The Shadowy Horses

And then it was David's arms supporting me, his shoulders warm beneath my hands, the walls and bright lights spinning past his dark head. I breathed again. The music slowed. People pressed in on all sides, but I saw no one else. Only David.

I might have blamed the kilt. He did look smashing in the blended green hues of the Hunting Stewart tartan, with his white cotton shirt clinging damp to his back and the sleeves rolled up over his biceps. Only a Scotsman, Highlander or no, could wear a kilt and look like he'd been born to it. It was as if, by trading in his trousers for a length of tartan, David somehow tapped the pride and wild passion of his ancestors. He seemed to drift in time, not altogether of this century, and his gaze now and then held the glint of a warrior.

Yes, I thought, I might have blamed the kilt; but that wouldn't have been entirely honest. It was the man, and not the clothes, that held me fascinated.

He stopped revolving, and the blue eyes smiled. Lifting one hand from my waist he brushed back a strand of my hair that had worked itself loose from its plait, and I saw his lips moving, soundlessly.

"What?"

This time I caught the words. "Too many people."

"What people?" I asked, and the smile touched his mouth.

"Come on," he said, turning me toward the door, "let's get some air."

Outside the night was clear and warm, and the wind, for once, was still. The harbor lay like glass beneath a moon that needed one small sliver yet to make it full. High tide had come and gone six hours ago, and the Fleetwing had slipped her moorings and gone with it. In her place, a small pale specter floated on the water. It might have been a mere reflection of the moon ... until it tilted up and turned and stretched a searching neck along the blackness. The swan.

"David." I stopped walking, and grabbed his arm. "Look at that." A second ghost had glided from the shadows, neck arched smoothly, wings at rest. It met the first and touched it and the two moved on together. "Oh David, look—he's finally found a mate."

David looked and said nothing. After a long moment he smiled faintly, and turned his face from the harbor, and started walking again, his arm settling warmly across my shoulders.

I didn't really notice which direction we were taking, but since David was going there, I went, too. After several long minutes the pavement ended and the ground became rougher. I sensed that the sea was below us now, the waves kicking spray on the rocks and the beach. Clearing my mind with an effort, I took a proper look around. "Where are we?"

"Up on Eyemouth Fort."

Of course, I thought. That massive spear of land that jutted out into the sea; the red cliffs topped with long green grass. David's childhood thinking-place.

It didn't take genius to know there had once been buildings here—some of the ridges were rather steep. "Mind the haggis hole," warned David, as he helped me over a tufted hillock.

"A haggis," I told him, refusing to bite, "is a sausage in a sheep's stomach."

"Aye, well," he said, straight-faced, "you'll ken differently when you've stepped on one. Vicious wee things."

I sighed, and stepped around the hole of the imaginary haggis, and in the shelter of the second ridge he sat, and pulled me down beside him.

We were more lying than sitting, I suppose, our backs fitted to the angle of the grass-covered slope. I tipped my head back and watched the stars glittering into infinity.

David stayed silent, hands linked behind his head. And then he said simply: "Verity."

"Yes?"

"What are you going to do about Lazenby's job offer?"

I rolled my head sideways to look at him. "What?"

"You ken what I mean. Alexandria."

"How do you know about that?"

"Adrian told me."

Reminding myself to smack Adrian next time I saw him, I pointed out to David that I hadn't actually been offered any job, as yet. "Lazenby hasn't been in touch, he hasn't asked me—"

"When he does," said David calmly, interrupting. "What will you tell him?"

For a moment, in silence, I studied his profile.

Then I said: "If he'd asked me two months ago, I think I would have said yes."

"And now?"

"Now I'm not sure." I shrugged, and pulled a clump of grass with idle fingers.

"And why is that?"

I tossed the grass away and sighed. "Look, I'm never very brilliant at this sort of thing ..."

He smiled faintly at my choice of words. "Happens a lot, does it?"

"No." The word came out of its own accord, and once out, it couldn't be taken back again, so I swallowed hard and repeated it. "No, it doesn't. In fact, it's never... well," I stumbled, as he slowly turned his head to look at me, "that is to say, I've never felt..." But that sentence faltered as well, so I gave up trying.

He held my gaze a long while, silently, his eyes turned silver by the moonlight. And then he stood, and held a hand out. "Time we were getting back," he said.

"David..."

"I've said I'm no saint. I can't stay here like this and not touch you," he told me, his tone carefully even. "And fond as I am of the Fort, I would rather our first time took place in a bed, if it's all the same to you."

I thought of his camp bed, and of my twin-bedded room at Rosehill, and of the other people who were constantly around us, and I shook my head in argument. "But David ..."