With Heart to Hear Read online

  What had she seen? Had she imagined the whole thing? Elise shook her head. No. It was real.

  She continued watching, but nothing changed except the length of the shadows. Finally, as Elise turned to go into her tent, she remembered her shoes were still on the far edge of the brook. She couldn’t leave them; they were the only pair she had with her, and the dew would ruin them. She looked back at the now innocent prospect of the bridge. Nothing more menacing than a bee buzzed around the wildflowers.

  Elise set her jaw. She wasn’t going to walk back to Lord Crandall’s barefoot, nor did she intend to cower in her tent for the next four days—as if the tent would provide any protection against a troll. She might as well face her fear now, straight on. She stepped forward confidently, but her gait became an awkward mincing as she covered the rough ground. She hadn’t noticed the sharp stones and stickers in her earlier flight. Rather than wade through the cold water in the shade of the arch, she crossed the bridge. As before, the feeling of old sorrow slowed her pace. She wondered if some tragedy had occurred there, or if the feeling was only her imagination responding to her fear and the lengthening shadows.

  At last she reached the stream-bank and gathered up her shoes and stockings. Hands full, she turned to leave, but the quiet rippling of the water seemed to whisper, Stay.

  Elise turned back, and a flash of white caught her eye. The flowers. A second bud was just beginning to unfurl its moonlight colored petals. She’d never seen its like in any of the naturalist volumes she’d studied. Ambition surged, in all its unladylike glory. Perhaps she’d discovered a new species. With barely a glance at the darkness under the bridge, Elise dropped her shoes and waded across the rill, pulling her sketchbook and pencils from her smock’s large pockets.

  An hour later, Elise looked at her work and frowned. She’d drawn the blossoms accurately enough, but their images lay cold on the page. She’d failed to render their life-filled glow, and without that they hardly looked like the same flower.

  It was too late to try again. Tomorrow. Tomorrow she’d capture them. She stood, pocketed her sketchbook, and turned to face the mottled-green chest of the troll.

  Elise stepped back quickly into the stream and stopped with the cold water swirling around her ankles. Her heart pounded in her throat. How had he approached so silently? Somehow, in the few hours since she’d first seen him, she’d forgotten how horrible he looked. Now she remembered. And his eyes still held that same dark hunger.

  Elise returned the troll’s unblinking gaze, afraid to look away. As they stood there, staring, the troll made no move to harm her. Her fear subsided, replaced by excitement. Before her stood a being no scientist had ever before observed. She took in the coarse black hair that sprouted in tufts from his head and upper body. He was clearly mammalian, and was that intelligence she saw in his gaze?

  “I mean you no harm. I am Elise Craft. Do you have a name?” She spoke slowly, pointing first to herself and then to him.

  His only response was a guttural sound that could have been either a growl or a groan.

  She stepped closer. The troll narrowed his eyes, but remained still. Slowly, she reached up to touch his face. His skin was cool and rough; she let her hand rest below a prominent cheekbone. The troll’s dark eyes widened in surprise, and he flinched. Then he turned his face into her palm and his eyes closed tightly. A moment later, Elise felt the monster’s cold tears trailing down her wrist.

  A chill ran down Elise’s arm, sending a shiver through her frame, quickly chased by a spreading warmth in her fingertips.

  Beneath her hand, flowing outward, he was changing. Racing across the surface of his face like wildfire across a wind-swept field, smooth, healthy flesh replaced the rough, mottled green skin. No longer disfigured and snaggle-toothed, his face reflected nobility in his straight nose, broad brow, and sensuous lips.

  Across his shoulders and chest, the sweeping change continued. Elise’s gaze followed the edge of transformation down his torso as it revealed his nakedness, as beautiful in its symmetry as Michelangelo’s David. Heat rose in Elise’s face as her embarrassment flared, but she didn’t turn away.

  The man, for man he now was, raised his face from Elise’s palm. Wavy, chestnut-colored hair fell to his shoulders. His eyes, now green, still held a hint of grief, but the anger and bitterness were gone. A sudden smile transformed his face still further as he stretched his strong, clean, human hands before him. He threw his arms wide and laughed like the sound of bells ringing. Then he lifted Elise and twirled her in a circle.

  Instead of feeling alarmed, Elise found herself grinning foolishly, caught up in the man’s joy. When he set her down again, the splash of cold water on her feet and legs did little to dispel her giddy happiness, despite the oddness of the situation. None of the etiquette books had prepared Elise for a moment such as this, but the awkwardness she expected to feel was absent as the nude man took her hand and inclined his head. “I am Garth, Lord… Sheehan.”

  Habit came to her rescue. “My lord,” she said, curtseying.

  Lord Sheehan reached for her other hand and kissed the inside of her wrist. The touch of his lips sent a shiver reminiscent of her dream through her body. Then he pulled her gently to the bank of the brook.

  In the back of her mind, Elise was aware that any proper lady would have long since run screaming or collapsed in a dead faint. She’d always striven to behave appropriately, but her interest in science and the natural world often overrode her best intentions. Her curiosity, however, wasn’t what now made her go with him. Something drew her, like iron filings to a magnet. The absolute strangeness of events and the unfamiliar sensations tickling her awareness colored her thoughts and inclined Elise to follow, unresisting.

  As she stepped out of the stream, Elise felt a faint vibration against the soles of her bare feet, subtle and varied like the rhythm of distant music. Lord Sheehan helped her climb the steep bank, and when they reached more level ground Elise began to sense, more than hear, a subtle melody. Almost out of reach, many voices contributed to its whole. The bird flitting from stem to branch, the field mouse’s scurrying, the clouds flowing past the distant hills all added to the song.

  Her companion reached behind her and unbuttoned the two large buttons of her work smock .

  “Lord Sheehan?”

  His hands stilled but remained where they were, holding her in a partial embrace. “Garth. And may I call you Elise?”

  Using first names was too familiar for propriety, but it felt right, fitting smoothly into the music surrounding them. She nodded. “Garth.”

  He pulled the smock from her, causing the knotted hem of her skirts to fall down around her wet legs. Her petticoat stuck to the dampness, and she kicked at the clinging fabric.

  “Take it off.” Garth’s resonant voice matched his handsome face. It sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

  The suggestion was outrageous. His removal of the smock had been presumptuous enough, but Elise didn’t feel outraged. She heard the meadow grass singing of freedom in the evening breeze and the confining fabric of the petticoat suddenly seemed too much to bear. Elise hiked up her skirt and untied the strings. Then Garth’s hands were on her hips under her skirt, sliding the garment down. Elise felt the heat of his touch through the fabric as they traveled down her thighs. The rhythm of her blood sang harmony with the chorus whispering around her.

  Garth took her hand, and they walked across the road and into the tall grass of the meadow. Her mild surprise that her bare feet took no offense at the rough ground was swept aside by the music that thrummed just beyond hearing. The rhythm of the song around them altered, leaving room now for the questions rising in her mind.

  Garth must have felt it too. He stopped and turned Elise to face him, his fingers resting gently on her shoulders. “I cannot tell you how I came to be here in any way that will make sense to you, Elise. I can only tell you that I am grateful beyond words for your touch.” His palms ran softly down her arm
s, leaving a delicious tingling in their wake. He lifted her hands to his lips and kissed each in turn.

  “I think I deserve more explanation than that, sir.” Her smile softened the severity of her words. “Irrational or not, I would like to hear it.” A small part of Elise’s mind wondered at her conversing calmly with a naked man in a meadow, but the thrumming of the symphony around her, and in her, became more powerful. Wordlessly it commanded her: Listen!

  Garth nodded, perhaps to her, or possibly hearing his own command to speak. “Years ago—it seems like a dream now—I took Margaret to wife. It was… we were… very happy.” Garth looked away for a moment as if at a beautiful picture, far out of reach. Then his green eyes returned to Elise’s. “Just when I was getting used to being about as happy as any man could stand to be, Margaret gave me a daughter, and increased my joy tenfold.” Garth’s gaze fell to knee height, and he smiled as though he were looking at the upturned face of a small child. “She was fair, like Margaret, but she had my eyes. And she liked magic tricks.” Elise stared wide-eyed as Garth reached and withdrew a yellow finch from behind her ear and then laughed as it flew from his opened palm. Then the shadow of grief returned to his eyes, and he fell silent.

  Elise waited, somehow knowing, and dreading, what he would say next. Knowing he would continue. He had to. The music wouldn’t allow him to stop now.

  “They died. Here, at this bridge. A carriage accident.”

  The pain in his words twisted in Elise. A theme of grief wove through the melody surrounding them, answered by an echo of rage.

  “I went mad for a time. I wish I could forget that, but I remember clearly. Too clearly. My friends rallied around me, right enough, but I became a wretch and abused anyone who tried to pull me back into life. I think I feared that if I let go of the grief, I would lose them forever. I frequented the bridge, there, sometimes for days at a time. And then…” Garth glanced away, embarrassment wrinkling his brow. “I became, in fact, what I had acted: a dark and repellant creature as ugly as my heart.

  “I never returned home. I stayed here, chained by my anger and hatred to the bridge that had stolen all my joy.

  “Until now.” Garth cupped Elise’s face in his hands. “This isn’t a Faerie story, sweet, nor am I mad. You saw for yourself.”

  She had indeed. Perhaps she was mad for believing him, for believing the evidence of her eyes, but the song surrounding them rang clearly now. Underlying the normal sounds of the evening meadow, it sang of hope and joy and a promise of fullness. If a soft discordant note ran through it, Elise barely noticed.

  Garth apparently needed no more answer than her smile. As she gave it, the music leapt up, and he swept her into a dance across the meadow.

  They twirled together through the tall grass in perfect step with one another, until Elise stopped, laughing, to cast off her skirt. Her bodice and chemise quickly followed, for their confinement seemed to strangle her. Her pins went the way of her clothes, allowing her hair to fall freely down her back. Finally, she stood naked beside Garth just outside the tree line. The last rays of the setting sun caressed her skin and struck sparks of red from her tumbled brown tresses.

  “So beautiful,” Garth murmured, smoothing the strands where they fell over her breast. Then he pulled a lock aside and replaced it with a kiss. When he drew her nipple into his mouth Elise gasped and buried her fingers in his chestnut hair. A lightning bolt of desire flashed from her breast to her womb and beyond to the sensitive place between her legs. Garth’s hands skimmed over her skin, leaving a trail of fire in their wake. Suddenly her entire body was awake and clamoring. Garth raised his head and grinned. Then he lifted her into his arms and carried her into the forest.

  He set her down in a bower of wildflowers beneath the green canopy and knelt beside her. Pausing a moment, he looked at her. Elise returned the favor. He was quite possibly the finest specimen of manhood in all of England, and his stunning erection gave ample evidence that he, too, liked what he saw. She only wondered how it could possibly fit.

  Her gaze drew his attention, and he smiled. “Don’t worry, love. We’ll take our time. I won’t hurt you.” Then he kissed her. When his tongue parted her lips, she opened to him, welcoming his questing warmth. Hot and primal, her tongue fenced with his, drawing him deeper until he pulled away to rain delicate kisses down her neck and shoulder. His mouth found her right breast while his hand gently kneaded her left. She heard a hungry moan and distantly realized it had come from her own throat.

  Garth’s touch moved downward, caressing, stroking, teasing until it rested on her mound. She pressed against him, instinctively spreading her legs. But he only petted her, toying with her curls and the edges of her nether lips until her hips were writhing, seeking something–something more. Then he slipped a finger into her.

  Yes! This was what she’d wanted, yet it wasn’t enough.

  Garth’s finger moved, pulling out then pushing in even further. She pushed back, trying to take him deeper. “You’re so hot and tight, Love. And so eager.” His voice was thick. “But not yet. You’re not quite ready.”

  His finger pulled out, and she whimpered. Then he traced the center of sensation, the point of her pleasure, circling it round and round until she was twisted and knotted in delight. When he plunged back into her, she almost screamed with the joy of it. A moment later he withdrew to tease her nub again. About and about his fingers traced, never quite touching her center. The sharp intensity swept everything from her mind. She almost forgot to breathe. Then he returned with two fingers, slipping them into her.

  The stretching sensation filled a hunger she didn’t know she had. His hand was still for a moment while she accommodated to him, and then he began to stroke in a rhythm she intuitively understood. When he stopped to tease her again, she cried out.

  Then the delight of his touch spread her legs even wider. The powerful sensation was almost too much. Almost–and yet it wasn’t. Her hands fluttered over his back.

  The restless hunger grew and grew. “Please, Garth,” she begged. “I need…” But she wasn’t quite sure what it was she required.

  Garth seemed to know. “Not yet. This is all for you,” he murmured against her lips. Then he drove his fingers into her, stroking in and out as she convulsed, his attentions taking her higher and higher.

  Lightning exploded as the power of her release fragmented her soul. No wonder the French called it le petit mort, the little death. Disintegrated, she was nowhere and everywhere at once. Her legs clamped tightly around his hand and yet still he moved his fingers, drawing out the ecstasy, pushing her into blissful oblivion.

  Slowly, so slowly, she returned to herself. Her muscles quivered with little tremors. No one in all her life had given her such a gift.

  Garth carefully withdrew and positioned himself between her legs. “You are a joy, my dear,” his voice was husky. “Open for me.”

  She looked between them at his jutting erection. The plum colored tip glistened as he rubbed the moisture on his hand over the shaft. It was so large, much bigger than his two fingers.

  “Don’t be afraid, love.”

  Elise felt the warmth of Garth’s embrace, the promise of renewal in his green eyes. She let her thighs fall open.

  Garth kissed her, his firm lips meeting hers languorously, his tongue caressing hers, his teeth nibbling gently. Her blood heated again under his persistent attention. She returned his kiss, meeting his tongue with her own, nipping gently at his lips. He groaned in pleasure, and then he slid his cock into her core.

  She’d expected pain this first time despite his promise, but there was none. Instead she felt as though a hunger she hadn’t recognized had been satisfied. Almost. Stunned with the wonder of it, her breath came in little pants.

  He pulled back, then pushed forward a little, then a little more. When he eased nearly all the way out, she could have wept at the loss, but then he returned, penetrating and pervading her every sense. Back and forth, back and forth, he gently p
ressed deeper and deeper, tending the flame that was flickering to life, until he settled fully into the cradle of her hips.

  She felt him quiver as he held himself still, waiting for her. Then something in her relaxed and she felt herself opening to him like a flower turning to the sun.

  He began to move once more, thrusting slowly at first, then with greater urgency. The flame he was stoking burned hotter and hotter, until she thought she might combust. Her jaw clenched and her fingers clutched his shoulders. The beauty of this experience was beyond what she had imagined, and yet she needed more. Her hips arched, meeting him stroke for stroke until lightning struck a second time. Sharp and vivid, the light nearly blinded her as her body convulsed around his, grasping with her inner muscles like someone starving reaches for a banquet. A guttural cry tore from deep in Garth’s chest, and his whole body shuddered. He threw back his head and plunged into her, his seed filling her beyond completeness.

  *

  Elise’s skin flushed pink with the dawn as she stood looking at the meadow from the edge of the forest. The expanse of tall grass glistened with dew, and insects flitted from stem to stem, drinking the moisture and singing their own gentle song. Behind her, Garth stirred in his sleep, and she turned to gaze upon him. He lay in shadow, but she could still see the perfect expanse of his chest and the sweep of hair across his brow. One leg was drawn up, and she remembered the strength in the firm muscles of his thighs. Suddenly she missed the feeling of him wrapped around her. Elise returned to the bower they had shared the night before. Snuggling into his warmth, a sense of wholeness enfolded her. No shame at her nakedness or her behavior marred it.

  “You were beautiful at dusk, but the dawn suits you even better.” Garth kissed the nape of her neck.

  “I thought you still asleep.” Elise turned in his arms and ran her fingers across his wide chest and down his side to the evidence of his arousal. “But I see now you are quite awake.”