They froze in that intimate moment for what felt like a miserable eternity, then Dageus shuddered and with a hand beneath her bottom, leaned her against the stone and dislodged her hand. She had a hard time making herself let go and they waged a short, silent, silly little battle that he won, which she reluctantly conceded was probably only fair since it was part of his body. He stood still, inhaling measured breaths, then lowered her to the ground.

It took him several minutes to refasten his jeans. Dropping his dark head forward, lips to her ear, he said in a burr thickened by desire, “There will be no takin’ this back, lass. Doona even think to be tellin’ me later that you willna hae me. You will hae me.” Then abruptly, wrapping one strong arm around her waist, he turned them both to greet the intruder.

Still dizzy and breathless with desire, it took Chloe a few moments to focus. When she did, she was startled to discover that the fog had vanished as utterly as the storm, leaving the night bathed in pearly luminance by a fat moon hovering just beyond the mighty oaks that towered around the circle of stones. She refused to dwell on the fact that a short time ago there had been no oaks around the circle of stones, only a vast expanse of manicured lawn. If she thought about that too long, she might start to feel sick to her stomach again.

So she concentrated instead on the tall, elderly man, with shoulder-length, snowy-white hair, clad in long blue robes, who stood about a dozen paces away, his narrow back to them.

“You can turn around now,” Dageus barked at him.

“I was but ceding you what privacy I could,” the man muttered defensively, his posture rigid.

“Had you wished to cede me privacy, you would have steered yourself right back into the castle, old man.”

“Aye,” the man snapped right back, “so you could off and disappear again? I think not. I lost you once. I’ll no’ be losing you again.”

With that, the elderly man turned around to face them and Chloe’s eyes widened in astonishment. She’d seen him somewhere before! But where?

Oh, no. As quickly as it occurred to her, she denied it, shaking her head. Earlier in the day, in the portrait gallery at Maggie MacKeltar’s castle. She’d seen several portraits of him displayed in a section where half a dozen other paintings around them had been removed, leaving great dark spots on the wall. That was part of what had drawn her eye to them. Maggie had told her that the others from that particular century—the fifteen hundreds—had been taken down and sent out to be restored.