Pendragon

Her eyes were shining with excitement even as the wild whipped her bo

Thomas caught it before it whirled overboard and set it back onto her tangled hair. He lightly patted her cheek, leaned down, and kissed her. "I wish I could have stayed with you this morning," he said, and kissed her again.

Meggie leaned into him, licked his bottom lip, and he stepped back to tie her ribbons beneath her chin. "It simply won't do for the earl of Lancaster to make love to his bride on the deck of a pitching boat."

"Why not?"

"Be quiet, Meggie," he said, stroked his knuckles over her jaw, and gri

"Pendragon," she said. "It has taste, that word, the taste of adventure and secrets and old passages that no one knows about." She rolled the name around in her mouth, said it out loud again. "Pendragon. My cousin Jeremy's home in Fowey is called Dragon's Jaw. Isn't that a marvelous name as well? I so wanted to-well, that's silly, now isn't it? No, I wanted to visit Dragon's Jaw. There are these sharp rocks at the base of the cliff just below the house and thus, its name."

If Jeremy had magically appeared, Thomas would have hurled him overboard without a second thought. She was thinking about living at his home. He was so angry he wanted to curse the billowing sails down, but he knew he couldn't, and so he said, "Pendragon is very old. It was once very important. Now it is simply beautiful. Now it simply endures."

Meggie frowned up at him. "What's wrong, Thomas? You sound as cold and sharp as my grandmother Lady Lydia who can both slice ham and a witless neighbor with just a single glare. She lives at Northcliffe Hall with my uncle Douglas and aunt Alex. She couldn't come to our wedding because she was ill. However, given the letter she wrote me, she is very pleased that I married an earl who's an Englishman, not a dreaded Scot like my uncle Colin. Still, given five minutes she could still find something significant lacking in your character.

"And so don't you look down that very elegant nose of yours at me, just like she does. Don't forget, my lord, that I gave you remarkable pleasure last night if your grunts and groans are any measure of pleasure, which they are, I know that firsthand." She gave him a smile that made him want to jump on her and take her down to the deck.

She said, "One would think you would perhaps wish to reminisce a bit, perhaps smile a bit vacantly, but here you are, thin-lipped, and I have no idea why."

All right. He would forget Jeremy for a moment and his ridiculous house in Fowey. Dragon's Jaw, a really stupid name, so precious it was nauseating. He didn't want her to guess that he was beyond jealous. He looked at her, saw the wind had burned her cheeks bright red. He also saw that she was so proud of herself, and now that he thought about it, she had pushed him right over the edge, and he'd happily fallen and fallen yet again, until he wouldn't have cared if the bloody roof of Squire Billings's house had come crashing down on his back.

He took her mittened hand and looked toward the distant shore, listened to the wind howl and poor Tim McCulver vomiting over the side of the boat, thankfully downwind.

"Yes," Meggie said after a moment. "Pendragon-it is a vastly romantic name, just flows off the tongue and makes you shiver with the feel of it-so unlike our home in Scotland-Kildrummy Castle. That is utterly pragmatic and down-to-earth, feet firmly planted. Tell me about it."

"I much prefer it to Bowden Close. You will see it yourself this afternoon."

"Where did the name Pendragon come from? Is it named after an ancient Irish warrior?"

"No. My great-uncle changed the name from Belleek Castle to Pendragon. Uther Pendragon wasn't Irish, he was Celtic or early English, the father of King Arthur. My great-uncle was obsessed with King Arthur. I believe he dreamed of finding Arthur's burial site on Pendragon land. I heard rumors a couple of years back that North Nightingale, Lord Chilton, had found King Arthur's sword Excalibur when a cliff wall collapsed into an ancient cave. Probably nonsense, but I would like to meet him someday and ask about it.

"My great-uncle always used to say that Tintagal was nothing but a heap of rocks, that Arthur could have easily sailed to Ireland, to Pendragon, and spent his final days there. But I wonder."

"Oh, I remember that now. Pendragon." She gri

He watched her and her tongue rolling around, could practically feel her tongue rolling about on and in his own mouth, and got harder than the mast.

She said, "Do you plan to live most of the time at Pendragon?"

"I haven't yet decided. Bowden Close is now also my responsibility. Your family is there. We will visit often."

"That's good. I would miss my family."

"Yes, I know. As I said, I don't wish Bowden Close to be left only in a steward's hands."

"My uncle Douglas says that a man is a fool if he ignores what is his."

"I agree."

"My father agrees too, which is why he traveled to Kildrummy Castle when he inherited it. We couldn't live there, however, and we were very lucky. Oliver manages Kildrummy Castle. Actually now it is as much his home as it is ours. Did you know that Oliver was one of my uncle Ryder's first Beloved Ones?"

"Yes. Your uncle Ryder found him trying to pull himself out of an alley so he could beg for food. His leg was badly broken, you see, and he couldn't walk."

"My uncle took care of him until he was eighteen, and then he went to Oxford. He was going to be my uncle Douglas's steward, but the instant he saw Kildrummy Castle, he fell in love with it. Oliver is very smart and married my uncle's daughter, Je

Meggie shook his sleeve. "Now, my lord, when will you thank me for last night? When are you going to sing my praises? Tell me you have never experienced such a woman as I? Goodness, Thomas, I laid you lower than a slug."

"I don't like the sound of that. You do know that you're ignorant as a stick," he added, and lightly touched his palm to her the underside of her breast. "But I have high hopes."

Meggie didn't move, became still as a statue and looked up at him, not saying a word. Then she leaned forward, pressing her breast into his palm. Thomas's breath hitched. He saw one of the sailors coming and regretfully dropped his hand to his side. "Yes," he said, "lower than a slug. Now, let's think about the pleasure I gave you. Meggie, the look on your face when I kissed you."

"Well, I love to kiss you. You make my mouth tingle."

"No, not on the mouth, Meggie."

He laughed when she turned even redder, none of it from windburn.

He couldn't help himself. He smiled down at her, at the loose hair pulled from beneath her bo

She pursed her lips and he knew, knew all the way to his boots, that she was giving this due thought. Finally she said, "Well, that's a real possibility. Who knows what you would have demanded to do? Our wedding night was memorable, but I wouldn't precisely say that it was a memory that I will cherish when I am an old woman. Yes, I might have shot you."

She was so likable, so damned open and giving. Not a reticent bone in that ever so white body of hers. Her body. No, he wouldn't think about that, not now, not on board a wildly rocking boat.

He looked out over the billowing wave that would slap the side of the boat in another instant. He waited, put his arm on hers to keep her steady, and felt the taste of the water in his mouth from the wild spray.