“Ask your son if that is such a terrible thing.” He drew her to the doorway and turned her to face the forest. “The world beyond your walls of stone and metal is his. He can be a part of it as few can hope to be.” He pulled her against his chest and nuzzled the back of her neck. “Do you know what it is like to be a part of nature, Eden—to live as one with the ebb and flow of the seasons, to understand the soaring thoughts of the birds and fly with them, to feel the tiny spark of the seed as it waits in the earth for the coming of the sun?”
“No. I do not.” She didn’t struggle to free herself, but she wasn’t yet at ease in his arms. Or with anything he said. “I have always… always hated coming to the country.”
“And do you still?”
She turned slowly. Her eyes were so soft, so unguarded, that he lost all desire to do anything but drown himself in them.
“No,” she murmured. “I do not hate it anymore.”
Ah, Eden. I stopped hating you the moment I saw you again. He bent his head. Her breathing stilled. The kiss he gave her was almost spiritual, like a benediction. The next, when it came, would not be.
“Let me show you,” he said, “how to begin to love it.” He took her hand and led her through the door, across the stable yard, and beyond to the gate in the stone fence that marked the boundary of the home pasture. He started up the fellside, but Eden’s grasp was an anchor that pulled him back.
She stood staring up at the forest. He remembered that look from the old days when, as Cornelius Fleming, he had tried without success to interest her in his world. Then, her thoughts had been focused entirely on returning to London after their wedding and teaching him the ways of the ton.
Yet in spite of her rejection of it, Nature was kind to her; the slanting late afternoon sunlight penetrated the sheer fabric of her dress, outlining her graceful legs as if she were some half naked wood nymph of the south, and the breeze caressed her face, stirring tendrils of hair and tinting her cheeks with rose.
He could see her as one of his own people in the time before so many had left—running with abandon through the wood, laughing, free of the human rules that forbade her to follow her deepest desires. If only he had time to teach her…
Why was it so important that she understand the things he loved and had devoted his life to protecting? For Donal’s sake, yes—so that when he took his son to Tir-na-nog, she would know it was for the best. And he held the slim hope that she would become the land’s guardian for the remainder of her mortal life, watching over the birds and beasts and untouched wood as she did her tenants.
But there was more to it than that. He need not take so much trouble to seduce her; she was nearly his, vulnerable in her confusion, prepared to throw caution to the winds. The marquess had helped, not hindered, his plans. A few more kisses would send her tumbling into his bed.
Seduction of her body was no longer enough. He did not know when his intentions had changed; he wanted to seduce her mind and heart as well, make her his in every way, even though he knew the cruelty in it if he succeeded.
When Fane wanted, they wanted with everything in their beings and would stop at nothing to obtain it. He was no different, whatever name he gave himself. Fane power was that of enchantment and the primal rhythms of the world; mortal power was the ability to fascinate the Fane into recklessness and, yes, even savagery.
The savagery to make a woman love, get her with child, and then abandon her, even though he no longer hated her or sought revenge. He did not have the excuse of such motives.
His soul was Fane: self-contempt was foreign to his nature. He had told himself that leaving Eden with a new child to replace Donal was a mercy and a kindness.