After climbing the hillside, he stumbled, and Isabel reached for his hand. He caught hers in a firm grip, then didn’t let go. She was content to stand beside him in the peaceful night.
After a moment, she said, “You told me we light bonfires to help souls on their journey.”
James nodded.
“Then may we light this in memory of my father?”
He stiffened. “Is there a reason you bring him up, Isabel?”
“Because I need to say good-bye.”
He held the torch out to her, releasing her hand. Isabel stared at it for a moment, then up into the night sky. From now on, she would belong only to herself and her husband.
But first she concentrated on her father, and hoped he had left behind his misery and bitterness. She took the torch in a firm grip, then thrust it headfirst into the kindling. After a moment the dry wood caught, and the fire spread crackling from twig to branch. James put a few small logs on top, and soon the fire was in no danger of going out. They stood side by side, watching.
She removed the chain she always wore and held it before her. The Mansfield ring spun and glittered in the firelight. She slid it into a pouch hung from her belt. She didn’t know why she did it. It made her feel vulnerable, uncertain.
He held her gaze, a half-smile curving his lips, but said nothing.
“There is one important reason to remember my father,” she said.
As he looked at her, the fire played a dance of light and shadow over his face and she could read nothing there. But she didn’t need to.
“Without him, I wouldn’t have met you.” She reached down and touched his bandaged hand.
He pulled away.
29
James felt utterly foolish. Isabel had told him she didn’t care about his hand. Yet he didn’t want her to see it—even he didn’t like looking at it.
“James,” she said in a soft, husky voice.
He let her unwind the bandages. The hand was still swollen, discolored—and had two scabbed lumps where they’d cauterized after amputating. He couldn’t look away, couldn’t imagine holding a sword or touching his wife again with that hand. Sweat broke out on his forehead.
Isabel loosened the laces of her doublet and shirt. With a shrug, she let them fall to her waist, and brought his mutilated hand up to cup her breast. Something twisted inside him, shaking everything he’d believed in.
“I love you, James,” she said softly. “Your hand matters to you, but not at all to me.”
Still holding his trembling hand against her, she touched his forehead, then his chest. “Your mind and your heart are all that matter to me. But of course, there is another thing that seems to matter to men.”
She suddenly grabbed him firmly between the legs and James almost doubled over in shock.
“And that certainly wasn’t damaged,” she finished wryly.
He thanked God for the gifts he’d been given, for the ability to finally see that there was so much more to appreciate beneath what his wife showed the world.
Isabel put her hands on the warm, stubbled skin of his face, and kissed him hard on the mouth. They touched in no other way but that, yet when she leaned back, they were both breathing hard. He looked shocked, wide-eyed, and then their bodies came together in a crash that almost knocked them down the sloping side of the hill.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on, opening her mouth and joining her tongue with his. She felt his hands run down her back, then mold her hips against his. He was aroused, pressing against her, and she wanted more than anything to feel his body inside hers again.
She pulled off his cloak and tossed it over her shoulder.
“We might need that to lie upon,” he whispered against her neck, pressing kisses there.
“I don’t care,” she said, tilting her head back, lifting one knee high so that she could feel his hips between her thighs.
They pulled each others’ clothes off, tangling laces, ripping hose, stretching seams. She lifted his shirt up over his head, then ran her hands across the muscles of his chest, touching him as he had touched her. She bent and kissed his nipples.
