Free Highland Tides by Anna Markland Page A

to swoon. She wasn’t the delicate type. Mayhap the wig had done her in, though he suspected John Reade’s revelations had overwhelmed her.
    The tale had nigh on stopped his heart. He understood now why he’d been sent to the future. To save his sister’s life. He had to go back. But how?
    Charlotte moaned something unintelligible. He smoothed a curl off her forehead. “What did ye say, my love?”
    She raved about a pilgrimage . He gazed at her, stunned by the realization he would rather stay in the eighteenth century with this remarkable woman than travel back to his own time. Perhaps meeting her was the reason he’d been propelled three hundred years into the future. He had a deep sense she was his destiny.
    But he couldn’t ignore his duty to Margaret even though leaving might mean he’d never see Charlotte again.
    She opened her eyes and stared at him, then touched his face. He wasn’t sure what he saw in her gaze. Desolation, need, love?
    “I must go back,” he rasped.
    She nodded as tears welled and trickled into the pillow. “Kiss me,” she breathed.
    He cupped her face in his hands and brushed his mouth over hers. She gripped his wrists and shyly nibbled his lower lip. He sifted his fingers into her hair, licked her salty tears, then deepened the kiss, coaxing with his tongue. She opened with a moaning whimper that sent more blood rushing to his already engorged shaft. Their tongues mated. She tasted clean and pure and warm. “I’ve never wanted a woman as much as I want ye,” he growled when the need for breath forced their lips apart.
    She smiled seductively. “Not in three hundred years?”
    “Nay, nor in three hundred more, Charlotte Tremayne.”
    She blinked as tears welled again. “Take me with you,” she whispered.
    He slid his arms beneath her and pressed her to his chest. “I canna. I dinna ken how to get back. ’Twill be dangerous. Drowning wasna pleasant I can assure ye.”
    He wanted to ease the heartbreak of parting. His century wasn’t a fit place for a woman like Charlotte.
    “Then take me now, Braden Ogilvie,” she murmured.  
    It was what he wanted, more than his next breath, but he walked away, pacing the chamber. “Nay, Charlotte. I willna shame ye. If I never return—”
    She rose from the bed, took his hand and held it to her breast. “If you don’t come back, at least I’ll have the memory of lying with the man I love. I’ll never want another as much as I want you.”
    His heart stopped. “Ye love me?”
    “From the moment you emerged from the cells.”
    He searched his memory. “But I was filthy. I looked like a barbarian.”
    She stood on tiptoe to kiss him again. “Aye, and I wanted you for my own. I know it now.”
    “And I loved ye as soon as I set eyes on yon wig,” he quipped.
    She giggled, intensifying his need.
    A ludicrous idea filled his brain. “We must wed afore I leave, then if there’s a bairn—”
    She frowned.
    “But yer uncle will never give permission, and—”
    She put a forefinger to his lips. “I believe my uncle is already of the opinion we must wed because I spent time alone with you in your chamber, and now he’s heard John Reade’s story and knows you’re of a noble family—”
    If death had taught him anything it was that life was for living. He bent the knee before her and took hold of her hands. “Will ye wed with me, Lady Charlotte Tremayne?”
    She kissed his knuckles. “Aye, Sir Braden Ogilvie. I will.”
    ~~~
    Braden whooped his glee, tossed Charlotte on the bed, shucked off his boots and climbed up beside her to rain kisses along her throat.
    The notion she’d lost her wits flitted into her brain.  
    A lifelong Protestant, she was willingly giving herself to a Catholic. But Braden had no knowledge of the Reformation and the religious strife it had brought.
    She was an independent woman, a clandestine novelist, the creator of a famous picaresque hero, but those things seemed insignificant now. Pilgrim Peter