Gwen rubbed her forehead. "This hurts my head."
Drustan laughed. "It hurts mine too. I'll be most happy to ne'er muck with time again."
Gwen was silent a moment, thinking. "What happened to Besseta?"
Drustan's eyes darkened. "After you disappeared, she plunged into the battle, and though the men strove not to harm her, she was determined to die. She impaled herself on Robert's claymore." He frowned. "She confessed before she died, and we were able to piece the story together."
Fresh tears gathered in Gwen's eyes.
"You would weep for her?" Drustan exclaimed.
"If not for her, I should never have found you," Gwen said softly. "It's sad. It's sad that she was so afraid. But at the same time, I'm so glad I found you."
He kissed her again, then told her the rest of it. How he'd grieved, how he raged. How he'd stormed to the stones and stood arguing with himself for hours.
Then his mind had struck upon an idea—so temptingly possible that it had taken his breath away.
The gypsies. They'd made him sleep once for five centuries. Why not again? And so he'd tracked down the wandering tribe and commissioned their services. The gypsy queen herself had performed the spell for a pouch of coin.
"For a pouch of coin!" Gwen exclaimed. "How dare they charge you? They were the ones who—"
"Who sold a service, nothing more. The Rom hold themselves to a strange code. They maintain that blaming them for Besseta commissioning them to enchant me would be akin to blaming the blade for drawing blood. 'Tis the hand that wields the dagger, not the dagger itself."
"Fine way to evade personal responsibility," Gwen grumbled. Then she sucked in a shallow breath. "Your family! Silvan and Nell and—"
He cut her off by kissing her. "My choice was painful to them, but they understood."
He'd not once wavered. He'd spent several months saying his good-byes before being enchanted. And implementing plans that would bear fruit five centuries later, plans to ensure a fine life for him and his wife. But there would be time to tell her of that tomorrow, or the next day or the next. "They bid me give you their love when we were reunited."
Gwen got misty-eyed again, then thumped his chest with her fist. "Why didn't you leave instructions for Maggie to find me weeks ago?" she cried. "My heart broke. I've been back for over a month—"
"I wasn't certain when you would return to your time. I couldn't decide if the month would pass for you in both centuries."
"Oh," she said in a small voice.
"And I wasn't willing to take any chances of summoning you before you'd met me. Och, but what a fankle that would have been. You wouldn't have known how to wake me. You wouldn't have even known me if we'd sent for you too early. Seemed safer to let you come."
"But what if I hadn't come? What if I'd never come back to Scotland?"
"I left instructions that if you hadn't arrived by Samhain, my descendants should find you and bid you come. They were to look for you in America and bring you here."
"But—"
"Are you going to talk me to death or kiss me, wife?" he asked huskily.
She opted for the kiss.
When his lips claimed hers, her body quickened with desire. He paused only to strip off his linen shirt, while Gwen made short work of his plaid.
"Lay back," she commanded when she had him completely naked. "I think I should like to be on top." He complied, flashing her a sexy grin that dripped promises of fantasies about to be fulfilled. She sat back on her heels, gazing at him, sprawled across the bed. His bronze skin and silky dark hair gleamed against the white linens. Six and a half feet of Highland warrior lay before her, awaiting her pleasure.
Yum.
Years of not understanding the equation of life culminated in one perfect moment of clarity—life equaled love plus passion squared. Loving and being passionate about what one did was what made life so precious. She would be perfectly content to devote the rest of her life to the proof of that equation.
"Touch me," he purred.
She touched. Lightly, gliding her hands up his muscular thighs. Tracing each muscle, each ridge, then lowering her head to taste in her hand's wake. She cupped him and swept her tongue up the underside of his hard shaft, delighted when he bucked beneath her.
"Gwendolyn!" he thundered, cradling her head with his hands. "I willna last a minute if you do that!"
"Och, nay, my braw laird," she said in a lilting Scots accent. "Be still. 'Tis my pleasure you serve—ack!" She burst into laughter when in one swift motion he rolled her onto her back.
"I bid you recall I've been needing you for five hundred years, whereas you've been waiting only a month."