He kissed her, slow and soft and deep so that the words slid back down her throat. Keeping her hand in his, he circled around the house toward the stables.

“In here?” Her eyes went wide, and she felt a quick tug-of-war between dismay and delight. “We can’t. All these people.”

He found he could laugh after all. “We’ll save a roll in the hay for another time, Shannon love. I’m just getting blankets.”

“Oh.” She felt foolish, and not at all certain she wasn’t disappointed. “Blankets,” she repeated as he took two down from the line where they’d been airing. “Where are we going?”

He folded them, laid them over his arm, then took her hand again. “Where we started.”

The dance. Her heart began to drum again. “I—can you just leave this way? All those people are in your house.”

“I don’t think we’ll be missed.” Pausing, he looked down at her. “Do you care if we are?”

“No.” She shook her head once, quickly. “No, I don’t care if we are.”

They crossed into the fields under the streaming light of the moon.

“Do you like counting stars?” he asked her.

“I don’t know.” Automatically she looked up to a sky teeming with them. “I don’t think I ever have.”

“You can’t ever finish.” He brought their joined hands to his lips. “It’s not the sum of them that matter. Not the number. It’s the wonder of it all. That’s what I see when I look at you. The wonder of it all.”

With a laugh, he scooped her off her feet. When he kissed her again it was full of young, burgeoning joy.

“Can you pretend I’m carrying you up some fine curving staircase toward a big soft bed, plumped with satin pillows and pink lace?”

“I don’t need to pretend anything.” She pressed her face into his throat as emotion welled up and swamped her. “Tonight I need only you. And you’re right here.”

“Aye.” He brushed his lips over her temple until she shifted her head to look at him. “I’m here.” He nodded across the field. “We’re here.”

The circle of stones stood, waiting in the warm beam of the moon.

Chapter
Sixteen

Under swimming stars and a moon that shone white like a beacon, he carried her to the center of the dance. She heard an owl hoot, a long call that drifted through the air and faded to humming silence.

He set her on her feet, then spread the first blanket, letting the other fall before he knelt in front of her.

“What are you doing?” Where had the nerves come from? she wondered. She hadn’t been nervous even a moment ago.

“I’m taking off your shoes.”

Such a simple thing, an ordinary thing. Yet the gesture was as seductive as black silk. He took off his own, setting them tidily beside hers. His hands skimmed up her body, from ankle to shoulders as he rose.