Seducing the Spy by Sandra Madden

Author:Sandra Madden [Madden, Sandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Romance
Publisher: Belgrave House
Published: 2002-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Meggie feigned indifference. But as she picked up the brush she had thrown to the floor, her hands trembled. The look in Colm’s eyes, the timbre of his voice, warned of impending catastrophe. At once the stable air felt close and warm. The distant crack of lightning and the vibrating roll of thunder felt particularly ominous. She could not catch a full breath.

He spoke softly as if offering an apology. “Meggie, it is time for me to leave Dochas.”

“Ye cannot leave now,” she declared in cheerful defiance. Purposefully misunderstanding his meaning, she added, “It will soon be dark, and a storm threatens. You cannot travel in the dark through a storm.”

“I will leave at first light. I shall be gone when you wake tomorrow.”

Nay! Nay! Nay! The words echoed in Meggie’s head as if she had shouted them from the highest mountain.

She could think of no way to make Colm stay but to throw her arms about his towering form and hold him tightly to her, to her heart. At the thought of waking to a day without the handsome bard, Meggie’s chest filled with pain. ’Twas as if a steel mace had struck and crushed her heart.

Nay, the bard was not a wealthy farmer, not a man who could restore Dochas to glory. But he was the man who had won her heart without a word, without a sonnet. Was he leaving because she had asked him to compose a poem, one that she could hear this eve? Had she coerced a man suffering without his muse?

It mattered not. Nothing else mattered other than that she was losing Colm, losing another she loved.

She took a step toward him. “I shall miss ye, Bard.”

His deep brown gaze locked on hers. “And I will miss you.”

Meggie could barely speak: the gates of her mind had closed; her throat felt as if it were lined with burning sand. “Is there nothing I can say to make you stay?”

Colm gave a melancholy wag of his head and then shot her a wry smile. “You might shoot me. That would make me stay”

“Ach! Will ye ne’er let me forget?”

“Nay.” A golden light twinkled in the sweet chestnut depths of his eyes. “It gives me pleasure to see your cheeks grow as scarlet as wild berries.”

Her lips quivered as Meggie bit back the words in her heart. It was all she could do not to cry out, “But I love you! I love you. I shall always love you.”

Instead, she bit down hard on the inner fleshy part of her lower lip. She refused to show her weakness for him. Fitzgerald pride would not allow her to plead for the bard to stay. Meggie needed no one. Had she not proven so all these years? With her mother dead, her father off fighting the English, and her dear old grandfather weaving in and out of the fog beclouding his mind, she had managed well enough alone.

But this would not be the same aloneness.

Even though

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.