Emily Baker Read Free Page A

his lips into a line and reached around her for his waistcoat. She took it from him and helped him get into it, then fastened the buttons for him. Her fingers smoothed the fabric over his tapered chest and firm abdomen.
    “I will miss you,” she admitted, not certain whether she meant during his journey or when he eventually left her to continue on with his life.
    He smiled then, a spark of hope lighting the depths of his soft brown eyes. “Mother plans to stay at Clancare Manor for the better part of next month, but I will be back within the next fortnight despite Grandfather’s threat to saddle me with the Barony of Stanhope.”
    “So the Ard Tiarna plans to make a true lord of you.” She handed him the carved-gold studs for his shirt cuffs.
    “The High Lord can try.” Freddie shrugged. “He wishes to saddle me with lands to tend and a wife to bear his next set of heirs as soon as he can manage. He thinks it is time I settled down and began my training to be his heir.”
    “Perhaps he is right.” She concentrated on threading the end onto the studs for him as relief over the clue he had provided for this urgency soothed her anxiety.
    Rebellion against the heightened expectations thrust on him, so unexpectedly and recently, explained his rash proposal. The immediacy of her dilemma eased. She had no need to act in his best interest and end things between them just yet. Freddie would come to his senses on his own, or his grandfather would pull in the reins soon enough.
    “Only if I may have the wife of my choosing.” Freddie’s tone carried a note of resolution she’d never heard before. “Only if I can have you, Maura Fitzgerald.”
    She had absolutely no idea what to say at that moment, so she released a long sigh.
    Freddie cupped her cheek. “We’ll talk when I return. Perhaps you would do me the honor of hosting a few of my friends for an evening of cards and allow me to stay the night then.”
    “Perhaps.” She nodded, promising nothing but not dashing his hopes altogether. She was not ready to bid final farewell to the new Lord Stanhope.
    He smiled broadly. “That’s a heartening answer. Give me a smile and a sweet kiss to linger over while I am away.”
    She wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him the soul-searing send-off he expected.
     
     
    The Ogham stone’s edge grated against Garrett’s soul as much as his shoulder as he kept watch under the light of the full moon over Saint Marnock’s well across the grouse.
    Even within the cloak of night this meeting site was too exposed, too risky. But his recent absence from the city had left him little choice. He’d had no time to investigate the possible reasons behind this late-night appointment or to change the location. Keeping it, or not, were his only options.
    In the distance, high golden moonlight spilled over the ruins of a medieval church once dedicated to a Cistercian monk and the lone, silhouetted figure pacing the clearing between them. The only sound was the pounding of the Irish Sea on the distant strand. A hint of salt carried on the wind mingled with the taste of anticipation on his tongue.
    Damnation, where was Sean?
    So much depended on timing, on their both being in place. The rough edge of the ancient pillar’s incised lines scraped his ear and tore a hiss from him. The messages these lines were meant to convey were wrapped in almost as much mystery as the summons that had brought the Green Dragon and his most trusted lieutenant to this coastal meeting.
    A high-pitched trilling sounded from what had once been the roofline of the church. The redstart’s song, at last. It was time to begin.
    He followed the line of the dunes to the place he’d noted earlier as the best approach for crossing to the well unobserved. When the admiral turned and headed once more away from the view of Velvet Beach far below, the redstart’s call sounded again. The way was as clear as it ever would be. Garrett moved as quietly as he could