“How did I make love to you, Gwendolyn Cassidy?”

Gwen’s lips parted on a soft moan. The simple words he’d just said had sent heat lancing through her body. He was beginning to sound like her Drustan. This intimate talk was melting her; perhaps it was melting his defenses as well.

“How, Gwen? Tell me how I made love to you. Tell me in much detail.”

Wetting her lips, she began, her voice lowering intimately.

Silvan grabbed Nell’s hand and tugged.

Nay, she mouthed.

We can’t eavesdrop on this, he mouthed back. ’Tis not proper.

Proper be damned, old man. I’m not leavin’. Her lips were pursed, her gaze stubborn.

Silvan gaped but, after a few moments, sat back down.

And when Gwen spoke, he found himself ceding her a sort of privacy by imagining it was Nell telling him in such detail how he’d made love to her. At first he kept his chin firmly down, eyes averted, but after a time he stole a surreptitious peek at her.

Nell did not look away.

Brown eyes met blue and held.

His heart pounded.

“And then you said something to me, there at the end, that I’ll never forget. You said the sweetest words, and they kind of shivered through me. You said it in that funny voice you have.”

“What did I say?” Drustan moved his hand on his cock. His kilt was tossed to the side, his legs spread, palm around his shaft. He was so aroused that he thought he was going to explode. She’d told him in detail how he’d made love to her, and it had been the most erotic experience of his life. Sitting in the dark, watching the images in his mind’s eye, he’d felt as if he’d been reliving it. His mind had filled in details she’d not mentioned, details that may have sprung solely from his imagination or from some deeply buried memory. He knew not.

He cared not.

It no longer signified if she was lying or telling the truth. He wanted Gwen Cassidy in a way that defied reason, in a way he refused to further question.

He admired her tenacity; he desired her with every fiber of his being; she made him laugh, she made him furious. She stood her ground; she believed him a Druid and desired him anyway.

By Amergin, he—thrice-jilted Drustan MacKeltar—was being pursued by a woman who knew what he was.

He could no longer recall why he’d ever resisted her to begin with.

He struggled against an intense desire to bring himself to completion, to find release—a release he’d desperately needed since the moment she’d entered his home. But, nay, not in so empty a fashion. He wanted it with her. Inside her.

“What you said was so romantic,” she said with a little sigh.

“Um-hmm,” he managed. When she spoke again, it took him a few moments to realize what she was saying.

And when he did, he leaped to his feet, roaring, but she kept speaking: “If aught must be lost, ’twill be my honor for yours. If one must be forsaken, ’twill be my soul for yours. Should death come anon, ’twill be my life for yours. I am Given. That’s what you said.”

As she finished, Drustan doubled over. A spark of heat and light built inside him and spread, enveloping him. He couldn’t talk, he could scarce breathe, as wave after wave of emotion crashed over him….

Gwen doubled over, as a wave of intense emotion crashed over her. She felt funny, really weird, like she’d just said something irrevocable….

“Och, Christ, Nellie,” Silvan whispered, stunned both by Gwen’s words and by the realization that he was holding Nell’s hand, and she was letting him. “She just married him.”

“Married?” Nell’s fingers tightened on his.

“Aye, the Druid vows. I didn’t work that spell, even when I wed my wife.”

Nell’s lips parted on a “why,” but then they both peeked breathlessly over the balustrade, desperate to hear what would happen next.

21

“Ahem,” Drustan said after a long time. “Do you know you just married me, lass?”

“What?” Gwen shouted.

“Would you please let your husband out of the garderobe?”

Gwen was stunned. She’d married him with those words?

“Those were the Druid wedding vows you just said to me, a binding spell, and I doona understand how you knew it, but—”

God, he still didn’t remember! she realized with a sinking sensation, even though she’d told him all of it, down to the minute details. “I knew it, you dolt, because you said it to me! And I didn’t know I was marrying you—”

“Doona be thinkin’ you’ll be gettin’ out of it,” he said testily.