Free Island of the Swans by Ciji Ware Page A

suspicions that we plan to marry until I take my training and am given my lieutenancy. Do you think we can keep a secret for that long, dearheart?”
    Jane looked as if she wanted to challenge the plan he had outlined, but, instead, she put her arms around him and pulled his body down along the length of hers. For a long moment they clung to each other, savoring the feeling of safety and warmth. A slight shuddering passed through them both as he nuzzled her soft pink ear lobe. Jane turned her head slightly, brushing his lips lightly with hers with the same curious wonderment they had felt as children discovering a nest of newborn sparrows in the arbor.
    At exactly the same moment, Thomas and Jane became aware of a new sensation growing between them. It was Thomas’s turn to become wide-eyed and he stared at her, embarrassed.
    “Thomas,” Jane smiled gently, “I do know… about what happens to men who take a fancy to a certain lass, you may be surprised to learn.… Aunt Elizabeth explained everything.” Teasing him lightly with her hips, she added in a saucy whisper, “and I did sneak out one early morn to watch when Da brought the McCullough stud to court Catherine’s pony at Monreith… so what’s happening to you now is not such a mystery to me as you might suppose—”
    Thomas kissed her again slowly, experimenting with the amount of pressure he put to her lips. Jane responded immediately, sensing what moves he would make and falling in stride with him. The straw, the stable, the world enveloping them both seemed to fall away and Thomas was only aware of an overwhelming desire to press his lips to the tiny mole at the base of her throat, to touch her soft breasts beneath her gown and to meld his body into hers.
    “Jenny, Jenny, darlin’ girl…” he whispered, trailing kisses down to pillows of flesh straining against her disheveled linen bodice.
    “Thomas…” Jane murmured, shifting her weight in needy response to his caresses.
    Suddenly, penetrating the fog of passion swirling around them both, came the creak, creak, creak of Hector Chisholm’s wheelbarrow rolling across the yard into the stable stall. Agonized, Thomas pulled away from Jane, forcing himself to listen intently.
    “Shh!” he whispered fiercely, putting a finger to his lips.
    Jane’s puzzled look changed instantly to one of recognition and she reacted quickly, throwing handfuls of straw over the two of them lying in the loft. They both froze in place, trying not to sneeze or even breathe. Thomas and Jane could hear, but not see, old Hector carefully piling the horse leavings into his wheelbarrow. Jane cast a desperate glance at Thomas, whose weight was becoming oppressive against her slender frame. At last, Hector put his rake in the wheelbarrow and departed, muttering about “young lads who dinna unsaddle their ponies straightaway.”
    Brushing the straw from their clothes in the dim light of the stable, Thomas and Jane knelt before one another, seeing themselves reflected in the other’s eyes for the first time.
    “I wanted… I wanted to…” Thomas faltered as he pulled the last piece of straw from Jane’s dark tresses.
    Her hand grazed the soft copper hair peeking through the laces of his linen shirt as she flicked the remnants of hay off his chest.
    “I wanted to, too,” she said simply. Then she smiled, adding with a wry smile. “I probably owe my virtue to old Hector.” She looked away briefly and then asked with uncharacteristic diffidence, “’Tis it proper to consider myself a lass who’s betrothed?”
    “Aye… consider yourself as good as my wife, my Jenny of Monreith,” he replied, wondering silently what Simon Fraser and Lady Maxwell would do if they knew of how he and Jane had plighted their troth in this dark, gloomy byre. To Simon, he owed his life. The question was, how high a price would his godfather demand for it?

Five

    D ECEMBER 1765
    S IMON F RASER , M ASTER OF L OVAT, LOOKED FORWARD TO MAKING his