Free Island of the Swans by Ciji Ware

windows shattered like his father’s dreams.
    Looking at her now, pinned beneath him, he ached to hold her in his arms. On New Year’s Eve she’d be sixteen. Lasses married at sixteen, and even younger, in the Highlands. His mind drifted back to a memory of the wild, wailing sounds made by Simon’s own piper as they echoed through Glencannich. Thomas’s throat would close with emotion as the shrill, plaintive notes clung to the fading northern sun. It was the same, heart-stopping feeling that was invading his chest this misty morning as he gripped Jane’s waist with his thighs and gazed down at her, half-buried in the straw.
    Jane stared up at him, wide-eyed. He could see she was also sensing something akin to the giddiness coursing through his body. Paralyzed by the clash of feelings welling up in him, he continued to meet her quizzical stare.
    “Thomas?”
    It wasn’t really a question, it was confirmation.
    Slowly, carefully, so as not to frighten her, he settled his weight slightly to the left of her and lowered himself onto his elbow, his right hand toying with a loose piece of straw. He smiled at her, tentatively at first, and then broadly, tracing the bridge of her nose and the lines of her lips with the prickly chaff.
    “Aye, Jenny, lass,” he said quietly, lightly stroking her soft, luxuriant hair. “Everything is different now, ’tisn’t it? Different… and yet the same.”
    With a swift movement, Jane’s arms broke from the layers of straw and came up around his back, knocking him off balance. He felt her clasp his body fiercely as it fell against her own. It had been so long since a woman had held him close. The few whose charms he’d sampled felt nothing like Jane. Her arms clamped tight around him, half child’s grip, half woman’s embrace, as she buried her head under his chin, snuggling beneath him and pushing her body instinctively toward his.
    “Please don’t let Simon rule your life,” she whispered, her voice cracking with emotion. “He’ll send you where it pleases him… where it suits his grand plan for the Frasers.”
    “Jenny… ah, Jenny, love,” Thomas murmured in her hair. “no one’s going to keep us apart. Not even Simon Fraser… not even your ma…”
    His bold words surprised even himself, but he knew with a certainty forged through the years of their shared childhood that there would never be another woman for him like Jane Maxwell. Somewhere deep inside he had known it when she was just six. Now that she was nearly sixteen, and he, a man, he felt like shouting it to all of Edinburgh. He bent down and kissed her with a tenderness and deliberation that sent shock waves through them both.
    “I know ’tis a wee bit sudden, Mistress Maxwell,” he said huskily, “but will you one day do me the honor of becoming my bride?”
    Jane reached up, tracing the line of his cheekbone with the back of her hand.
    “’Tis not sudden, Thomas,” she said, her brown eyes boring into his. “I’ve loved you one way or t’other since we were bairns. ’ Tis different now, though… the feelings that come over me when I see your dear face, or you take me in your arms—” She fell silent, continuing to stare at him as if she expected him suddenly to vanish. “I’ll be a soldier’s wife, or live in a cave in Struy Forest, but I’ll do what I have to, to have you, Thomas Fraser!” she whispered fiercely.
    “You might even one day be called Lady Jane if I get back what’s rightly mine,” Thomas said half-mockingly.
    “Don’t waste your dreams on that,” Jane said flatly. “I just want you , title or not, and I don’t care who tries to keep us apart!”
    “We shall have to be discreet, Jenny,” he said thoughtfully, “until my Commission comes through and Simon can’t call the tune.”
    “Outfox Simon?” she asked gloomily. “I don’t think him so simple a fool.”
    “He’s not, to be sure,” Thomas replied, “but we musn’t arouse his or your mother’s