“It is true.” He was surprised that he could speak so steadily. His senses were still awhirl, but he felt the warmth of certainty within him. Since that first moment when he saw her looking down into the pit where he had fallen, haloed in light, it seemed to him that this moment had been preordained.
“It would shame us both, and there is no dishonor at all in what I feel for you. I love you, Eilan, as a man loves the woman he would make his wife.”
“How can you?” she whispered, staring at the fire. “You are a stranger. You never even saw me until two weeks ago. Have you dreamed of me, too?”
“I am more of a stranger than you know,” he said grimly. “But I will prove my love to you -” He gathered his courage. “Now I will put my life in your hands. I am a Roman, Eilan. I did not entirely lie,” he added quickly as she pulled away. “Gawen was the name by which my mother called me; but my true name is Gaius Macellius Severus Siluricus, and I am not ashamed of my lineage. My mother was a royal daughter of the Silures, and my father is Camp Prefect of the Second Adiutrix Legion. If that makes you hate me, summon the guards and let them take my life.”
She flushed and then went pale again. “I would never betray you.”
He stared at her. My mother did . . .Suddenly he realized what an odd thought that was, for surely his mother had not wanted to die and leave him alone. Only now, back in her warm and colorful world, was he realizing how painful the shock of being wrenched away from it to the chill discipline of an army camp had been. Was that why he had never been able to reveal himself to any Roman girl as he was doing with Eilan now?
“Tomorrow I must go back to my people, but I give you my pledge that if I leave here unscathed, and if it does not displease you, I shall ask your father honorably for your hand!”
He could feel his heartbeat shaking his chest, but he could think of nothing else to say.
“It would not be displeasing to me, Gawen – Gaius,” she said at last. Her voice was very soft, but her gaze never flinched from his own. “But I do not think my father would consent to give me to a Roman, especially to one born of the Legions. And even if he should agree, my grandsire would not; and Cynric —” The words came in a rush. “Cynric would kill you if he knew!”
“That might not be so easy,” Gaius said, his pride wakening, though the same thought had occurred to him. “But is it really so impossible? Since we came to this island, a number of our officers have married British women of good family to cement alliances. I am half a Briton myself, after all.”
“Perhaps,” she said doubtfully, “but not in our family!”
“Well, my blood on both sides is surely as good as yours!”
She gave him an odd look, and he realized that his Roman pride was speaking. She did not seem to dislike it, but she was not convinced, either, and her stern father would be even harder to persuade.
“I have never met anyone I liked so well as you,” she said helplessly, “and in so little time. I do not understand it, either,” she admitted, “but somehow it seems as if I had known you from the beginning of the world.”
“Maybe you have,” Gaius said, almost in a whisper. For a moment he felt as innocent as the girl in his arms.
He said, “Some of the Greek philosophers believe that each soul comes back again and again to complete its mission on earth, and knows again those it has loved and hated in other lives. It may be that some fate from another life has guided us together, Eilan.”
Even as he said it, he wondered at himself. How could he, Gaius Macellius Severus, speak so to any woman? But Eilan, he defended himself, was not “any woman”; never in his life had he felt so close to anyone. For the first time in his life, his feeling for a girl was almost mystical, something he did not know how to explain.