as she curved her hips upward and clasped him internally with voluptuous power.

He shattered in a final convulsion, and his long-withheld seed flooded into her. Mind-hazing rapture paralyzed him, then ebbed to leave anger at his shameful loss of control. "d.a.m.nation!" Gasping for breath, he rolled onto his side and held her against him, as if shielding her body with his arms would protect her from his mistake. "I'm sorry, Troth. I didn't mean for that to happen."

His words were like a torrent of icy water, transforming her exhausted joy to ashes. How could she have been fool enough not to realize that it was her body he wanted to love, not her self? "Of course it was an accident. Dallying with a concubine should have nothing to do with the serious business of getting children."

"Don't speak like that." He cradled her head against his shoulder, as if a gentle touch could mitigate the bitter sting of his words. "The issue here is that one doesn't carelessly make children with a woman who doesn't want them."

She wrenched herself free and sat up, eyes blazing. "What a quandary that would be, if you had to decide between having an unwanted wife or b.a.s.t.a.r.dizing your own child. Don't worry-I didn't conceive that last time in Feng-tang, and it's unlikely I did now. You and your precious patrimony are safe from me."

He sat up, bracing himself with one arm while watching her as if she were a firecracker on the verge of explosion. "Do you truly believe I'm so intolerant that I would reject a child because it had mixed blood?"

She dropped her gaze, knowing she had been unfair. "I don't think you're intolerant." On the contrary, he was the most open-minded man she had ever met, but tolerance was no cure for what divided them.

"Desire is pointless-dangerous, even-when there is no deeper foundation." When there was no love. Yet now that they had coupled again, how could they keep apart as long as they lived under the same roof? It would be impossible. There was only one solution. With painful certainty, she said, "It's time for me to leave."

Shock flickered in his eyes. Trying to deny her real meaning, he said, "We could start for Scotland tomorrow."

"There is no 'we,' Kyle." She touched his cheek, aching. "We are more than old lovers, yet far less than mates. Being together is only hurting us both. I will go to Scotland alone."

A muscle jerked in his jaw. "It hasn't been a year and a day."

"The handfast was a... a social fiction. There is no reason to continue going through the motions when the whole point is that we are not married, and never were. The handfast can run its course as easily when we are apart as together. More easily." She stood, needing to get beyond the lure of touching him. "With or without your approval, I'm leaving, Kyle."

His naked body dappled by sunlight, he sat on the gra.s.s as still as a Greek statue except for the clenching and unclenching of one hand. At last he said, "Take the travel coach-it will be more comfortable. And... and if you decide to return it will be ready to bring you back."

"I won't return, my lord," she said softly. "What would be the point? " She pulled on her garments and braided her hair, wondering if they would have behaved so intemperately if she'd kept it tied decently back instead of wantonly loose. No, it was the playfulness between them that had proved their undoing.

He stood and dressed also, his hands clumsy with the simple garments. "Will you at least write now and then? Surely there is a strong enough bond between us for that."

"Perhaps. But first I need to get away. Far away." She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, an absurdly casual caress after the feverish intensity that had briefly fused them together. "I'm very glad to have known you, my dear lord."

He raised her hand and kissed it. "And I you. I... I wish things were different."

"So do I," she said with soul-deep regret. "So do I."

The travel coach would allow her to go like a turtle, with all her worldly goods on her back. It didn't take long to pack. Calmly she bade farewell to the servants she knew best, as if her departure were part of a long-existing plan. Bessy the maid and Hawking the butler stared at her with great accusing eyes, but spoke no reproach. She wondered how much they guessed of the situation between her and Kyle.

Just before going down to the coach the next morning, she realized she still wore his ring. She pulled it off and set it on the dresser, then found the matching Celtic knotwork bracelet Meriel had given her. Family treasures were held in trust, and she was no longer a Renbourne. She never really had been. She set the bracelet around the ring so that they were concentric circles, like the rings of a tree.

Beyond anger, she turned and walked away for the last time.

Chapter 37.

There were times and places to get drunk, and Kyle was in one of them. He'd managed to see Troth off in proper fashion, loading her down with cash and a draft on his bank in Edinburgh to keep her until he had a settlement drawn up.

She had behaved with equal formality, manners impeccable, expression inscrutable. After all, they had both known this was coming. Just... not so soon.

After a pleasant nod, she climbed into the travel coach. She'd refused the offer of a maid to accompany her; Troth could and would take care of herself. Her only companion was her little cat, safely stowed in a covered basket.

He memorized her still profile before the footman closed the door. Hard to remember that twenty-four hours earlier they'd been twined in the ultimate intimacy.

After the well-sprung coach had rolled out of sight along the newly curving front drive, he'd gone upstairs to her bedroom. He'd never entered while she was here, but he wasn't surprised to see that the room had changed from his vague memories from seven years before. Furniture had been rearranged, hangings and decorations changed.

The effect was pleasant, but chillingly empty. All her possessions were on the coach heading to the Great North Road. There wasn't a shred of evidence that she'd lived here, except for her abandoned ring and bracelet. There was a terrible finality in the precise way she'd left them, one inside the other.

Saddling Nelson, he went for a blazing gallop over the hills. When they'd both tired, he converted his ride into tenant visits, a proper landlord checking on conditions during spring planting.

In younger days he'd felt suffocated by these responsibilities, with the implication that he was tied forever to the estate. Oddly, now he enjoyed the work even though he'd never have Dominic's genuine pa.s.sion for farming. In the past, he'd always been a conscientious steward of the family properties. In the future, he would also find satisfaction in being part of the eternal cycles of the land.

Estate doc.u.ments and correspondence kept him occupied until dinner. He ate in solitary splendor, face impa.s.sive. Then he retired to the study and set out to become seriously drunk. Not too quickly-that would be vulgar. A genteel lowering of the level in the brandy decanter should have him pleasantly foxed by mid-evening, and ready to retire upstairs, probably under his own power, an hour or two later.

Perhaps he should go to London. There were plenty of distractions there: endless entertaining, friends he hadn't seen in years, more time with his father.

Marriageable young ladies and ambitious mothers who would love to capture the next Earl of Wrexham.

He shuddered at the thought. Best to avoid London during the Season.

He was on his fourth gla.s.s of brandy when he heard distant voices in the entry hall. Hawking and someone else, probably a footman.

Then the study door opened and his brother entered in travel-stained clothes, as casual as if they'd dined together an hour before. "Ah, perfect. A gla.s.s or two of brandy will dispel the chill. It was a long ride."

Kyle stared, knowing he was nowhere near drunk enough to be hallucinating. "What the devil are you doing here?"

"Just pa.s.sing by, so I thought I'd spend the night at Dornleigh." Dom poured himself a gla.s.s of brandy and settled into the other wing chair.

"Dornleigh is not on the way from Shropshire to anywhere you could possibly want to go."

"So I lied," Dominic said peaceably.

A footman arrived with a tray of food. Dom directed him to set it on a side table, then asked for a fire to be built. Kyle waited until the footman had complied and left before saying dryly, "Go ahead, make yourself at home."

"Well, it was my home for many years, and if any of the servants balk at obeying my orders, I can always pretend to be you. You need to add another stone of weight, though. It's too easy to tell us apart at the moment." Dominic stretched his feet toward the hearth. "You should also allow yourself more luxuries like fires-it's a cold night."

"Not after several brandies."

"Ah." Dominic set aside his gla.s.s in favor of ale and a sandwich made from crusty bread and thick slabs of ham. "What's wrong, Kyle? I've felt as if I've been kicked in the stomach since yesterday morning. I haven't been, so it must be you."

Kyle sighed. "How do you always know when things aren't going well?"

"You do it, too. Besides being twins, I think we both inherited a touch of Highland second sight from Mother. Remember that bad fall I had when hunting in the Shires? You knew immediately, and were at my bedside bullying me within two days."

Kyle remembered that time vividly, along with the almost unbearable fear he'd felt when his brother fought at Waterloo, and the days after when Dominic had been missing in action. Such awareness was the dark side of the twin bond they shared.

All levity gone, Dominic said, "I knew that something horrible had happened to you in China. I... I couldn't believe you were dead, yet thought I must be deluding myself because the horror didn't pa.s.s. Though it ebbed some after you were released from prison, it's never really gone away. For a long time I wondered if your soul was in purgatory." His voice dropped to a whisper. "It feels as if you still are."

His last sentence hung in the air as an oblique question.

No point in delaying the inevitable. "Troth left this morning for Scotland."

"For how long?"

"She won't be back. Ever."

Dominic gave him a slanting glance. "Hence the decanter of brandy."

"We never intended a real marriage, so we told people here that we'd performed a nominal handfast as a way of helping Troth leave China. With the year and a day mostly over, naturally she's gone."

Not fooled, Dominic said, "For someone who didn't want to be married, you're absorbing quite a lot of brandy in the absence of your nonwife."

Kyle closed his eyes, temples throbbing. "I'm... very fond of Troth. I'll miss her."

"So she was the one who wanted to end it? Odd. I had the impression that she was more than a little fond of you."

"Fondness isn't marriage."

Sandwich gone, Dominic returned to his brandy. "Are you going to make me pull this out of you one word at a time, Kyle? I will if necessary, but it will be easier for both of us if you just tell me what the devil went wrong."

Kyle stared at the licking flames, appreciating the warmth. He hadn't known he was cold until Dominic arrived. "It was... difficult for both Troth and me. As she said, we're more than old lovers, but less than true mates. I didn't like seeing her go, but it was the only fair thing to do. She has spent most of her life feeling like an outsider. She deserves to find a man who can put her in the middle of his world forever."

"And you can't?"

"I loved that way once. I'm not capable of doing it again."

"Let me see if I understand this properly. You're saying that you don't and can't love Troth, so even though losing her is tearing you up, that isn't love? "

"Not the way I loved Constancia." Kyle closed his eyes, remembering. "I never told even you this, but I married Constancia just before she died in Spain. Part of me died with her. I can never love anyone as I loved her."

Instead of showing decent sympathy, Dominic said, "Of course you can't. Your feelings for her were unique, rooted in whatever qualities made her special to you. More than that, Constancia was your first love, and a great love. But losing her doesn't mean you can't love another woman in a different but equally powerful way."

"I've never had your roving eye or resilient heart," Kyle said dryly.

"Until I met Meriel, I'd never been more than a little bit in love, though that was enough to teach me that each time and each woman is different. Thank G.o.d I've never lost a great love. If something happened to Meriel..." A shadow pa.s.sed over Dominic's face. "Let's not talk about that. What I wanted to say is that love is not a finite substance that is used up and never replenished. The way you loved Constancia proves you have a tremendous capacity for loving. Isn't it possible that you already love Troth at least a little, and you might come to love her more with time?"

Kyle opened his mouth to deny it, then stopped. "How do you define love?"

"You don't believe in easy questions, do you?" Dominic absently flicked droplets of brandy into the fire, where they burst into blue flame. "Pa.s.sion is the seed of romantic love, and it has flowered with the years in ways I could never have imagined when Meriel and I first married. But there is so much more. Friendship. Talking and trusting. The itchy feeling I get when I haven't seen her for a while. A tenderness that makes my heart glow just thinking about her." Another flurry of brandy flares. "The fact that I would give my life to save hers as instinctively as I breathe."

Kyle considered the list. Pa.s.sion? He and Troth certainly shared that. Friendship and conversation, too. G.o.d knew he was itchy in her absence, and she'd always inspired protective tenderness. Nor would he hesitate to sacrifice himself for her, but that was a given, since she would have done the same for him. She'd risked her life to visit him in prison and would have tried to help him escape even knowing the attempt was doomed. Yet none of those qualities matched the depth of the closeness he'd had with Constancia. "Isn't love more than the sum of those parts?"

"Yes. But I don't have words to describe that," Dominic said slowly. "Except to say that Meriel is my heart. Yet oddly enough, when Philip was born, I found there was plenty of room in my heart for him, and for Gwynne in her turn. If we have another child, there will be more than enough love waiting."

"You're better at loving than I."

"We're not that different, Kyle. It's harder for you to let yourself feel, I think-you had to protect yourself more when we were growing up. But you have just as much to give-and just as strong a need to receive." Dominic frowned at the fire. "Would Constancia have wanted you to mourn her forever? "

"Of course not-she was the most generous of women, and her last words to me were that I should go forth and live. But knowing she would approve doesn't mean that my heart is capable of obeying."

"You and Constancia were together for many years. When you first met, did you feel as if you'd never love again if you lost her? "

"I... I don't know." Kyle frowned. "I've never thought about that. I suppose not."

Dominic said nothing, letting his point speak for itself. Kyle tried to compare how he felt about Troth with what he'd felt for Constancia in the first year or two of their liaison, but it was impossible. When he thought of Constancia, ten years of shared experiences were woven together into the profound love he'd felt for her at the end.

Besides, according to Dom he probably shouldn't try to compare his feelings for the two women. "You're saying it's too early to decide that I can never love Troth as much as I loved Constancia. But even if that's true, it doesn't take into account Troth's wishes. She was the one who decided it was time for her to leave."

"Very well, let's take her wishes into account. What is Troth's deepest desire?"

"For acceptance," Kyle said without hesitation. "A sense of belonging that she doesn't think she'll find here. A week after we came to Dornleigh she overheard a conversation between me and Wrexham at his most narrow-minded, and she was on her way to the Great North Road half an hour later. I managed to persuade her to return, but I think the incident convinced her that there was no hope of a lasting relationship."

"So battered and bruised, metaphorically if not physically, she decided it was time to part. But if she's half as miserable as you are, it may be worth making one last try. Love seldom falls neatly into one's lap. Usually it must be won the hard way."

Kyle said haltingly, "I don't know if I have the courage to try and fail."

"Would failure be harder than wondering forever if you might have been able to have a true marriage with Troth? She is unique."